One large VM?

[tvond]

It is possible to use VMware vSphere to create a single, high-performance VM spanning multiple physical systems? For example, using DRS (or some other feature), could you create a single VM that would consume all resources of a resource pool spanning several physical blades or servers?

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

You can certainly use DRS as you would do it on physical systems to link to resources on other VMs/hosts, however you cannot aggregate the resources (CPU, memory) of multiple ESXi hosts natively.

André

[EdWilts]

It is possible to use VMware vSphere to create a single, high-performance VM spanning multiple physical systems?

No.  Each ESXi blade/physical systems is a unique instance and no VM can span instances.

Not only that, but the maximum number of CPUs that a VM can have (in 5.0) is 32 and there are many choices for hardware platforms that will give you 32 cores in a single instance.

[tvond]

Thanks for the quick reply. Is there another product in vmware's line that allows this kind of configuration?

[a_p_]

Unfortunately not. What you are looking for is a compute cluster, if I understand you correctly.

André

[tvond]

André Pett wrote:

Unfortunately not. What you are looking for is a compute cluster, if I understand you correctly.

André

That's correct. Thanks for clarifying!