Mixing and matching Server and Desktop VMs

[rrosenkoetter]

The powers that be want to use VDI for 25-50 remote programmers... and they've already purchased two dual-core four-processor servers.

I don't know anything about VDI yet (Yes, I''ll start researching in a minute), but when I pointed out that 2 servers for 50 desktop VMs isn't exactly a N+1 environment, my boss replied "Of course not, we'll just add those two host servers to one of our existing VMware clusters (currently hosting only server VMs).

Well, sounds reasonable on the surface I guess... to have those 50 desktop VMs spread among 8 host servers instead of just 2... but my gut feeling (again, before reading the documentation on VDI) is that I shouldn't be mixing these two environments...

Any quick comments from experience?

[RParker]

It won't matter. WE do the same thing your boss wants, however, my only addition is that you should be using QUAD not DUAL core for this.

Spreading this amount of VM's on just 2 hosts will kill performance, unless you have ample CPU to cover it.

Otherwise, mixing and matching doesn't matter to ESX, to the VDI, they ALL look the same. Unless you mean that you are using DRS and HA, then ALL the hosts should be identical for optimum use, but there isn't a reason you can't put all the ESX hosts under one roof, but the clusters can be separated.