Cluster sizing best practices - when and why to spawn a new cluster?

[TedH256]

I'm looking for some guidelines to follow regarding cluster sizing. I know about the limits - but the question at hand is more "best practice" than limits.

Is there a strategy for sizing that reflects "best practice"? How many hosts is "enough"? At present we just seem to create new clusters "whenever" - sometimes because somebody believes that a particular workload should be isolated from others, either for management or political or performance reasons.

Anyone care to share the standards or procedures that you have developed, concerning when and why to spawn a new cluster?

[weinstein5]

I try to minimize the number of clusters because you will quickly have an environment that become to tough to manage and potentially resources sitting idle - if you need to segregate workloads you can use Resource Pools -

I have also moved this to a more appropriate forum -