ESX vs. VMware Server for Windows?

[hutchingsp]

I'd appreciate some advice folks. I'm digging around the forums and reading papers etc. but in the meantime here's the situation I'm in.

I'm budgeting for next year when a bunch of servers are replaced.

At present the physical boxes are all HP DL360's:

2 x Domain Controllers

1 x Intranet/Antivirus/Commvault box

1 x DMZ External Web Server

1 x SQL Server (light usage)

We have various other servers that will be replaced over time which mostly come down to being application specific i.e. HP SIM, Citrix.

One of the options I'm looking into is virtualization.

Looking at the list above, other than wanting at least one physical domain controller I think most of the other servers are candidates for virtualization.

Suppose I were to buy a Quad Core HP DL380 with 8gb of RAM, several NICS, and attach it to an MSA50/70 disk shelf.

As I understand it I could purchase 2003 Server Datacenter (for the unlimited VM's license) and then do one of two things:

Install 2003 Datacenter on it and run VMWare Server for Windows.

Install ESX Server Starter Edition (on a single box is standard worth it?).

The cost of ESX Starter is minimal. I've yet to download the demo of ESX (waiting for the test hardware to arrive).

What I'm unsure of right now is whether I would benefit from running ESX at this kind of fairly small level?

I know user count doesn't mean much, but we have approx 500 users and a single location/server room and at present I think things like VMotion/HA are beyond us as we're not yet at the point IMO where we can justify a SAN.

I guess being cynical I'm assuming that because VMWare Server is free it is somehow restricted/not production ready etc.

I'd appreciate any pointers, hints, tips, advice and in the meantime I'm off to read some more

cheers,

Paul

[hutchingsp]

I know ESX is essentially linux based, but as we're a Windows shop I don't think a DIY linux + VMware Server would be viable, the Windows product would, I'd simply assumed that for $1000, when you look at the bigger picture ESX starter would be more stable/make better use of hardware resources?

It all comes down to the "single point of failure". I actually think from a resource POV a single box would be sufficient, it's just the options for what happens if it breaks, let's assume we could rustle up a spare basic server, I'm thinking how easy is it to actually access your VM images that are still on the old server?

Even with a cheap SAN the issue is still there if a switch or the SAN storage box fails.

Message was edited by:

hutchingsp

[m_d_sella]

From the storage point of view, we have a relatively low-end SAN-based disk system, and it has quite a bit of redundancy built in. Most similar disk systems have at least dual power supplies and have dual controllers with a couple fiber ports on each controller. To start, we cabled the 2 ESX hosts directly to the disk system to avoid the need for the switches. Over the last three years, none of our three disk systems have experienced an outage.

But even these small disk systems do cost a bit and could easily be out of budget range. In that case, I think that your idea to go with a second server (of the same model) as a backup should be fine. It wouldn't quite have the flexibility of SAN, but it should provide you with a pretty straightforward failover path.

[christianZ]

I'd simply assumed that for $1000, when you look at

the bigger picture ESX starter

Remember max. 8 GB RAM

>would be more

stable/make better use of hardware resources?

Yes, but with this configuration you haven't any shared storage

It all comes down to the "single point of failure".

I actually think from a resource POV a single box

would be sufficient, it's just the options for what

happens if it breaks, let's assume we could rustle

up a spare basic server, I'm thinking how easy is it

to actually access your VM images that are still on

the old server?

Correct, this is quite simply but if the server fails your all vms will be crashed.

Even with a cheap SAN the issue is still there if a

switch or the SAN storage box fails.

e.g. some fc Infortrend's systems don't need any san - you can connect your server directly to storage.

By the new sas systems (e.g. IBM DS3200/Enenio 13xx) you can work over sas cables - you don't need any san too - but the shared storage is there.