Starting Out

[stevehoweuk]

Hi

I have a site that will be buying a 2nd PC server and I am thinking they could benefit from VMware ESXi Free edition.

I am wondering where the best place to start is, for example are there any free resources, how to's, examples or best practices?

Also if someone could assist in clarifying whether or not the following would work?

Current Server running Windows SBS2003 and Exchange the client wants a 2nd box for hardware redundancy so the new box will be Windows 2008 Standard and Exchange 2010 Server.

If the old box meets the VMWAre requirements what I would like to do is the following...

Connect a Drobo Pro (Single iSCSI) to the new server and run both OS's under ESXi Free.

Use the 2nd Server with a Free ESXi License and keep it as a standby machine.

If the 1st server should fail the VM's would be on the iSCSI box so would I be able to simply plug this into the 2nd server and run up the 2 VM machines?

Thanks in advance for any help or comments?

[ExpletiveDelete]

While the ESXi free edition does give you some benefits, it really only allows you to consolidate your physical servers and could actually be a potential single point of failure. Is this going to be in a production environment?? If you're using the two separate machines, are you also using MSCS? I know you don't get clustering without vCenter, so if thats what you're planning to do, you're best option is to go with MSCS if you don't want to pay for vCenter - Just be aware of the single point of failure possibility.

as far as 'free' tools go, there are a plethora of them out there, it just depends on what you want to do. Veeam, RVTools, and vKerenel are my favorites. There was a session at VMworld this past september about them - if you can get access to the sessions.

[stevehoweuk]

Hi

One server will be a production (Either Hardware or Virtual) running Win2k8 the current server will become the secondary server.

It's not an environment for Clustering given its only a sub 20 user base.

Just wanted an easier way the redundancy doesn't have to fail over or be instant, simply Technical turn up and configure the 2nd hardware box to runup as the main server in the event of a failure, hence why I aksed if running the VMs from the ISCSI drobo would enable me to simply unplug and plug into the other server and start running up the VMs.

Steve

[ExpletiveDelete]

yes. Its possible. but you will have to re-register the VMs on the 'new' host after you have verified the path to the drobo (assuming the storage/VMFS partitions are set up properly).