Structure for 2xESX + MSA Storage

[heynem]

Hi everybody,

We are planning the following structure: Two different ESX Servers which are both connected via Fibrechannel to

an 100GB Partition Hewlett Packard MSA Storagesystem. On this Space we want to store approx. 10 virtual Systems

and rund them thru the two ESX Servers. Ist the following scenario possible ??

On normal use both servers are running with 5 virtual Systems. In case we have a performance problem, I want to switch the

virtual machine to the ESX Server which is not so much in use - for example ESX1=7 machines / ESX2=3 machines. What will happen

if one of the ESX machines crashes ?? Can I restart without any problems all 10 virtual machines on the spare server ??

I hope, I have explained the problem correct

Thank you very mucgh in advance for your replies.....

Michael

[Rodos]

Hi Michael. In summary yes.

You can turn on DRS (if you have that feature available with your license) and it will balance the virtual machines across your two hosts automatically. You can configure HA availability constraints to ensure that there are always enough minimum resources to cater for the failure of one of the hosts.

Have a read of the Introduction to VMware Infrastructure document. The section VMware Infrastructure Distributed Services starting on page 17 has some good info. Other documents have more info in much greater details.

If you need any more details just post the questions here and people will assist with answers or pointers in the right direction.

[ascari]

Hi to all, i'm agrre with Rodos and i add:

100Gb for 10 VM? Is a good idea to split VM in different LUN/Vmfs datastore. Leave 10% of free space in your lun and do not forgot swap file necessary at VM. You need other free space if you use VCB o generally Snapshot startegy. Keep attention also at your VM i/o type and separate VM i/o intensive in different LUN.

Bye Alberto

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Which MSA are you using, if it is a MSA500, MSA1000, 1500 then you can use that as shared storage. If you use a MSA30 or MSA50, then they can not do the shared storage thing for ESX. As for disk space, you need to consider the following:

size of VMDK + size of RAM + size of VMDK (snapshots) + 512MBs of sundry files

The above gives a good estimate of how much space each VM needs.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

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Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization