[THIN] Re: VMWare Farm
- From: "Selinger, Stephen" <SSelinger@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 16:02:17 -0600
Hi,
Thanks for your thoughts.
Estimates might be low but that is what I am running on for production
right now. We will be adding more hosts in the future as this was a
proof of concept.
I wasn't talking about nor am I running Citrix on ESX. I don't want to
run Citrix on ESX as my physical Citrix environment is fine. I was
talking about my other servers. There are cost savings for environments
with less then 500 servers.
Yes $4k is high for a server but I need 3 years of warranty. If I wanted
a cheap server I would go to build one with parts from Best Buy. :-)
Yes dual HBA is a good idea but I only have one switch so the added cost
in my environment wasn't worth it. I will consider this when we redo our
SAN.
Thanks again.
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Greg Reese
Sent: July 31, 2006 3:39 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: VMWare Farm
I think your cost estimates a little too conservative for putting in two
VMWare ESX boxes. it's your server room and budget though.
consider dual HBAs in the servers for fault tolerance and redundancy.
Consider more than 8gb of ram per VmWare host. Especially if you want
to run your entire farm virtual. Those two things alone will eat up
that cost differnce.
My VMware hosts are quad Opteron dual core with 32gb of RAM and I still
don't consider them good enough for my main citrix servers. I have a
couple of PS 4 machines hosted there that get light use for screwball
apps I don't want on my main servers. Two VMWare servers in my
environment was way over 100k.
For running Citrix PS4, you can do better than 4000 per server. I paid
2500 per server for the last ones I bought and they were maxed out for
performance.
I don't see VMware as a money saver until you scale big. Really big.
500 servers big. it has it's place and is a great thing but i would
recommend against it for hosting your entire Citrix farm. Even then,
unless you have a burning need for the benefits of VMotion, the more
basic versions of VMware are good enough.
Greg
On 8/1/06, Selinger, Stephen <SSelinger@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hmm...Good points but let's take a further look...at least what has
worked for me. This might not work in your environment but has worked
great for me!!
Please note that I am not talking about Citrix on VMWARE in the
following message.
Well I have 20 Virtual machines running across three Dell 2850 servers
in my environment. They all are connected to the san and absolutely run
without any performance problem for the last two years. They haven't
been rebooted for 228 days. These are production virtual machines that
are used everyday. I have not yet had one single issue with the
virtualization platform and no vendor has not provided support.
(Including MS_). Let's compare some quick numbers.
If I would have purchased 20 Servers for this environment it would have
cost: (Please note Canadian dollars which are pretty much US dollars now
:-) )
Plan A - Physical Servers
20 - DELL 1850 - $ 4,000 each = $80,000 (with 3 year
warranty)
1 - Rack for Servers - $ 5,000 (I was out of rack
space in my environment)\
1 - Blade for Switch - $ 5,000 (Network Guys are out
of ports)
Total Cost = $90,000.00
** Note I would have probably needed to purchase more AC and power but I
will not include these numbers in my calculations as I do not directly
pay for those things.
Plan B - ESX Servers
2 - DELL 2850/ 8 GB Ram/ - $ 15,000 each = $30,000
2 - HBA for SAN - $ 1,000 each = $ 2,000
2 - SAN Ports - $ 2,500 each = $ 5,000
2 - ESX License - $ 7,500 each = $15,000
2 - ESX Support for 3 years - $ 3,000 each = $ 9,000
1 - Disk for SAN - $ 10,000 300 GB = $10,000
Total over 3 years $71,000.00
Ok so you say wow you only saved $18,000 dollars big deal?
Well it is a big deal when you consider that all of the physical servers
in plan A are not connected to the SAN. They are stand alone and live
and die alone. If I wanted to compare apples to apples I would put HBAs
into each server and attached them into two SAN switch ports. This is
not cheap. So assuming that an HBA costs $1000 dollars and a SAN port
costs $2500 dollars which are the costs in my environment this would be
the updated numbers.
