With Vmware the process is as easy as taking a Ghost image and just doing an import.
It's done ,no muss no fuss.
Discussion on:
View:
Show:
Well-written article, thanks. My company decided to go with VMware, and I have to agree with pgm554 a little... migrating servers in a VMware-based virtual environment seems much easier than what you described.
I did a class last year on the M$ product and attempted to use there migration tool.
Very frusrating and not straight forward.
I have a subscription to VMTN (Vmware developer software) and between the P2V and the import utility that is included in the WS product,it was all most a no brainer.
The only hitch was it will not import NT 4 SMP HAL's into a VM.
Otherwise ,pretty decent stuff.
Very frusrating and not straight forward.
I have a subscription to VMTN (Vmware developer software) and between the P2V and the import utility that is included in the WS product,it was all most a no brainer.
The only hitch was it will not import NT 4 SMP HAL's into a VM.
Otherwise ,pretty decent stuff.
You know the IT industry is subject to fads. Whether it is Xterms or thin clients or client-server or clusters, there is no shortage of "great new things" that everyone seems to think is critical to implement right now. Some of these things turn out to be useful; others do not.
I would like someone to explain to me why virtualization is a good thing. Why is it a good thing to put all of your corporate computing applications in one box with different OS environments? Why is it good to create a single point of failure for all of the business computing functions? Why is it good to have to cripple the entire business for computer maintenance or repair?
My understanding of virtualized machines is that if you have a really really big machine like a Sun server with 128 CPUs and 256 GB of RAM then at some times of the day or week or month some applications will need more resources than others. The idea is that temporary resource requirements can be adjusted dynamically from a common hardware pool. When the resources are not required they are returned to the common pool for another application to use.
I seriously doubt that Wintel boxes have so much hardware that this sort of dynamic allocation of hardware to particular applications on demand makes any sense at all. I think this is all a big joke. It's like driving a pickup truck and pretending that its a tractor trailer.
So would someone please educate me? How can the shortcomings that I listed above be outweighed by whatever benefits you think that you gain by using virtualization software?
I would like someone to explain to me why virtualization is a good thing. Why is it a good thing to put all of your corporate computing applications in one box with different OS environments? Why is it good to create a single point of failure for all of the business computing functions? Why is it good to have to cripple the entire business for computer maintenance or repair?
My understanding of virtualized machines is that if you have a really really big machine like a Sun server with 128 CPUs and 256 GB of RAM then at some times of the day or week or month some applications will need more resources than others. The idea is that temporary resource requirements can be adjusted dynamically from a common hardware pool. When the resources are not required they are returned to the common pool for another application to use.
I seriously doubt that Wintel boxes have so much hardware that this sort of dynamic allocation of hardware to particular applications on demand makes any sense at all. I think this is all a big joke. It's like driving a pickup truck and pretending that its a tractor trailer.
So would someone please educate me? How can the shortcomings that I listed above be outweighed by whatever benefits you think that you gain by using virtualization software?
We have been looking at VMWare as a means of high availabillity. With VM we can have 2 machines and a SAN running that will give us redundancy in hardware. MS clustering can do this too but I don't have a lot of faith in it. While VMWare is expensive to start with, MS clustering adds up fast as well when you need Enterprise Ed. for everything. But this isn't the big reason for most people as I understand. Server consolidation has been a big topic since before VM. I agree with all the eggs in one basket idea but there are limits. If you have 100 file servers and you can count 10 that aren't running hardware specific apps or have high needs then why not move those to a VM? I would never suggest 90 machines on one physical server (even if you could) but if you can group a few together here and there it adds up. How much can one server support? Depends on the app obviously but at the moment hardware is a bit ahead of many software needs. Dual core high cache procs, cheap memory, etc. VM also gives you hardware independence. A VM instance can be moved from on machine to another easily. Failover isn't the only reason - think hardware upgrades with 0 downtime. Software patches and testing also apply.
