Virtualization Frontier

RE: What To Do With Free ESXi

ToddMuirhead — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 18:25:13 GMT

I agree with you that SMB is probably the most logical place for ESXi. Tackling how to easily setup storage for these limited IT environments is tricky. Using a software based tool like those you mentioned could be the way to go. If the storage is all local, then maybe you don't need anything. Setup RAID (5 or 10 or whatever) and then just partition a big VMFS partition or partitions for everything.

I guess that the thing that kinda gets me is that all of this stuff you can do with ESXi could also be done with VMware Server - both of which are free. And in some ways it might be easier with VMware server because you have a full OS there to help you configure and manage the host. Of course in other ways it is bad for the reason that you have to manage that host OS with VMware Server. Performance should be much better with ESXi, but I don't know that performance is really a big issue.

I want to listen to the podcast that you sent me, but our "Smartfilter" blocks it. I'll check it out from home.

Thanks - Todd

Todd

RE: What To Do With Free ESXi

SinghSingh — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:54:59 GMT

There are going to be many sharp minds playing around with ESXi and with that experimentation will come lots of interesting projects\ideas.

I like the idea of using ESXi with mirrored local storage. I think this could be a great offering for SMBs (medical offices, etc) who need uptime and have limited resources for IT management. I was thinking of using Lefthand Networks' VSA or perhaps something like xtravirt's xvs to manage the local storage.

There is a great discussion hereon what could be done with ESXi for the SMB market and the hurdles which must be overcome. (FYI - The title of the discussion is completely different from were the convo ends up)

rajesh singh

RE: Benefits of iSCSI over Fiber Channel

jameervin — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:49:18 GMT

I think iSCSI is a lot easier for most people to set up. No extra stuff required. You already devoted networking infrastructure to virtual servers, why not for storage. The other big benefit for iSCSI and Virtualization is the DR (disaster recovery) angle. Most iSCSI SANS offer some sort or WAN replication. It would be much easier to failover virtual servers to site 2 and have the data sync up.

Jame Ervin
www.stonefly.com

RE: Storage Choice for Virtualization Can Be Easy

jameervin — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:58:14 GMT

There are a lot of great certified iSCSI and SAN storage choices on the HCL. I'd start mey research there. Everything starts to look pretty similar after awhile so find a good resource to help you weed through the marketing stuff to find out what will work well in your environment.