Plan A- Physical Servers with SAN Disk
20 - Standard Dual Proc Server = $80,000.00
1 - Rack for Servers = $ 5,000.00 (I was out of rack space in my
environment)\
1 - Blade for Switch = $ 5,000.00 (Network Guys are out of ports)
20 - HBAs for servers = $20,000
20 - SAN Switch Ports = $50,000
1 - Disk for SAN - $ 10,000 300 GB = $10,000
Total Cost = $170,000
Plan B - ESX Servers
2 - DELL 2850/ 8 GB Ram/ - $ 15,000 each = $30,000
2 - HBA for SAN - $ 1,000 each = $ 2,000
2 - SAN Ports - $ 2,500 each = $ 5,000
2 - ESX License - $ 7,500 each = $15,000
2 - ESX Support for 3 years - $ 3,000 each = $ 9,000
1 - Disk for SAN - $ 10,000 300 GB = $10,000
Total over 3 years $71,000.00
Potential Cost Savings = $101,000
So you would see that if (and I say IF) the requirement was that all
servers were connected to the SAN then the ESX solution would be cheaper
by $100,000 dollars. Yes you might not agree exactly with my numbers but
I think that this illustrates that there are tremendous cost savings
made in an ESX environment. We IT people have always been taught to over
build servers just to ensure that no one complains. I think that this is
the only industry that you can overbuild everything and not get fired!
If you were building office buildings for your company that were only 5%
utilized and you wanted to build a new building each time that you hired
a few more staff you would be fired so fast your head would spin.
There are also many soft benefits to virtualization with ESX I will
quickly name a few:
1) Vmotion
Absolutely cool technology. Imagine moving a live production server in
the middle of the day to another piece of hardware without any downtime.
Let's say you want to install more ram into the host server. Simply
VMotion all the guests over to another server, install the ram and then
VMotion the hosts back!
2) Snapshots.
Take a snapshot of you server before you install some MS patch of the
week. If the patch bombs your server simply fall back to the Snapshot
and all is well!!
3) VMWARE HA
If one of your ESX servers dies all of the VMs on that server will
restart on another ESX server. Yes the VMs will go down but within a few
minutes they will be back on another system.
4) Distributed Resource Scheduling
You basically setup a cluster of ESX servers that you're VMs live on.
They will be load balanced across this hardware to ensure enough
resources are spread across the farm.
I am not going to say that this won't work in every eviroment as
everyone and every company is different. I would just ask that you keep
your options open and at least look at this solution. Start small with a
few test servers and build from there.
You can download VMWARE ESX 3.0 evaulation from
http://www.vmware.com/download/vi/eval.html Remember the eval is free
but once you start you will never go back!
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ] On Behalf Of Greg Reese
Sent: July 31, 2006 1:50 PM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: VMWare Farm
I'm with Jeff on this one. VMWare has it's place but I wouldn't trust
my entire farm to it. Web interface, license server, test environments
etc. Small things that don't need lots of attention or power.
5 vmware servers and licensing for ESX will also cost a small fortune.
Not to mention the SAN space etc. If you spent 3k per server on 15 Hp
DL360 servers, you would be looking at 45k for the farm. 5 vmware
servers, plus support, plus vmware esx, HBA's, SAN space etc will be a
lot more than 45k and not perform as well. It will perform OK, but once
you get loaded up with lots of users, the physicals will outperform.
I like the fact that running on physical boxes is a known commodity.
When you are running things on VMware and there is a problem, it gets
brought up. The vendors point fingers at it, management wonders about
it. Then you have to move it to a physical box to prove it is or is not
a vmware issue etc. it just becomes a hassle. A hassle you paid more
money to have.
Greg
On 8/1/06, Jeff Pitsch <jepitsch@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This all depends on what your DR needs are but Zone Preference and
Failover will allow for automatic redirecting of clients to the DR site
without any need for you to get involved.
As for the 15 VM's, that depends on many factors. What hardware are you
moving from and moving too? How many users? How much load were on your
old servers? Have you looked at 64-bit at all? How did you determine
that 5 servers running VMWare would meet your needs? Have you done any
real testing to see if this solution would work?
Jeff Pitsch
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
Forums not enough?
Get support from the experts at your business
http://jeffpitschconsulting.com <http://jeffpitschconsulting.com/>
On 7/31/06, Eldon <u2htdaab@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks to all providing very good info so far. Now, which features
specifically in PS 4 would resolve my DR needs (not totally up to speed
with PS 4). Also, isn't running 15 VMs running on only 5 servers
improving my farm based upon consolidation?
