VMware rocks. No. Seriously. VMware rocks. Let me tell you why...
Forget the consolidation ratios, forget the resource usage, forget all the cool advanced functions you can bolt on (like SRM, View, etc...). Just focus on the portability for a moment.
We have a nagging issue going on with one of our servers. I believe the motherboard is going bad, but I am having an issue getting the support guys to see it... trying to prove "it's just a feeling I have" is very difficult. So, I am walking down their support path to get to that endpoint. We keep seeing errors on DIMM0... which, if you're not hip to the xSeries hardware, is not one of the actual DIMM slots on the server. Yes... I know someone out there is going to mention how it may be possible that IBM is counting from 0... but, that is not the case here...
Anyways... this weekend, the DIMM0 issue popped up again. This time, in the form of rebooting the server and shutting off all of the virtual machines. Wamp wamp wamp, right!?
We do not have any of the whiz bang FT or HA features setup in our environment. Heck, I have such a hard time keeping enough room on the ESX hosts to handle an ESX failure. Budget does not exist to keep too much extra room available. However, I don't need those features to truely appreciate VMware (and show the business another area that VMware addresses).
The VMs were in a 'Power Off' state. So, I simply powered them up onto other machines in the cluster and moved on with life. The single-package-like design of a virtual machine is so convenient that when a host died, the whole server was not dead. I just brought it back to life somewhere else! Magical! Right?
I think I will use the event this weekend for many years to come. Most people look down the feature set for the value virtualization brings to the company. However, one of the most basic principles of virtualization may be the most useful!
