how many VM can I run with 1 host server ??

[Thomas4600]

hi there.

I'm pretty new to VMware and still learning a lot. I got myself a little sandbox with HA, ISCSI NAS and blablabla that is working fine up to here (Thanks to all that help me understand by explaining patiently since I'm not english based)

Now, My bosses want to have more meat around the bone, more gravy. They asked me: What about real life applications. What are the real cost to that.

In order to give that answerm I need to answer a few questions so I'm currently looking for some information here. We have 40 employees and plan to move them on VMWARE VIEW COMPOSER desktop images.

Will a NAS with 7200 RPM will suffice ? (my guess is NO but the accounting person prefers the price so... Please tell me that I'm right

In terms of server/physical host for all those 40 machines, what can I expect? I'm quite sure that all of them won't run on a single server so what is the ratio VM per host can I expect. I tried to run through all the documentation and they are verry evasive on that. They surely tell me about how economic it is and how many percent of storage I will save but nothing clear about this aspect that I think is important. Example: Saving a bit on storage but to tripple on processing hardware is not a deal ( know what I mean ) !http://communities.vmware.com/message/1475742/!!

So if someone can be kind enough to share his experience with me on this matter, It would be verry appreciate. I would like to have some Real Life examples if possible to give me a few hints on what to do and what not to do.

Thanks

[rManic]

single ESX( running on latest Server Hardware) is enough to run 40 VM's but it may very if your VM's will run Processor/Memory indensive OS/Application

If you consider HA in mind you need more then 1 ESX(If ESX Servers are brand new,then 2 ESX is enough)

Your ISCSI box is enough to run 40 VM's IF your VM's not I/O indensive

regards

Manic

[mittim12]

As the other poster said a single box when designed correctly could very easily handle 40 VM's but you would lack the flexibility and failover that make VMware so popular. You should definitely build an image that mimics would you would give the user and do some test to see what kind of load it generates. This will go a long way in helping you design and price our your server. Your storage may also be ok but you need do some performance metrics on that as well to determine how many iops are being generated. This will help you scale storage to suit your needs too. I have found in my experience that this is always a work in progress. We learned so much more when we rolled into production vs our test and demo environments.

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[Thomas4600]

thanks for que quick answers. I verry appreciate it. However, my questions are not totally answered.

what is the minimal expected server configuration to be able to run that kind of workload. (give me SPECS, models, etc)

our compagny currently run on an old proliant dual p3 600 mhz with w2k server. I plan to purchase more than 1 server to have HA, FT, DRS and AM-FM stereo CD radio options . I just want to know what kind of server should I keep in my scope (cpu, ram, etc) and how many of them should I plan (2 - 5 - 10 - 50 - 100 )

I want also to plan for future expantions. We are building infrastructures so having a camper with high speed internet, a VPN and few Thin client sounds good to me (instead managing 3-4 computers / laptop on each site, sometimes way far from HQ.)

My question maybe makes me look like a newbie (wich I am, concerning virtualisation, I admit it) but There is nothing clear on any documentation I was able to find.

Despite the fact that my english is basic so everything needs to be translate ( time consuming, issue with non-techie translator comprehention, etc) , all of this is driving me crazy since nothing is verry clear from the begining.

Can Vmware just add a document somewhere with a clear chart like: a given type of server can handle X capacity of regular XP sp3 VM with office 2007 (for example). to support options like (HA, FT, etc) then add X qty of this same server type. nothing more complicate than that would suffice (and if it already exist, then just make it available more easily because I havn't found it yet)

Can you guys just tell me the big lines on what you currently have on the field, just to help myself to make a blunt idea of what I should expect ?

(sorry for beeing sometimes blunt and sounding anoying, Big thanks to all that understand my frustration and help me out with my interrogations)

[mittim12 · Accepted solution]

I don't think VMware is going to give recommendations like that because they have no idea what type of utilization you experience in your environment. Each environment is different and requires monitoring and performance gathering to build a good plan of action. In our case we use HP DL 385 dual quad core machines with 32 GB of memory for our environment. Depending on how you size your VMs you should be able to handle 40 no problem.

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[rManic]

It is very critical to ans your question

without knowing your environment,

vmware already have relatioship with most the server,storage vendors like HP ,IBM, Dell etc you can approach them.

I am using HP Proliant DL380 G6 with 32 GB RAM to run 25 VM's if your VM's are processor indesive go DL580 G6 it will have 4 Physical processor

if your VM's are memory indensive add more memory while purchase, for storage consideration contact HP,Dell,EMC, Netapp etc reffer the offical site for cotact details

work out more to design

decession is your's

regarsd

Manic

[Thomas4600]

THAT is what I was looking for !!! thanks :smileygrin:

so for HA, FT and DRS, 2-3 of them should do more than the trick.

Are you in a persistant mode or non persistant?

[Cameron2007]

I created a post to check sizing prior to deployment The link is here:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1095445#1095445

Ended up using DL385 G5's and can run all the machines easily. User load is not really very heavy and the amount of concurrent connections is unlikely to be a high percentage of the total VM's.

Hope this is some help.