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vmmadhu
Contributor
Contributor

Non-virtulazation to Virtulazation consolidation

Hi,

Exactly what points to be consided while moving datacenter from non-virtulazation environment to virtualazation environment , i seen Assess , plan & Design , manage and deploy but in that what points to consider can you give details steps about

Thanks

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mreferre
Champion
Champion

Well this is going to be tough to respond on a forum.

It's like me sitting in the cockpit of a Boeing 747 and asking on a pilots' forum "can you exactly tell me which buttons to push in order to take this beast off ground?"

This might be a starting point though: http://viops.vmware.com/index.html

Massimo.

Massimo Re Ferre' VMware vCloud Architect twitter.com/mreferre www.it20.info
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vmmadhu
Contributor
Contributor

Hi King,

I mean some kind of checklist to be performed before doing the plan & design, so i required those checklsit points so if you have points please let me know. that would be helpful to me to the plan and design

Thanks

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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

Many of the books out there contain such checklists, at least 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education does.

As does the new Oglesby, Herold, and Laverick book.

But in general,

You start with assessment looking at CPU, Network, Disk, and Memory utilization of the physical systems. Then look at the application suite on the machines, should they be split apart. This is a good time to consider 1 application per 1 VM. Is it better to reinstall or to P2V. That is always a good question. This could be a great time to fix any issues with the physical machines, etc.....

Then choose your brand of ESX, minimally something w/HA is my normal suggestion but Enterprise has quite a few very nice and useful features.... vMotion, SVMotion, DRS, EVC, etc.

Then choose your hardware, minimally 6 pNICS + 2 controllers for your chosen storage whether iSCSI, SAN, or NFS, Memory and CPUs based on your previously determined numbers.

Then install VMware ESX properly, it is easy to mess up this step.

Then do your migrations, installs, etc.

But it does not end there.... Welcome to the virtualized world.


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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Leafy911
Expert
Expert

I'm currently reading the Oglesby, Herold, and Laverick book - "Advanced Technical Design Guide and Advanced Operations Guide" (ISBN 978-09711510-8-6) which should cover everything you need. The other book mentioned VMware ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers is by Edward L. Haletky (ISBN-10: 0-13-230207-1) which is slightly older but I found discusses some issues I did not find in the previously mentioned book. Treat yourself, buy both of them Smiley Happy

Regards Leafy911 (Dont forget you recieve points when you award points)
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vmmadhu
Contributor
Contributor

Hi ,

Thanks for giving the answer, i need some more help on server sizing , i have old server ie

PE 4300 450Mhz 2 GB RAM, Peak Hour the CPU 40% and Memory 70%

Sunfire V440, 1500 MHz , 4 GB RAM OS- Solaris

DELL PE2850 - Xeon 4 GB RAM Peak Hours the CPU 35% and Memory 40% OS- Win2k

DELL GX620 , 512 MB RAM Peak hour the CPU 20% and Memory 50% OS -Win2k3 Ent

DELL GX 620 , 512 MB RAM Peak Hour the CPU 20% and Memory 60% OS - Win2k

out of the above server which server is good for virtulazation server and how many vms can be host on it and with optimized performance, I tried the the vmware capacity planner but i couldn;t understanad properly, could you give some suggesstion or tools which will be help to me calculate properway.

Thanks

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Leafy911
Expert
Expert

Only systems in the ESX 3.5 hardware compatibility guide are supported by VMware. Based on this the only supported h/w you have is the DELL 2850. Another assumption is that the processors are around the 3GHz mark in which case you should be able to get around 4 VM's per core e.g for a 2 proc dual core box you should in theory be able to host 8 VMs. This all depends on how much memory installed, size of your storage (local or central), network cards installed, utilisation of the VMs your going to install (I assumed light to medium for the estimate).

Regards Leafy911 (Dont forget you recieve points when you award points)
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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

The theoretical maximum in 8 VMs per Core. However, 1 COre will belong to the hyper visor and SC, so you limits are really based on having 1 less core than physically in the server. The goal is to have no more than 80% (empirical evidence) of your system utilized in CPU, network, and disk at any given time. This allows for spikes and new VMs to be added.

Note that I have seen the theoretical maximums reached but they were all low utilization systems. CPU will not be your issue if you have quad cores, however Memory and IO will be your limits. You really do not want to overcommit memory. So if your system has 16GBs of memory, assuming 1GB set aside for the hypervisor and SC, that leaves 15 1GB VMs (well below the theoretical maximum), 30 (512MBVMs) etc. Yes you can place more on the system based on Transparent Page Sharing and Memory Ballooning concepts so these are just general rules.

You need to plan your VM sizes carefully, give out resources within eye-dropper or start with high limits and drop down once you realize what the real utilization is in each system. DBs generally will use as much memory as you give them, so you need to look within the system for more help on this.


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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vmmadhu
Contributor
Contributor

Hi ,

Is it possible to install any applications on core ESX server not on the VM's , if so what kind application can be installed.

Thanks

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Leafy911
Expert
Expert

An ESX server is essentially a reduced installation of Redhat Linux, as such you can install applications directly on it. This is strongely NOT recommended as the service console has been optimised by VMware to be as light as possible so that it does not take resources away from running VMs. You can get backup agents, monitoring tools, etc but it is again not recommended.

Regards

Leafy911

Regards Leafy911 (Dont forget you recieve points when you award points)
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vmmadhu
Contributor
Contributor

Hi,

Thanks for giving suggestions.

Thanks

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