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bsobczyk
Contributor
Contributor

One or Two cluster

Hi,

I would like to upgrade my vmware vsphere dc, now I have one cluster with three node Westmere architecture, I'm going to buy new three servers and I prefer new architecture Sandy Bride (E5-2690v2)  but I'm afraid about I need create new cluster beacouse this is another evc compability. I would like to know, what's better idea: buy old architecture and create one cluster with 6 node or create new cluster with new architecture, and after maintenance 2 cluster with 3node.

thansk for suggestion

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7 Replies
DavoudTeimouri
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hi friend,

As you may know, EVC has little impact on your application but when you have 6 hosts in a cluster, you have more fail-over capacity and also better load balancing.

These link and document help you for make best decision.

  1. Impact of Enhanced vMotion Compatibility on Application Performance | VMware VROOM! Blog - VMware Bl...
  2. http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-vSphere-EVC-Perf.pdf

BR

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Davoud Teimouri - https://www.teimouri.net - Twitter: @davoud_teimouri Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teimouri.net/
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martin_hosken
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Yes, so if you enable EVC you will loose the new features and performance of your new Sandy Bride CPUs and lower the cluster to the lowest common denominator. But having a 6 node cluster will improve your HA failover capacity % and allow you to provision more VMs overall.

So what you need to ask yourself is what is your priority - which only you or your customer can answer ?

A) Additional Performance for the VMs running on the new cluster

B) Less Failover Capacity required and therefore more overall resources to provision VMs on.

If it was my decision I would go with option B, unless I needed to create and dedicated Island cluster for Oracle for example, where there would be licensing, performance, operational and security benefits of operating your existing and new resources as two clusters.

Regards

Martin Hosken Global Cloud Architect | VCDX #117 | vExpert 2014 Global Cloud Practice – vCloud Air Network | Cloud Services Business Unit
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Sreejesh_D
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

its not a good idea to buy old architecture servers because of EVC. Because those servers may hit EOL soon and you will not get vendor support after that.

In fact EVC is for helping customers in these scenarios. Its good to add the new servers in the existing cluster if the VMs are grouped in same category. By this you will get additional fail over capacity and compute resources.

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jrmunday
Commander
Commander

Agreed with all of the above. If I had to make the decision, then I would definitely buy the latest hardware which will ultimately give you greater flexibility.

Cheers,

Jon

vExpert 2014 - 2022 | VCP6-DCV | http://www.jonmunday.net | @JonMunday77
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TBKing
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I'd have to agree with the One Cluster opinion.

Not too long ago I was looking at what are the "real" advantages of the higher architecture chips and using EVC.  The only thing that stuck out was about processing "AES Encryption workloads"

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/VMware-vSphere-EVC-Perf.pdf

hehe - I just noticed I linked the same article as above

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bsobczyk
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for all comments. I decided to buy new cpu SandyBridge and create another cluster.

Regards

BS

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raffic_ncc
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Good Decision .... It is always better to buy new hardware with the latest architecture..

Mohammed Raffic VCP4,VCP5,VCAP4-DCA,VCAP5-DCA,VCP-Cloud, MCSA.MCTS,CCA http://www.vmwarearena.com
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