Re: VMWare is Finally Free

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

Yikes - I see upon reread that the contents of your message was a snip from
someone else's blog.  Strike 'your' and its variants and insert 'that guy'.

Thanks,

Andrew



On 1/11/07, Andrew Willy <andrewwilly () gmail com> wrote:
> 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:
> >
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > 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
> >
> >
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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> > wj8DBQFFppYlq1pz9mNUZTMRAlb/AKCKGTK0jyZOpNh2x4G7NDbFnm2YPACgkCTs
> > g/7wZ8pZwe2AXbsn+/hCKFE=
> > =njSm
> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> >
> > --
> > "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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> > Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
> >
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