On 7/31/06, Jeff Pitsch <jepitsch@xxxxxxxxx > wrote:
mm, i would argue that you probably have space to consolidate anyway but
moving to 64-bit OS and hardware would allow you to consolidate very
easily and the features that are in PS4 would allow for exactly what
your looking for from a DR perspective. Just remember that you will not
get the same performance out of a VM that you would out of pure
hardware. Now there are obvious considerations here like you may be
using really old hardware, etc but do not be surprised that you could
very easily end up running more than 15 VM's to handle the same amount
of users in a virtualized environment.
As well, don't agree to anything until you can actually test all of thi
sout. Anyone can promise the world, it's up to you to make sure that
it's actually the world you want. I've seen to many people fall into
this trap and only listen to what they are being told, then sign the
agreements, then live to regret because they didn't do due diligence to
make sure that the solution would actually work.
Jeff Pitsch
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
Forums not enough?
Get support from the experts at your business
http://jeffpitschconsulting.com <http://jeffpitschconsulting.com/>
On 7/31/06, Eldon <u2htdaab@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Being the OP, the lure of VMware to me is twofold: 1 - to consolidate
hardware in my current deployment of HP G1 hardware (15) to support 250
concurrent connections to a published dekstop and other siloed apps; and
2 - to allow failover to our DR site by using our current EMC SAN
located in our main site and a future EMC SAN (Centerra) at our DR
location. Portability of moving VMs between SANs in a DR scenario is
very appealing.
I am in the process of waiting on a quote from a Solutions Architect,
but the way it was explained to me is that I would be looking at
consolidation of 3 current servers into 1 (3 VMs per server).
On 7/31/06, Jeff Pitsch <jepitsch@xxxxxxxxx > wrote:
Hence my statement of lightly used servers. Most companies care about
getting more users on a system vs less. Now granted the OP didn't say
how many users, how many servers but in the end if you try to take an
entire farm and port it to VM's, you will typically end up using more
VM's than phsyical boxes. VM's simply cannot get the same amount of
users on a system as physical hardware can at this point in time. If
you aren't utilizing your servers to their full potential or even close
to their potential, then yes you could move to VM's and not notice much
of difference. But let's be realistic for a moment, most people move to
VM's to consolidate servers. As well, many many companies that do this
with Presentation Server aren't using their boxes to nearly their
potential anyways so moving to VM's for that reason is simply
ridiculous. I would be willing to bet that many PS implementations have
never taken the time to benchmark or stress test their servers to see
how many users they can get on a system. They have no idea what their
sytems can handle and therefore over buy on the systems required. Now
overbuying isn't necessarily a bad thing (for redundancy) but I've been
into many many companies that do it because they simply don't know what
their systems can handle.
whew, gotta get off that soapbox. Sorry everyone
Jeff Pitsch
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
Forums not enough?
Get support from the experts at your business
http://jeffpitschconsulting.com <http://jeffpitschconsulting.com/>
On 7/31/06, Selinger, Stephen <SSelinger@xxxxxxxxx > wrote:
Jeff,
Respectively I hope that you are only taking about highly utilized
production Citrix servers and not other servers as VMs. There are many
companies including where I work that have production VMs of various
sorts and flavours. ESX is absolutely a production ready product that is
capable of running production VMs. Yes there will be servers that have
too high of utilization to be running on ESX but there are tons of over
powered underutilized servers out there.
________________________________
From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ] On Behalf Of Jeff Pitsch
Sent: July 31, 2006 11:29 AM
To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [THIN] Re: VMWare Farm
I believe the general concesus is is that for production, VM's are not
the way. Lightly used servers are fine, but for an entire farm the
performance is ismply not there yet.
Jeff Pitsch
Microsoft MVP - Terminal Server
Forums not enough?
Get support from the experts at your business
http://jeffpitschconsulting.com <http://jeffpitschconsulting.com/>
On 7/31/06, Eldon < u2htdaab@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:u2htdaab@xxxxxxxxx> >
wrote:
Currently running FR3 on 2000 SP4, and am beginning to evaluate and look
at building a separate Windows 2003 CPS 4.0 Farm on the VMWare ESX
platform. Just wanted to get an idea if anyone on the list has
something similar in production today, what hardware you deployed to
support published apps on ESX and VMotion, and how you designed your
farm (including Data Collector and Database). Also looking for Best
Practices and Things to Avoid!
Thanks!!
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