VM /ETC

Like it :)
1 admin (moi), started with 1 host and local storage, now 3 hosts, 1 SAN, 15-20 VMs maybe by end of next year, after hopefully successful clean install of ESX 4.0 and migrate over all the ESX 3.5 VMs.
Reading/learning >> admin time since VMware is quite stable for us.
No giant VMs etc. :)

BTW you thin-provisioned 'Provsioning' in the title by leaving out one letter. LOL :)

Tom,

LOL. Actually, I De-duped the the word "provisioning" and saved an "i". Thanks for pointing it out!

I'm the sole VMware Admin (and server/network/storage admin in general) in our organization, currently managing approx. 35VMs on two hosts. Combine that with 10 physical servers, one san with extended storage and the general networking for our HQ, branch offices and 22 vessels. The branch offices and vessels all have physical servers in their location as well. :)

Rich,
Great shirt and great timing. My wife just reminded me last night that I need to give her and the kids a list of what I want for Christmas. Got my "Virtually Insane" sweatshirt for Christmas from them last year.

1 primary admin (me) with 1 backup if I'm not around for 8 hosts and 125 guests in production.

We are a team of 4 and are responsible for 2 vcenter servers, 200+ VMs and about 200 physical servers. We have a separte group for our storage and backups.

You guys are all Ugly Green Heroes! Thanks for the comments and stats. Ratio is avg of 90 Systems to 1 admin so far.

Heh.

Here to screw up your stats - and I kid you not.

1 Admin - me. 3 clusters. 19 Servers. 843 guests. And a partridge in a pear tree.

Abe,

I believe you are a very busy VI Administrator ... WOW! Just curious, but did your company have a team of server admins before virtualizing?

They had me. I *used* to be a network engineer, but because I was someone who made the foolish mistake of rogering up to this 'new-fangled virtualization' stuff, I've now found myself here. We had three instructors who doubled as admins when the work was out of my reach - we're centered around a training environment, specifically information system security, so we're always tearing down and putting up new targets. When folks figured out how easy it was to do that in VI, the product portfolio grew. Then somebody got the wise idea of doing malware research. I wasn't about to let that happen on my production lab, so that turned into a development cluster, which then went production, and now we've got a 3rd cluster for development with a 4th in the works - and hopefully a new slot for a VI admin. I don't know how I'm going to be able to handle 4... :)

Most of my day is spent researching targets and trying to prevent VM sprawl. Busy is definitely in my vocabulary. Tools like VESI and PowerCLI are god-sends to me (and the work of Alan Renouf - thanks man). If I didn't have those, I don't know how I'd handle the proper care and feeding of these labs.

- abe

5 of us. over 3000 guests, 113 hosts. 20 clusters

I should clarify, only 2 of us actually administer the environment to any degree, 5 members in the team build servers on the clusters (server admin team).

William,

5 members for all of those servers .. whether administering or not. I'm curious about your thoughts on VM Sprawl - like Abe too.

rbrambley, VMsprawl is a huge problem with us...people come to us more frequently, because we no longer have a 2 week lead time (or longer), but rather minutes. The 2 of us that do the VI work spend probably 20% of our week on vmware admin duties alone...the rest of it is our other work (I am the storage admin, vmware admin, server admin, and the team lead (project planning and paperwork mostly). It's not as time consuming as I feared, but we've been overloaded from the beginning. It's far better than physical servers in any case, I replaced my virtual center yesterday, and it was an all day affair, because it was hardware. If it had been virtual it would have been at most a couple hours.

Sprawl is a huge problem and no one seems to be inclined to rein it in at all.

At my current job we are 2 and 40 systems. At Hertz.com (I was layed off) they are 5 for 400.

At my current job we are 2 and have 40 VM systems. At hertz.com (I was layed off) they are 5 and have 200 Physical and 200 VM systems.

Thanks

1 VI Admin (guess who?) 11 Hosts 4 clusters 300 VM's
And of course AD infrastructure which takes up a small part of my day :)

Maish,
Thanks!

That shirt is full of awesome. I can't comment specifically on numbers, but the word "Lots" doesn't quite fit anymore.

Cody,
I am sure your VI is massive. If I only knew! Thanks!

2 Clusters of 3 ESX hosts, 50 VMs

bezell,

To clarify: 6 ESX hosts and 100 VMs total? Thanks.

So far 50 total. We SAN-SAN replicate many hosts and use SRM for many.

Rich, that is fantastic and almost unfunny because it is so true! I can't give exact numbers, but we run approx. 100-200 hosts per admin and around 400-600 VMs per admin.