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jmox
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recommendations about what to do with two servers / run two local ESX (6.5?) hosts efficiently

Hi there,

I was wondering if you could give me some advice for the following case:

I got two servers (they are not so powerful but I hope I can use them) and I'd like to read some advices about what I could/should do in order to implement a two ESX hosts infrastructure (other ideas are welcome).

Below the hardware description:

    

ServerRAMHard DrivesRAID Type
Lenovo RD220 ThinkServer Xeon E55208 GB3 x 300 GB5
IBM System x3550 M3 Xeon E550620 GB2 x 500 GB1

The ThinkServer runs no vSphere yet and the x3550 is running two VM that almost use the total of the RAM memory and the total of the hard drives. My idea is to add more RAM memory and hard drives in order to run 4 or 5 VMs on the x3550 server, all of them having about 44 GB RAM assigned, and I didn't decide yet what could/should do with the ThinkServer. I have read about the adventatges of running a VM with vCenter installed and it could be a good option, but my idea is implementing a free vSphere solution (ESXi 6.5), so I am not sure if it would be worth it in this case to think about acquiring a license and how expensive it could be.

The VMs are basically Windows Server, another to performance backups, and linux tests environments.

Counting on that, could you give me some advices? About RAM in each server. Worth to think about the possibility of HA or mirroring virtual machines (backups between two hosts?). I have an external backup system.

If I don't implement a vCenter solution, would it be possible to move virtual machines between the two hosts?

All the comments are appreciated. Thanks!

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cyberpaul
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Hi jmox,

with ESXi Free you can't really do much more than using the two hosts completely separately. Each host will have a separate management and to move a VM from one host to the other you need to stop the VM and then copy it. To copy the VM, you would ideally enable SSH on both hosts and then use scp command to copy the VM over LAN. It is not very practical.

You need at least vSphere Essentials Kit (650 EUR for 3 hosts) just to get a vCenter Server (centralized management) which would help you to move VMs from one host to the other using GUI. The VM needs to be powered off anyway.

You need at lease vSphere Essentials Plus Kit (5200 EUR for 3 hosts) and a centralized storage (NAS or SAN) in order to achieve high availability and live migration (vMotion).

As it hurts me to say this, if you're low on budget and already have a Windows Server license, you might get better results with Hyper-V...

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cyberpaul
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Hi jmox,

with ESXi Free you can't really do much more than using the two hosts completely separately. Each host will have a separate management and to move a VM from one host to the other you need to stop the VM and then copy it. To copy the VM, you would ideally enable SSH on both hosts and then use scp command to copy the VM over LAN. It is not very practical.

You need at least vSphere Essentials Kit (650 EUR for 3 hosts) just to get a vCenter Server (centralized management) which would help you to move VMs from one host to the other using GUI. The VM needs to be powered off anyway.

You need at lease vSphere Essentials Plus Kit (5200 EUR for 3 hosts) and a centralized storage (NAS or SAN) in order to achieve high availability and live migration (vMotion).

As it hurts me to say this, if you're low on budget and already have a Windows Server license, you might get better results with Hyper-V...

jmox
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Hi @cyberpaul,

Thank you for taking the time to answer. It was very clarifying despite my bad explanation. I'll mark your comment as answer.

Stopping the VMs and copying them wouldn't be a problem but I've been told that the two servers are too old, there's no support anymore, so they cannot add more RAM. It looks like the only option would be to buy new hardware. So, my idea about expanding them and using two ESX hosts in parallel seems not to be factible.

About moving to Hyper-V, I will google first and see how much realiable is the migration process of the existing VMware VM. I'd rather not add a new point of failure, though.

Thanks again for all the info!

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