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danvmware
Contributor
Contributor

Newbie Seeking Hardware Recommendations/Best Practices

Hi All,

My small business is transitioning away from using VMWare Server for use in our lab environment and for some non-essential production machines (possibly even an essential machine -- namely Symantec's Virtual Brightmal Appliance, which is currently unsupported by VMWare Server). We were considering VMWare ESX, but would prefer to use ESXi and do things on the cheap if possible.

I've spent a short while looking through the forums here seeking recommendations for hardware, but I don't see a ton of solid information for an acknowledged beginner like myself - mostly I see references to the HCL and the Whitebox HCL. What I'm looking for specifically are some rough metrics on number of processors, processor speed, recommended disk i/o, etc. I realize that without intimately knowing my environment, the best I can hope for are generalities, but by the same token, without intimate knowledge of ESXi, I don't really know how to make this decision myself.

For what it's worth, I already priced out a Dell 2900 with

  • Xeon Quad Core - 3000

  • 1 TB RAID-5 disk (7200 RPM SATA)

  • 16GB RAM

It fits the HCL just fine, but what I'm curious about is whether I'm buying too much, too little. Again, I accept that the best I can hope for here is a rough answer...

Thanks,

Dan

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4 Replies
ablej
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Dan,

What type of VM's are these SQL,Web, Application Servers?OS types?Will you need any of VMware's Enterprise features like vMotion,HA,DRS? Do you have any performance OLA's you must meet?






David Strebel

www.holy-vm.com

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David Strebel www.david-strebel.com If you find this information useful, please award points for "correct" or "helpful"
danvmware
Contributor
Contributor

David,

Thanks for replying. I wrote back a while ago, but the post got eaten, so here goes again:

The VMs would primarily be Windows 2003 for the time being, but Windows 2008 might appear at some point in the future. There would be no web servers. We do have a legacy app that requires an XP workstation that we'd probably keep on there, in addition to the aforementioned Brightmail application (which runs on Red Hat Linux). Our SQL boxes are currently dedicated hardware -- I can imagine trying to make one production one virtual (at most), but the most likely scenario would be having some test/lab SQL servers that are built, torn down and rebuilt for a variety of reasons.

As you can see from the above, we're a small, somewhat nimble shop, and we can play pretty fast-and-loose with things. HA is not required. I'm unfamiliar - noob - with vMotion, although I've seen it mentioned. You wrote about "performance OLA's" but I assume you meant "SLA's," and hopefully you can infer from the above that our SLA is somewhat flexible.

Does that help?

Thanks,

Dan

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depping
Leadership
Leadership

we need more info,

  • how many vm's?

  • total amount of virtual cpu's?

  • total amount of memory?

Duncan

VCDX | VMware Communities User Moderator

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danvmware
Contributor
Contributor

Duncan,

Thanks. At this time, unfortunately, that's somewhat unclear even to me. The machines that I know for certain will be on there are the Brightmail box, the XP workstation and a BDC (unless there are negative ramifications of this that I'm aware of). The only one of those machines that is going to be particularly demanding is the Brightmail Virtual Server, but I can't speak to its exact footprint.

Again, unfortunately, I think we're going to know more about what we'll do with the box once we actually have in hand. As a result, the real issue for us is that we're probably going to want to buy a box that's right on that thin line between not overbuying but also having a decent amount of room to grow. That's why I'm trying to limit my expectations so far as what I can receive from this forum -- I just can't seem to find anything that gives any basic specs to use as guidelines.

That probably frustrates all of you good folks more than it helps, but if it's any consolation, I'm in an even worse position!

Thanks again,

Dan

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