Thats a TON of packets per second. I think its doable, but its not low hanging fruit.

--Matt

Chuck, are you trying to work out what virtual hardware to give it (RAM, number of vCPUs) or are you after a spec for the ESX host. The spec for the ESX host will be dependant on how many other VM's you will be running on that host. Do you already have a cluster of other ESX hosts? If so you will want to consider CPU compatibility for VMotion. How much spare capacity is their in your current cluster?

I have normally not needed to do it but for that number of connected users you may want to leave that particular VM out of DRS and let all of the other machines move around it. Just something to consider.

Considering awarding points if this is of use

I'm more on the quest to find out if I should at all virtualize it. Based on the numbers I gave what do you guys think? I'm really not sure that it's a good candidate.

As far as the cluster is concerned I would not iclude this server in any DRS (like my SQL servers - "planned").

Chuck

I can't see any reason why not. The resources are not massive. For the disks you can use RDM to attach to the existing luns. You already know the machine has enough grunt and the overhead of ESX should not cause a problem. The problem will be if you oversubscribe the host its on. Also ensure you OS is on the guest compatibility list.

Also figure out your fail back strategy. If you use RDMs can you give it a go and if there is a problem shutdown the VM, reconnect to LUNs to the physical box and continue on (will be dependant on your systems).

I don't suppose you have netware experience!

It's a netware 6.5 sp5 server

Tnx for the help though.

No.

But I can make jokes.

+I went looking for someone who had netware experience, but I ran out of fuel.

+I have had lots of experiences with netware, none were pleasant.

Okay, so I am no good at jokes either!

Very funny! :smileysilly:

It's just to bad that I like Novell, so I can't really understand these kinds of jokes....

Thanks for your help...kind of....

I am relatively new to the VM world, and have some related questions. If he is using around a 50% load on two proc's, but can only use a single virtual proc in VM, wouldn't he still be able to assign a higher reservation to this VM in MHz? So, even though he wont be running two virtual proc's, he would still then be able to utilize more physical processor than that single virtual proc. would be running if it were physical? Does that make sense?

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To me, your answer makes complete sense, I could probably even lock the vm to a certain number of vcpu and exclude these vcpu from the other vm's, couldn't I?

Exactly what I was thinking of. There have been many threads here I have read regarding better performance on some systems by assigning a single vcpu rather than multople vcpu's, because of the VM having to wait for multiple time-slices on multiple physical proc's. Thus, trying the machine to solely utilize one or more physical proc's., and also guaranteeing it a MHz level from the total pool high enough to handle the load, you may be able to achieve what you are looking for. I would love to hear some thoughts from some of the VM guru's out there on this. I have been wondering about how to possibly switch some of our high-load machines, like our Exchange Server, over to a VM, and have been confused as to the best way to configure the vcpu's for this type of machine.

Don

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You might want to look at this thread http://communities.vmware.com/message/695065

It won't help you on cpu config's but it's nice to know what people in the field are really using esx for!

A lot are running Exchange and SQL 2000/2005

Chuck

I like Netware , works fine for me