Anybody Virtualize HP SIM Server?

[doubleH]

Wondering if anyone has their HP Systems Insight Manager Server running in a VM. Any pro's/con's to this? Is it supported?

[tgradig]

We did virtualized it as a test, but HP suggests not to virtualize it because of the way the application talked to the hardware and for the repository.

[Curdasss]

I have the new version installed on a VM for the upgrade. It runs fine for me, it take a good bit of RAM so thats a down side. Other than that I really haven't time to get it fully configured, but it is running and collecting data with no issue's.

[doubleH]

thanks for the replies. i don't know how i missed this before i posted, but i found this in the HPSIM guide...

HP SIM 5.1 can run on a Windows Virtual Machine (VM) provided the following requirements are

met. The VM must be hosted on an ESX 3.0.1 or later server and the VM configuration must meet HP SIM

hardware requirements and the CPU and Memory resources allocated to this VM must be always available

to this VM (by reserving CPU and Memory resources).[/i]

[dougjef]

I've found that if you monitor a significant # of servers performance isn't nearly as good as a standalone server even if you give it 2gb of RAM. I have multiple SIM servers managing our DMZ's with small quantities of servers (under 50) each and performance seems to be ok, but if you are looking at managing 300+ a physical server looks to be the way to go.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

For quite a number of months we virtualized our HPSIM server, but this is not really recommended. Once I started adding more and more plugins into HPSIM, the network performance start to really drag. If you want to virtualize HPSIM (which HP says NOT to do, due to the network requirements) be sure to use it only on an Administrative network and not anything production as it is very network intensive.

Due to its network intensive nature we eventually moved it to a physical host and we could better balance our ESX Servers. While it works, I think it depends upon its usage more than anything. Monitor carefully, and besure it is on an admin network and your production machines should be fine.

Best regards,

Edward

[doubleH]

were you using HPSIM 5.1 and ESX 3.0.1?

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Yes we were using HPSIM 5.1, VMM, PMP, VPM, and Version control all from within a VM on ESX v3, v3.01, and on v3.1.

We did not migrate it off a VM (we still have that VM on backup) until recently and everything worked within a VM. Making it a physical host allowed us to better balance the system and give it as much memory as it could use. Our ESX Server running HPSIM is a small DL380 G3, and HPSIM increased the utilization of the box to 2x what it was without HPSIM. It is a very intensive program. We would consider revirtualizing it when we could get more processor just for it.

Best regards,

Edward