Looking for advice...

[MaxVM]

We are considering implementing a VMWare ESX 3 to deploy Exchange 2007 and Sharepoint 2007 servers. We are a relatively small organization with 65 users currently, but we will most likely reach 100-120 in the next 3 years.

This is going to be a new deployment from scratch and I have few general questions I hope somebody can answer:

1) CPU licensing: how are dual and quad core CPU's considered?

2) The Starter edition doesn't include Virtual SMP. Does this mean that only 1 cpu can be assigned to each VM?

3) Are the VM's created in ESX compatible with the regular VMWare Server? Basically can I move test VM's back and forth between them?

4) How much overhead does ESX takes in terms of RAM and disk I/O? I was thinking about 8GB and a 6 or 8 10k rmp SAS drive in raid 5. Is that reasonable or a SAN of some sort is "required"?

[esiebert7625]

CPU Licensing is by socket, not core. So dual quad core server would be a 2 CPU License. You cannot assign more then one vCPU to a VM in Starter, Started also has a limitation of 8GB total memory. VM's are compatible, you can use VMware Converter and the ESX tool vmkfstools to go back and forth. ESX uses very little overhead compared to Server.

Here's links to help you...

Vmware Infrastructure Architecture Overview - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi_architecture_wp.pdf

Introduction to ESX 3.0.1 and VirtualCenter 2.0.1 - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_intro_vi.pdf

Pricing, Packaging & Licensing Overview - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi_pricing.pdf

[Dave_Mishchenko]

1) For ESX it is the CPU slot that you would license, so a dual processor - dual /quad core server would only require 2 ESX licences. ESX licenses are purchased in 2 CPU packages.

2) Without vSMP your VMs would be limited to just 1 virtual CPU.

3) The VM's would be basically compatible, but you would have to export / import them into ESX (with a tool called vmkfstools) or you could use VMware's converter tool (www.vmware.com/converter).

4) THe overhead isn't that great. You'll want to give some attention to what your servers require right now. For example, if the Exchange server was maxing out 6 - 10 K drives in a RAID 5 currently, then it'll be doing the same (plus a bit more for overhead) in a virtual machine. If you have the option 15 K drives are good to go with for the extra I/Os.

[oreeh]

1) CPU licensing: how are dual and quad core CPU's considered?

They are treated the same. ESX is licensed per physical socket not per cores.

2) The Starter edition doesn't include Virtual SMP. Does this mean that only 1 cpu can be assigned to each VM?

Yes - but normally you don't need vSMP. Most VMs are faster using 1 CPU instead of two.

3) Are the VM's created in ESX compatible with the regular VMWare Server? Basically can I move test VM's back and forth between them?

Yes - as long as you use virtual SCSI disks and don't utilize features not available in the other product (USB for example).

4) How much overhead does ESX takes in terms of RAM and disk I/O? I was thinking about 8GB and a 6 or 8 10k rmp SAS drive in raid 5. Is that reasonable?

Not much ;.-) But this highly depends on the number of VMs you run.

With 5 VMs I'd calculate (very rough - there are formulas in the docs) 512MB for ESX itself (including the COS).

Regarding the disks: To maximize performance I'd rather use a RAID-10.

Make sure your disk controller has a battey backed write cache.

[esiebert7625]

Looks like we all think alike

[oreeh]

Yepp

[MaxVM]

Wow, that was quick! Thank you for the suggestions, I like what I see

Max