ESXi upgrade. (dumb question I believe)

[GoodMorningDave]

So ESXi supports two cpus or machines; it have proven to be very reliable.

Can ESXi be upgraded to support more than two machines?

The offerings are a lot confusing; ESX, Infrastructure, Foundation, ? What's the path?

I ask because: (pm = physical machine)

PM_1 produciton SQL (server to be retired)

PM_2 Test SQL ( dual-quad cpu and we want to make good use of it)

My plan (needs work) is to make PM_2 a full ESX(?) unit.

Then move both the produciton and test servers on to PM_2 as VM's.

[RParker · Accepted solution]

Can ESXi be upgraded to support more than two machines?

Yes. ESX can scale to as big as you need to run VM's. It mostly depends on hardware. We have IBM 3950. Each of those is 16 core / 2.93GB CPU / 63GB of RAM and we use Fiber attached SAN. just one of those IBM servers is running 77 VM's. I pushed it to 100 and it didn't even show signs of degrading performance. So it's up to whatever you need and configure for your hardware.

The offerings are a lot confusing; ESX, Infrastructure, Foundation, ? What's the path?

Foundation is limited to 3 machines managed by a single Virtual Center. If you even THINK you may have more than 3 machines, don't buy Foundation buy standard or Enterprise. Now if you think you need to move machines around or have high availability, then buy Enterprise, if not the Standard version will be fine. Talk to your sales rep, he will explain to you those options in better detail.

Then move both the produciton and test servers on to PM_2 as VM's.

That seems plausible. Not too much VM's right away, so that seems fine.

BTW, there are NO dumb questions, only assumptions are stupid. Ask and you will get an answer.

[GoodMorningDave]

Thanks.

let loose the dogs of technology........

[RParker]

let loose the dogs of technology........

So YOU let the dogs out Too bad you didn't get there BEFORE Michael Vick was discovered, perhaps the evidence would never have made it to trial.