Virtualization Edge

Wiggle Room in Deciding on a Virtualization Server

ToddMuirhead — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 15:33:00 GMT

What is the best server for virtualization? This is a question that comes up often in discussions, although it is sometimes phrased differently. It might be "How many NICs do you recommend for ESX?" or "How much RAM can you put in an R805?" or "Are blades the most power efficient server?". The really cool thing is that the answer to all of them ends up being the same - If you can tell me what you are trying to do, and the key requirements that you have, I can give you the best answer. Sometimes you need tons of RAM, sometimes you oodles of NICs, and sometimes you are looking for the best value.

We can give you some basic guidance and even provide you with reference architectures, but ultimately everybody has to customize their virtualization solution based on their needs. To provide you with the ability to be able to customize, you have to be educated about what your choices are what the ramifications are for each choice. That's what this focus topic on Selecting a Virtualiation Server has been all about. Connecting people with the information as well as each other for discussion about the process. This played out in each of the three chats that we did, and can continue on the discussion threads.

This really isn't anything new in the IT world. Almost all solutions have required a certain amount of planning and sizing that was specific for each organization. The advantage with virtualization is that there is more wiggle room to adapt and learn as you go. Because virtualization provides a layer between the VMs and the physical servers, things can be changed, modified, tuned much more easily than without virtualizaiton. If you find that a server is overloaded with too many VMs, you can use VMotion to move some to another server. If you find that you are out of capacity, you can add another server to the farm and redistribute the VMs to take advantage of the new capacity - without any downtime.

Use this community to keep the discussion going about what the best server is for virtualization - all questions around this topic are welcome. The opportunity to interact with your peers and find out why and how they made their decisions is really the best answer to a question that has a different answer for everybody.

Todd

Iniside IT Video is Still True

ToddMuirhead — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:15:00 GMT

I didn't get a chance last week to draw attention to the nice video that Marc Farley put up on the InsideIT blog last week about our TechCenter web chats. Marc is a regular attendee of our weekly chat sessions and he is also the lead blogger on InsideIT. The video is cool, short, and just as relevant this week as last. This week's chat (Tues 3 PM CST) will be about when to select blades for your virtualization server platform.

Todd

Is it Cool to Use Virtualization?

ToddMuirhead — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:24:00 GMT

These days, it seems like everybody is at least looking at using VMware. It's the cool thing to do. Clearly.

But what about when you run something like Exchange or SQL Server or Oracle? It seems that almost everybody is cool with virtualization, until you start talking about stuff like this. Then there is a pause. Some decide to push forward, others decide to wait, still others may declare that they would never do it!

There are lots of issues to consider including support, performance, backup, disaster recovery, and even non-technical things like organizational structure and management support. So the answer for everybody isn't the same. The next TechTuesday chat is going to have this as it's discussion point - Running enterprise apps virtualized - to let everybody learn from each other.

Todd