[THIN] Re: VMWare ESX
- From: "Steve Greenberg" <steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2003 14:34:56 -0700
It is a technology which allows you to run a complete Operating System on
top of another Operating system. So, if you are running Windows XP, you can
launch a process which is a complete instance of Windows 2000 or LINUX, for
example. The HOST operating system sees the GUEST operating system as if it
is a program running locally while the GUEST OS "thinks" it has it's won
hardware available.
The ESX server product is an Enterprise version of this capability which
dedicates and optimizations a multi CPU server, i.e. 4 or 8 way Pentium, as
a platform for running multiple instances of operating systems. This is very
useful for test environments and for consolidate many servers into less
hardware. Many of our clients, for example, end up with 10 or 20 servers
that are doing very small tasks such as DHCP, licensing, hosting a specific
database or application, middleware, etc. In reality they end up maintaining
these 10 or 20 servers when they may only use a few % of their resources.
For application compatibility reasons, OS version requirements, etc. you
often cannot combine these roles. So you use VMWare ESX as a way to run all
of those functions on one server which the ability to assign RAM and
PROCESSOR to each session as needed.
In a Citrix context, it is a way to build a complete multi-server farm
functionally while maintaining much less hardware. In some cases the
overhead is not worth it, in others the simplification of hardware and
resource allocation outweighs any loss in raw performance.
Regards,
Steve Greenberg
Thin Client Computing
34522 N. Scottsdale Rd. suite D8453
Scottsdale, AZ 85262
(602) 432-8649
(602) 296-0411 fax
steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Luchette, Jon
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 1:37 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] VMWare ESX
Hey,
Can somebody give me a high level overview of what VMWare is all about? We
have been looking at moving towards a Blade server platform for our 10
Citrix servers specifically, and I am trying to see if VMWare is something
we should look into or not. Is it extremely expensive? What exactly does
it allow us as administrators to do? Is it to be used in conjunction with
Blade servers or as an alternative? The brochures and white papers on their
website are confusing the hell out of me!
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks guys,
/jL
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