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msmeltzer
Contributor
Contributor

Max XP VM's on ESX Host - HP Proliant BL460c

Just looking to see the max number of XP VM's I could get per ESX host, that is a HP Proliant BL460c. Each Blade has 16GB Ram and 4 CPU's. I have three of these Blades dedicated to VM, and will be moving more over soon. These are attached to a SAN as well. I am running VDI / VM View desktop virtulization and want to know what kind of output of the blades I can get.

Thanks very much.

Matt

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15 Replies
kjb007
Immortal
Immortal

Depends on what the vm's are doing. For low usage desktops, you can get 20-30 vm's, and more if the ram is higher. For high usage vm, that number may go down by half.

-KjB

vExpert/VCP/VCAP vmwise.com / @vmwise -KjB
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msmeltzer
Contributor
Contributor

All these desktops are for replacing HR, Payrol, Accounting all these types of people desktops. They are just XP workstations that don't do much really, just basic apps, a couple apps are JAVA based. 25-30 per ESX host? That seems like a very low number when have 16 GB Ram. Thanks very much for replying!

Matt

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DCTony
Contributor
Contributor

With 16 GB you should be able to get in the 50s. Trim down your XP to around 300 megs, yes, 300 megs and you should still seem optimal performance. At that point it won't be memory contention that will get you. After working on VDI for almost two years, I sat in a session at VMWorld where they had tested performance and their numbers were solidly in line with ours, you start seeing degradation if you go over 8 VMs per core.

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kjb007
Immortal
Immortal

For a half-height blade, I'd say that's not bad. Your numbers will vary. My number is based mainly on a quick calculation of memory. If you pair down the XP image even smaller, then you can get away with more. I also don't overcommitt memory, so that brings my number down as well.

-KjB

vExpert/VCP/VCAP vmwise.com / @vmwise -KjB
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DCTony
Contributor
Contributor

you don't have to overcommitt. 300 megs will give you 53 without overcommit. Point is most people way overspec the RAM on an XP VM. Now my preference would be to have 24 or 32 GB on the host. That way I can have my 56 with plenty of room for failover.

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pizmooz
Contributor
Contributor

From the Release Notes from ESX 3.5 update 3

The limit on vCPUs per core has been raised from 8 (or 11 for VDI workloads) to 20.

Again it depends on how you allocate memory resources and how many vCPUs per VM you have. Practically it is a matter of 'how well' you want VMs will run and you will just need to try it out on a test bed. But there is an actual limit per core as you see above.

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BigHug
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

300MB memory for XP!? Just browser, office and antivirus will consume more than 300 MB.

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DCTony
Contributor
Contributor

on a physical machine yes. We had a hospital running office, browser, and several healthcare apps running on less than 300 megs, and running very well.

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williambishop
Expert
Expert

On Tony's base...So you don't think he's crazy..

Symantec 10.1

Novell 4.91sp5

Zenworks 7

Office

GE clinical application

Wellsoft ED

Accessanyware (streamline Health)

IE

All running at the same time, all fully functional, responsive....and all running on 296M. On a physical box, we required nearly 2gig for it to run responsively.

WINDOWS IS SO MUCH BETTER AS AN APP THAN AN OS!

--"Non Temetis Messor."
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RParker
Immortal
Immortal

seeing degradation if you go over 8 VMs per cor

It's not number of VM's per core, it's number of Virtual CPU per core that makes the difference. If you have 8 VM's all running 4 CPU I can guarantee you can't get that ratio. Only if EACH VM has only 1 CPU can get achieve that.

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williambishop
Expert
Expert

I think that is an understood....

Your numbers decrease rapidly if you use more than 1 vcpu per vm, because they have to wait on idle cycles for both cores...

No one is saying any differently.

--"Non Temetis Messor."
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RParker
Immortal
Immortal

300MB memory for XP!?

The important thing to remember here is that VM's are pure environments. Physical machines need drivers for Serial, USB, Sound, Video (that's a big one) motherboard resources, CPU, disk drivers, and a bunch of 3rd party stuff that you don't need a VM, so yes you can run 300 Meg, although that's pretty lean, we don't typically go below 512, but obviously it works fine. So when you load those other apps, they don't have to fight with all those DLL and drivers loaded into memory bloating the running software. They run much cleaner.

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williambishop
Expert
Expert

And much more stably! Smiley Wink

--"Non Temetis Messor."
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RParker
Immortal
Immortal

WINDOWS IS SO MUCH BETTER AS AN APP THAN AN OS!

Yeah it's time for Microsoft to get out of the OS biz and just develop apps! It is much better in a VM. I think Microsoft is heading that way with Windows Core (no explorer shell) and I wouldn't be a bit surprised to see a VM only OS which can't be installed bare metal.. that would strip at least 15 million lines of code Smiley Happy

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williambishop
Expert
Expert

Just 15? :smileydevil:

--"Non Temetis Messor."
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