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dickieblack
Contributor
Contributor

Feature requirments for small-scale deployment

Hi All,

This may not strictly count as an enterprise question, but I am in a satellite office of large enterprise environment and this is about planning.

Currently we have a 4 socket quad core server with 64GB RAM running the free VMware Server 2.0. People here are generally impressed with the abilities of this system, so I am now looking at turning it into a production system. There is no specific budget available for this however, so costs need to be kept at a minimum

Ideally, we would wanted to host our file server, print server, DC and various other mission critical servers along with a number of WinXP guests with various different application suites installed on this 4 socket machine. For resilience purposes, A second, less powerful host would be available in case of failure of the main one and would only be required to host the mission critical guests. Storage would be provided by an iSCSI SAN. All the guests will need to be backed up, preferably whilst running. A third server with an LTO-3 tape drive, running Windows Sever 2003, is available for this function.

So, what I want to know is: to have the mission critical guests failover automatically to the reserve host, what components of vSphere do I actually need?

Is it possible to have less licenses for things like DRS and vMotion than CPUs, since these features would only be needed for some guests?

Thanks,

Richard

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AsherN
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

First off, a 4 socket quad core amy be severely over spec'd.

To acheive what you need, you will need a second server, vSphere Standard, vCentre Foundation and ans SAN.

Given the apparent sizing of your current server, DRS may not be required :).

vMotion is only required to evacuate a host to perform maintenance.

The HA capabilities in vSphere will re-power a guest in the event of a host failure. There will be some domwntime as the second host realizes that the first host is down and powers up the VMs. If you need true always up service, then you need to look at Fault Tolerance. Caveat, there are a LOT of restrictions on FT.

For backups, you have a number of possibilities, depending on what you need the backups for.

if you need data for archival purpose, then sometthing like Backup Exec with agents in the VMs wil do.

If want to backup at the VM level for faster DR, then you are looking at something like vRanger.

dickieblack
Contributor
Contributor

Wow, quick response - thanks AsherN.

I agree that for the moment the 4 socket, quad core machine is overkill, but it is already purchased, as it is left over from a completed project, as is the secondary host. The extra capacity will almost certainly get used in the near future.

In terms of HA versus FT, I think HA will have to do for now. The processors on the primary and secondary host are not on the supported list for FT - Intel 7320 and 5110 respectively. Always up would be extremely useful, but hard to justify. Data integrity is more important to us.

As for licensing, might we be able to get away with an SMB license for Essentials Plus by combing two of the three 1 server, 2 processor licenses to make a 4 processor license? I think that would be more economical than 6 licenses for Standard, plus vCenter Server, correct?

Thanks again,

Richard

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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

For the license question see also this discussion:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/211393?tstart=50

Andre

**if you found this or any other answer useful please consider allocating points for helpful or correct answers

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
AsherN
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

In theory it would be, I`m just not sure it would work, at least it would be a violation of the EULA.

I`ve just been through a protacted discussion with VMware re Essentials. At the end of the day, it is a completely different, dead-ended product. There is no upgrade path out of it. the standard vCentre cannot administer it. So if you need to add either another host, you have to relicense everything again.

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dickieblack
Contributor
Contributor

So, Essentials could in theory work, but in the long term is inapproriate - we would not be able to manage the hosts from any other versions of vSphere purchased later. I suppose this is what you are paying for. Still, the price difference for what is effectively the same number of licenses is hard to swallow.

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AsherN
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

It`s worse than that. Essential can only be managed by it`s own vCentre. The question I asked VMware was if I had the ability to add a Standard server to an Essential cluster and manage all 4 with a Standard vCentre license, and the answer was no.

Essentials is a great price point, but it is limited to single location 3 or less hosts shops.

To make matter worse, there are no acceleration kits for vSphere Standard.

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