I'm looking for more reasons myself though or if anyone has opinions about using it for redundancy like we are.
I'm looking for more reasons myself though or if anyone has opinions about using it for redundancy like we are.
- Hardware costs = Less physical boxes saves $
- Rollout = You can roll out a new virtual windows server in ten minutes, instead of 4 hours with a physical box
- Environmental costs = Less physical boxes, less power, heat, rack space, etc.
- Less breakdowns = Less physical boxes means less hardware that can break
- High Availability = VMware can send virtual servers to another box if there are problems
- Management tools = VMware has a nice management suite for watching over and manipulating the virtual servers
- Software savings = Microsoft just announced that if you buy their datacenter server (about $2500 per processor) you can have an unlimited number of Windows standard, enterprise or datacenter virtual servers running on that box.
- Network = Save on network congestion by having virtual boxes speak to each other within the virtual network environment, instead of over the physical LAN
Personal thoughts = I do not believe that virtual systems are just a fad. With all the major players developing hardware, software and network solutions for VM, it is not hard to see that the majority of today's I/T visionaries are seeing VM as the wave of the future.
- Rollout = You can roll out a new virtual windows server in ten minutes, instead of 4 hours with a physical box
- Environmental costs = Less physical boxes, less power, heat, rack space, etc.
- Less breakdowns = Less physical boxes means less hardware that can break
- High Availability = VMware can send virtual servers to another box if there are problems
- Management tools = VMware has a nice management suite for watching over and manipulating the virtual servers
- Software savings = Microsoft just announced that if you buy their datacenter server (about $2500 per processor) you can have an unlimited number of Windows standard, enterprise or datacenter virtual servers running on that box.
- Network = Save on network congestion by having virtual boxes speak to each other within the virtual network environment, instead of over the physical LAN
Personal thoughts = I do not believe that virtual systems are just a fad. With all the major players developing hardware, software and network solutions for VM, it is not hard to see that the majority of today's I/T visionaries are seeing VM as the wave of the future.
Virtual network between the virtual machines? That sounds interesting.
Fad or not? It just remains to be seen what happens.
Fad or not? It just remains to be seen what happens.
Perfectly good questions.
> Why is it good to create a single point of failure for all of
> the business computing functions? Why is it good to have
> to cripple the entire business for computer maintenance or
> repair?
You're not. In fact, you're doing the opposite. You're creating a machine that isn't locked to a piece of hardware. You can create a hardware pool (multiple physical machines) to run your VMs. If you need to do maintenance on one piece of hardware, shift the VMs off of it (without shutting the VMs down). You can now repair your hardware with zero downtime to your VMs.
There's also Disaster Recovery. Mirror the storage to a DR site. In a DR event, you can bring the exact same VMs up at your DR site in a matter of minutes.
> My understanding of virtualized machines is that if you
> have a really really big machine like a Sun server with
> 128 CPUs and 256 GB of RAM
Average it all out and VMs require fewer hardware resources than physical machines. This is because they share resources. ESX is even able to share kernel allocation across VMs. For example if you're running 10 MS-Windows VMs on a single physical machine, you don't necessarily have 10 copies of MS Windows in memory at the same time. It's much more efficient than having physical machines. You also don't need a monster machine to run your VMs. You can have a dozen smaller machines in a pool. You can even use your existing hardware.
> So would someone please educate me? How can the
> shortcomings that I listed above be outweighed by whatever
> benefits you think that you gain by using virtualization software?
My main goal is disaster recovery. I could care less about the rest of it, but am happy to take advantage of it.
My biggest problem is that we're currently running all DAS (Direct Attached Storage) The cost of converting to a SAN is borderline insane for my environment. Somebody explain to me why I have to buy a $40,000 box to put $4000 worth of disks in. Oh yea, I need to spend more on building a SAN network. The cost of a mirrored SAN alone would cost more than we've spent on every sever (combined) in our company. Disaster Recovery is the ONLY way I can try to cost justify this.
