Important question for use of VMWare Software

[2e2]

Since I don't have any experience with VMWare solutions for virtualization I might try to get an answer here. I have a lot of them but here's the first one and most important at this moment. Currently I'm responsable for creating a 'test lab' for our company, more specific: creating a test lab for our tool development (which is HP OpenView ServiceCenter).

Because of a lack at experience I started to read some articles and technical papers of all the VMWare products. Unfortunately, I didn't get much wiser in the mean time...

The scenario must be like this: a testing environment with servers for our tool ServiceCenter, AssetCenter, Oracle Database, SQL-server and so on... All of them must be accessible via a direct or remote connection. We are a small company (who are going to grow strongly in the nearby future) and currently we count 13 employees who must have access to this environment.

Looks to me like VM Lab Manager might be a very interesting solution for our project although I'm not so sure. Anyone who can strongly recommend me another product or could give some advice please? I would be very grateful...

Greetings,

Stijn

[AWo]

The scenario must be like this: a testing environment with servers for our tool ServiceCenter, AssetCenter, Oracle Database, SQL-server and so on... All of them must be accessible via a direct or remote connection. We are a small company (who are going to grow strongly in the nearby future) and currently we count 13 employees who must have access to this environment.

That is possible with every VMware product. VMware guest's (virtual machines) can be configured to behave like any other physical host on the LAN. So every mechanism to access the machine will be available to you + the VMware console.

You may want to start with VMWare server, which is available for free, to check if all your demands are addressed. You always can migrate to a different VMware product if you need to do so.

Looks to me like VM Lab Manager might be a very interesting solution for our project although I'm not so sure. Anyone who can strongly recommend me another product or could give some advice

please? I would be very grateful...

Don't know nothing about this, but it maybe worth to look into it.

I had a customer which managed a lab (several Linux and Windows machines) for different customers. The booked lab time, did their tests and my customer was responsibe to back up these things and to clean up the mess to be ready for the next tests. As Lab Manager wasn't available at this time we used the different disk modes of the ESX server, to do fast reset's of the complete test environment to a know and initial state. Thereby they were pretty fast in doing so. Tody they can use the snapshot function to keep different test stages and to reset the whole stuff at the end or when some test went terribly wrong.

[2e2]

Ok, thx for the tip. But could you explain me somehow if possible what the real difference is between the VMWare Server en VMWare ESX? According to the information I found ESX would not need an underlaying OS while VMWare Server does, so does it make such a huge difference?

Second question: I know you can set up the amount of virtual RAM for a virtual machine. But in reality, do you have to take the sum of the virtual RAM of all the running virtual machines into account when it comes down to choose your actual physical RAM. And is there a limitation or "guideline" for the amount of virtual machines you can run at the same time on one physical server?

Thx in advance!

[AWo · Accepted solution]

Ok, thx for the tip. But could you explain me somehow if possible what the real difference is between the VMWare Server en VMWare ESX? According to the information I found ESX would not need an

underlaying OS while VMWare Server does, so does it make such a huge difference?

ESX (or VI3, Virtual Infrastructure 3) is the high-end product for Datacenter virtualisation from VMWare. It doesn't need an underlying third party OS as the OS is VMware's ESX.

It offers more features than VMware regarding management, availability, ressource sharing/allocation, multiprocessoring, backup and desaster recovery.

As fas as I know ESXi (the embedded Version) is free now, too.

VMware server needs an underlying OS (Windows, Linux) and depends on its stability, ressource sharing, scheduling, file system, etc. It runs well but might not satisfy all requirements if you want to use virtualization more widely and the demands rise.

Second question: I know you can set up the amount of virtual RAM for a virtual machine. But in reality, do you have to take the sum of the virtual RAM of all the running virtual machines into account

when it comes down to choose your actual physical RAM. And is there a limitation or "guideline" for the amount of virtual machines you can run at the same time on one physical server?

Yes, if you do not want to degrade the virtual machines performancy you should add at least as much RAM as all your guest needs (+ some overhead for the OS and some VMware processes). There are mechanisms which allow an overcommitment of RAM (assigning more RAM to guest's than what's physically available) but this will lead to intensive swapping if the RAM is really used up. This will significantly slow down your guests. These mechanism is for keeping things alive, primarily. In ESX swapping will be the last thing ESX would do to keep things running. There are some more things which will be triggered to satisfy guest memory needs before swapping is used.

In fact, most of the time the sum of oll RAM actively used by the guest's would theoretically allow a permanent overcommitment, but you won't/shouldn't do that, if possible.

Regarding this "limitation" you can run as much guest's as you like and as long as the single guest's run fast enough for you.

[2e2]

Ok, thank you very much! You saved my day:D

[Ken_Cline]

Lab Manager would be a good fit for your environment. It provides a lot of functionallity that really enhances a developer's environment.

As Awo mentioned, I think I would recommend starting with VMware Server or ESXi (both free) to see if your tools will work as you expect within a VM (I don't doubt that they will). If you plan to move to Lab Manager in the future, I'd suggest using ESXi since that can just "plug in" to a Lab Manager environment.

The other (and perhaps better) option is to contract with VMware or an authorized consultant (VAC) to come in and do a Lab Manager proof of concept. This will allow you to have an expert come in and help you get things up and running quickly and with best practice configurations.

Best of luck - and welcome to the forums!

KLC

Ken Cline

Technical Director, Virtualization

Wells Landers[/url]

VMware Communities User Moderator