Thank you in advance for your help;
I have used VirtualBox, QEMU, Virtual PC, and others for some time to virtualize instances of various Linux and Windows Guest OSs. In the company I for which currently work, there are multiple Proliant DL380s and the vmware used on them (though dated) is very functional. I am having problems comnvincing some internal people that we just do not have enough physical memory on the systems to effectively grown avirtual network to satisfy our testing needs. For example, the construction/implementation of 15 Linux systems on one server took almost a week. I have tried several ways to speed things up (the creation of the appliances) but to little avail. (i.e. I have exported an appliance and then gone through the lesser pain of importing that appliance several times, done vanilla installs simultaneously, etc...)
To elaborate;
I wish to make a case for more memory, since we will be running 15-20 VMs on the server for stress testing and simulation. We typically assign a maximum of 1GB of memory per VM and @20GB/disk. our installs are usually Linux (Ubuntu, SUSE, RHat/Fedora,etc) with a mix of Windows XP and a couple of Win7.
The Proliant server config is:
S/W:
VMware ESX Server 3i v3.5.0 accessed via VMware Infrastructure client v2.5.0
Hardware:
2x500GB volumes (mirrored, Raid0)
dual intel Xeon E5504 (4-corex2)
12GB memory
Symptoms observed:
Building a VM utilizing an .iso is SLOW to be sure. Even with no active VMs it takes 2-10 times longer to build an Ubuntu (for example) than to build the same system (exactly) utilizing VirtualBox or even the archaic VirtualPC. (Either x386 or x64)
Based on these specifications, how could a case be made for more memory given what the system will be used for? I know that active systems will make the specifications/analysis tools look like things are under-utilized but with page faulting, etc, things running at a crawl at best.
I am a n00b to VMware and the proliants. Help please in making a case for upgrading the memory (or even disk). Also, what memory would be best for what we have? wading through documentation is, at best, a losing proposition...
In advance, thank you for your help, I will keep all informed.
(also, why did I repost... well, I hit the wrong button.....again)
