How many VM's can you place on a server

[gdunn1]

Rather, how do I do the math to understand how many virtual machines I can run on a single server.

Dell R600

dual quad core cpus

64 GB main memory

thanks

[danpalacios · Accepted solution]

You can have a VMware VAR come in and do an analysis of your current server load, or ...

Guess about 4-5 single processor guests per core. Look for your limiting factors. For us it is disk storage (currently relying on local storage) Are you running high CPU loads or need excessive amounts of RAM? What is your total NIC count/network throughput? You could theoretically have over 100 domain controllers on that server without too much trouble or you could struggle with a couple of busy database servers. It all depends on that you will be running.

[gdunn1]

thanks!

[Milton21]

With out getting into your environment

VMware says 4-8 VCPU per core.

Also you have 64GB of ram so you could hand out around 54 of that to VM's and not worry about memory contention. I say 54 since there is over head on Ram per VM

As it was said before disk will be the problem. This system is big enough to run as many as your supporting hardware will allow. Disk or San, Nic's, Fibercards, etc...

I would only try to get 4-8 VM's per Server. So maybe a smaller server would be the right call. Unless you want to make lots of DB VM's this system might be a bit of over kill.

If you are still in the planning stage and do not have the servers yet take a look at this.

If you do have the systems man you have a lot of power

http://h71019.www7.hp.com/activeanswers/cache/120132-0-0-0-121.html

this will size up hardware to your environment.

[gdunn1]

Gary Dunn

Thanks again. this is good.

I will be using the SAN. The machine will have 2 x 73GB drives.

There is redundant FC HBA - 4GB link speed

NIC GigaBit Ethernet ports

I want to eventually, when I learn more, move everything to the SAN.

[gdunn1]

Thanks !!!

[opbz]

Hi,

That is a very pretty heavy duty server.

I will not recommend number of VMs you can put on it as that obviously depends a lot on the type of VMs you will have. What I would recommend though is using something like platespin power recon to actually analyse your environmen and provide recomendations as to what can be virtualized and what can not.

Finally is this the only server you will get for vmware? I tend to be a bit leary of putting all my eggs in one basket. Specially when Vmware are providing you with functionality like HA and DRS.