> Why is it good to create a single point of failure for all of
> the business computing functions? Why is it good to have
> to cripple the entire business for computer maintenance or
> repair?
You're not. In fact, you're doing the opposite. You're creating a machine that isn't locked to a piece of hardware. You can create a hardware pool (multiple physical machines) to run your VMs. If you need to do maintenance on one piece of hardware, shift the VMs off of it (without shutting the VMs down). You can now repair your hardware with zero downtime to your VMs.
There's also Disaster Recovery. Mirror the storage to a DR site. In a DR event, you can bring the exact same VMs up at your DR site in a matter of minutes.
> My understanding of virtualized machines is that if you
> have a really really big machine like a Sun server with
> 128 CPUs and 256 GB of RAM
Average it all out and VMs require fewer hardware resources than physical machines. This is because they share resources. ESX is even able to share kernel allocation across VMs. For example if you're running 10 MS-Windows VMs on a single physical machine, you don't necessarily have 10 copies of MS Windows in memory at the same time. It's much more efficient than having physical machines. You also don't need a monster machine to run your VMs. You can have a dozen smaller machines in a pool. You can even use your existing hardware.
> So would someone please educate me? How can the
> shortcomings that I listed above be outweighed by whatever
> benefits you think that you gain by using virtualization software?
My main goal is disaster recovery. I could care less about the rest of it, but am happy to take advantage of it.
My biggest problem is that we're currently running all DAS (Direct Attached Storage) The cost of converting to a SAN is borderline insane for my environment. Somebody explain to me why I have to buy a $40,000 box to put $4000 worth of disks in. Oh yea, I need to spend more on building a SAN network. The cost of a mirrored SAN alone would cost more than we've spent on every sever (combined) in our company. Disaster Recovery is the ONLY way I can try to cost justify this.
Looks like I've got some book learnin' to do. Disaster recovery is one of my biggest interests. Well I'll have to see how to make a virtual machine move from one phycical machine to another.
Is that you can use your older Software and files.
For example you want to go from Windows to Linux. You can continue using Windows while New Linux Server is running in Background.
For example you want to go from Windows to Linux. You can continue using Windows while New Linux Server is running in Background.
SAN has been our biggest problem as well and we've been told it's the only way to get failover. Are you doing snapshots of the DAS to use for DR? We're looking for an automatic failover which I believe requires SAN storage. Not only that but we need a higher model to get true data path redundancy to the disks. Otherwise on bad card or switch and everything dies. There are some comming out now that are in the $20k price range (mostly SATA).
I think there are some limits on running older apps and OSs - at least with MS VM.
I think there are some limits on running older apps and OSs - at least with MS VM.
Thanks for the info. I should probably implement this at home just for the experience. You never know when a customer will have a use for it.
We use VMWare - but the P2V tool they sell (at a very high price/machine) didn't work very well. Blades didn't migrate at all and also going from x64 to x32 (or vise versa)didn't work very well.
Doing a little research I found an independant tool called DDChanger. On their web site they claim that they can migrate just about any machine to any vitrualization software. I thought it was a big boast but worked with the vendor to test before we committed to a purchase. They agreed and every one of our servers came across in one day.
The support was great, and the product had good flexibility allowing us to strip drivers our of the registry to properly migrate our servers. The license for unlimited migrations was less than half the cost of P2V for a handful of servers.
Doing a little research I found an independant tool called DDChanger. On their web site they claim that they can migrate just about any machine to any vitrualization software. I thought it was a big boast but worked with the vendor to test before we committed to a purchase. They agreed and every one of our servers came across in one day.
The support was great, and the product had good flexibility allowing us to strip drivers our of the registry to properly migrate our servers. The license for unlimited migrations was less than half the cost of P2V for a handful of servers.
- Keyboard Shortcuts:
- Prev
- Next
- Toggle
