Re: VMWare is Finally Free

["Andrew Willy" <andrewwilly () gmail com>]

If you're not virtualizing in production environments, you're missing the
boat.

We started out virtualizing for testing and, as you said, found you can't
beat it. It wasn't long before we decided to create a full time virtual
server to host a particularly problematic application on a production VMWare
Server  --  and it's been non-stop since then. The ability to provide a
single purpose box without having to provide the hardware for it is an
incredible value.

Our data center was (is!) full of under-utilized machines.  Linux boxes
serving a few dozen users occupied 2 U in our racks generating heat.  Barely
accessed legacy apps crammed our modern machines, slowing down more needed
services by their presence alone. Creaky, bloated applications needing
constant attention (and reboots) impacted their fellows. All resolved by
virtualization.

You mentioned "eggs in one basket" -- more appropriate is eggs in many
baskets.  With a well planned virtual posture (including a SAN), your
machines aren't subject to extended server hardware failure.  RAID
controller croak on your VMWare master host?  Ouch - multiple server outage.
Eggs in one basket.  But have a SAN?  Start those VMWare machines on any
server that can spare the memory and processor power until your host is back
online (and that's only if you don't have a backup VMWare master host on
standby).  No SAN?  If you're able to take your virtual boxes down for a few
minutes in off hours, you can backup the server file and restore it anywhere
you like.  It will start up in hardware it expects to, the VMWare container,
and go back to work.  All this is just the free product, VMWare offers paid
for products with more.

As for slowing everything, we've found that a single purpose server sharing
resources with other single purpose servers performs better than
multi-purpose servers with resources all to themselves.  We built a VMWare
host (with admittedly better specs than our regular servers) and installed
four virtual servers on it.  Each of these virtual servers perform better in
all categories than the traditional installations they used to exist on,
except for writes, for reasons I don't understand, but may be related to our
configuration.

We went from trusting VM to only test, to trusting VM only for non-crits, to
our planned virtulization of our AD DC's and more. This is from a mid-sized
company's perspective.  Virtualization doesn't just save money, it
simplifies, provides great diaster recovery and performance, and aids
migration.

It isn't right for everything, of course.  We don't virutalize brutally used
database servers or so-mission-critical-we-don't-dare servers, but it
certainly has its place in our data center.

Thanks,

Andrew



On 1/11/07, Fergie <fergdawg () netzero net> wrote:
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> Via ha.ckers.org.
>
> [snip]
>
> I'm not a huge fan of virtualization in production environments (feels an
> awful lot like putting all your eggs in one basket and slowing everything
> down in the process) but you cannot beat it for testing.
>
> Today I found out that VMWare server is now free for download. Their major
> upsell is service contracts and add-ons, but if you don't tend to use
> that or need it for testing and you run Windows but want to run other
> operating systems or perform potentially dangerous tests, this is the
> software for you.
>
> [snip]
>
> More:
> http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20070111/vmware-is-finally-free/
>
> - - ferg
>
>
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> --
> "Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
> Engineering Architecture for the Internet
> fergdawg(at)netzero.net
> ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/
>
>
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