Which Product?

[Nikotsunami]

Hi, i hope somebody will help me here and i'm in the correct forum.

First, i'm sorry for my english, i don't use it very often.

I use vmware ESXi on a server for Virtualisation. Its a Server with one prozessor an 8GB RAM. This server isn't enough for the new virtualized machines and i need a new one. This is a machine with two Prozessors and perhaps 20Gb RAM.

Now i will buy Vmware Infrastructure Center. Which Product do i need? Standart, Enterprise? Muss i Buy one for each Server? Need I support option?

Greets Niko

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Welcome to the Forums!

I use vmware ESXi on a server for Virtualisation. Its a Server with one prozessor an 8GB RAM. This server isn't enough for the new virtualized machines and i need a new one. This is a machine with two Prozessors and perhaps 20Gb RAM.

Now i will buy Vmware Infrastructure Center. Which Product do i need? Standart, Enterprise? Muss i Buy one for each Server? Need I support option?

You can either continue to use ESXi (free version) on both nodes. If you would like to have a unified management console then you would need VMware vCenter, and this does help quite a bit. There is the VMware ESXi Management Kit that may be of interest. However if you would like failover (VMware HA) then you are looking at a Foundation at the very least for both your nodes.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs -- Top Virtualization Security Links -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

[Nikotsunami]

Thanks for your Answer.

I will perhaps use iSCSI, migrate the server on new hardware in 3 years and Backup the whole server once. May i do it with the v-center?

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I will perhaps use iSCSI, migrate the server on new hardware in 3 years and Backup the whole server once. May i do it with the v-center?

vCenter does not currently contain a 'backup' option for that you use VMware Consolidated Backup (free with ESX licenses). However vCenter will do the migration (hot or cold) as well as storage VMotion.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs -- Top Virtualization Security Links -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

[azn2kew]

Besides VCB as a free backup options you can use VISBU and esXpress as well or use Veeam, vRanger and that cost money. You can look at other tools to manage your ESXi environment such as RCLI and VIMA and people has created powershell scripts to do the migration of VMs across ESXi platform so its worth looking at it but not convenience according to vCenter components. If you want ease of managemnet and redundancy than using HA, VMotion and DRS with shared storage would be a good options. What do you use for iSCSI? If small environment can use Xtravirt XVS has active/passive failover options or Openfiler & FreeNAS its great freebies.

Another options is Citrix Xen Server 5.0 is totally free of use just being announced this week and its pretty good as well as small environment with Linux machines. Worth looking at and try it risk free.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[cjt]

If its for a production workload - Enterprise with Platinum Support

contact your nearest VMware VAC - get them to quote you the acceleration kits that are available - a great way of getting a bulk discount (ESX Ent + Vcenter + support)

[cjt]

... oh... i assumed you have some form of shared storage ??

if not - ignore my last post