ESXi and clustering

[RDT91]

Hi,

We are planning on making a virtual enviroment at work.

We are looking at 2 Dell servers that we would like to use for the pourpose (2 x PowerEdge T110 II).

We'd like to get these 2 servers to work with load balancing. Now, I can understand that we can load balance virtual machines, or the ESXi hosts. We are thinking about setting up load balancing for the ESXi hosts.

My question is: what VMware software do we need for such a setup? Is it possible to make such a solution with the free edition of ESXi (vSphere Hypervisor)? Or do we absolutely have to go enterprise?

Our budget is low, so we'd like the cheapest solution available.

What can you guys reccomend? Also, do you reccomend load balancing on the VMs or the hosts? Pros vs. Cons?

Thanks in advance,

RDT

[iw123]

Hi,

When you say load balancing, you mean for the virtual machines that your esx hosts will be running? For this you need vCenter in order for you to create a cluster with your ESX hosts. Clustering your hosts will allow you to use features such as high availability, fault tolerance and drs (vm load balancing). You can find out more about vcenter and esx versions here:

http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/overview.html

You can get evaluation versions to try it out, but there it no free version. To take advantage of HA etc you would also need shared storage for your hosts.

hope this helps

[RDT91]

Thanks for your reply.

I was thinking more about clustering the 2 ESXi servers. Not the virtual machines. If that is possible?

- I am a total newbie to VMware and all the VMware products.

[iw123]

ah, no worries. Yes, vcenter allows you to cluster the ESX servers, which in turn gives high availability to the virtual machines they are running. For example, when configured in a cluster, if an esx host fails due to a hardware issue, the virtual machines will be able to run on another host in the cluster (albeit with a slight outage as the vm restarts, in this example).

[firestartah]

Hi

when you say load balancing and clustering the ESXi hosts you mean if one host had to fail then it wouldn;t impact any of the machines running in your environment right? If so then as mentioned you will need vCenter to allow HA/failover capabilities.

Gregg

[RDT91]

I was thinking more about a load balancing, not a failover solution.

[firestartah]

Alright well load balancing in vSphere is called DRS (Distirbuted Resource Scheduling) which is only possible via vCenter server. DRS constantly monitors your virtual machines and will balance the work load between the two (in your case) ESXi hosts.

Gregg

[iw123]

You can't load balance ESX in that sense - A virtual machine is either running on one server or another. DRS (which you need vcenter for) load balances by attemping to spread virtual machines evenly across esx hosts in a cluster.

[RDT91]

Yes, that would be a good solution as well.

What software do we need for this setup? I don't know anything about vCenter and what it does. Is it a software product that you build on your ESXi? And I assume we need ESXi Enterprise?

[iw123]

Hi,

vcenter is a windows application - generally speaking you need a 64bit version of windows to install it on (assuming your using vsphere 5), and a database (though SQL express edition is fine for small deployments)

You can get a 60 day evaluation copy of vcenter from the vmware downloads site. you can read more about it here: http://www.vmware.com/products/vcenter-server/overview.html

[iw123]

something else worth mentioning - its fine to run the machine you install vcenter onto as a virtual machine.

[v-4-virtual]

check out..

http://www.vmware.com/products/high-availability/overview.html

http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/402

[rickardnobel]

RDT91 wrote:

I don't know anything about vCenter and what it does. Is it a software product that you build on your ESXi? And I assume we need ESXi Enterprise?

The vCenter could be used also in lower license classes, but for the "load balancing VM feature" called DRS you will need at least Enterprise edition.

[BharatR]

Hi,

Here is the link for Align Resources to Meet Your Business Needs http://www.vmware.com/products/drs/overview.html.

[krishna_v78]

Hi,

Please ignore this message if you already verified that your Dell servers are compatible with ESXi 5.0

Incase you haven't, then... Vendor didn't confirmed that these servers are compatible with ESXi 5.0

http://www.dell.com/us/enterprise/p/poweredge-t110-2/pd

However, you can still go for ESXi if your servers having i3-2100 Processor (VT enabled)

Regards,

Balu.