Server load and amount of Vitrual Machines.

[dmanrez]

Hi

Is there a way of finding out the amount of vitrual machine I can load onto a host esx server. My boss wants to know how many virtual machine I can load onto one host esx server before we pay additional storage.

Thanks

Derek

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

There are many factors that will go into answering a question like that on both sides - the virtual machine and the physical server -

Physical Server - What type of processors? How many cores? How much memory? What type of storage? How many Nics? - to get a rough estimate

• For CPU plan on 4 virtual CPUs per core - so if you a dual Quad core you should be ok with 32 single vcpu VMs running on it -

• For memory ESX does an excellent job of allowing you to overcommit memory but if you want to be conservative have the VM memory total equal the ESX server memory total - for example you place 32 1 GB VMs on the host you will want at leats to have 32 GB of RAM being conservative but realistically you can VMs with 38GB to 40 GB worth of memory

Virtual Machines - you need to understand the load the virtual machines will be placing on the server - for example you will be to host fewer database servers compared to lightlly loaded web servers -

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[jbruelasdgo]

it depends on you load, but usually you could get from 4-8 virtual machines per core (also depends of how much memory you have, how much network bandwidth, etc). Also is important to have in mind which version of the product you are using

do not forget to review the configuration maximums:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere4/r40/vsp_40_config_max.pdf

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_config_max.pdf

regards

Jose B Ruelas

http://aservir.wordpress.com