Mixing Desktop VMs with Server VMs

[rrosenkoetter]

Suddenly "VDI" is a buzzword at my company... We have a need for 50 XP VMs, possibly using some Citrix product as a broker (I don't have near enough detail on that).

My main question is, would this be something to build out as a separate farm, or could I build these 50 VMs as part of my current ESX farm (currently only hosting servers). What are best practices between mixing server and desktop VMs

[uslacker99]

You probably want to do some load testing - it really depends on how much load you have on each VM. VMware DRS comes in handy here as it will automatically VMotion VMs to other hosts for load balancing.

[TomHowarth]

In all reality no, a VD is just another VM, just a diferent OS. they are also not usually as disk intensive as server VM's so sharing the same SAN LUNs should not be an issue, (caveat, beware during AV updates (plan for out of hours and stagger across Hosts and LUN's) and logon/off periods as these are times of high disk usage)

your real issue would be memory, however this would be the issue in all cases, as has already been stated, Plan, Plan, Plan and then Test, Test and Test again.

Remember DRS is your friend, if you have the capacity use it.

If you found this or any other post helpful please consider the use of the Helpfull/Correct buttons to award points

Kind Regards

Tom,

[hakimzc]

I have a very similar setup, about 50 XP VMs mixed in with a couple of file servers.

I only have two hosts so I had to consider HA settings quite closely (in terms of restart priorities of the servers and the VMs), also have a good think about using shares to control your resource utilisation.

My storage is very cheap, only 7200rpm disks, but everything works within acceptable I\O limits.

Kind regards,

bbplc

[Rajeev_S]

Hi,

You can have the Virtual desktops and servers in the same farm. But you should make sure that it does not affect the perfomance of the virtual servers in any way.

So u need determine the Maximum resources for ur VD's and you can define the resource pool's to limit the memory and CPU % for VD's. Resource Pools comes handy in these kind of setup.

Hope this helps

[mreferre]

Today it does make sense to do that (as Tom mentioned these are just 50 more vm's ... that happen to be XP and not win2003.....). Of course you need to take into account 50 new vm's so ... either Resource Pools or new physical resources will help ....

In the future you might see different packages / policies in terms of VDI licensing so (perhaps) it <might> make more sense to separate the environments....

Massimo.

[hakimzc]

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To: cyrus.hakimzadeh@si.poole.barclays.co.uk

Subject: New message: "Mixing

Desktop VMs with Server VMs"

Sent: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 20:11:52 -0000

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