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By now you’ve seen the pictures, video (VMworldTV), and posts about the hardware in the datacenters that hosted the VMworld 2009 Labs. You should already know about the staggering number of virtual machines ( > 37,000 ) running on the ESX 4 servers ( > 770 ). But enough about the hardware.

If you are like me you probably would have loved to get the opportunity to use the vSphere client to connect to a vCenter server managing that entire virtual infrastructure (VI). Although I did not get to do just that, I did get the opportunity to do the next best thing – talk to the manager of the team that does. My VMworld ended by talking to Randy Keener, Group Manager of VMware’s GETO team (Global Engineering Technical Operations). Keener explained to me some of the VMworld 2009 virtual infrastructure design details that VI administrators would be interested to know.

Nested ESX in the Lab Manager Cloud

What Keener revealed somewhat surprised me. Although vCenter 4 server was a piece of the design, the true magic that supported the self paced labs, instructor led labs, and the Solutions Exchange was (arguably) an example of a private cloud created by

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This post is more of an idea then a report. If you’ve experimented with a design similar to my thoughts below please post a comment and let me know!

Have you tried to configure VMs in a MS cluster across separate ESX hosts? How about clustering a physical server with a VM? VMware’s guide can be found here. Referencing this guide I am specifically talking about “Clustering Virtual Machines Across Physical Hosts (Cluster Across Boxes)” and “Clustering Physical Machines and Virtual Machines (Standby Host)”.

Read the guide and you’ll find there are several prerequisites and restrictions. The most important ones being:

• you must use RDMs in physical mode for shared storage
• dedicate at least 2 physical nics to the VMs
• you can not use multipathing software
• you must use the LSILogic virtual SCSI adapter in your VMs
• you can only use 32 bit VMs. You can not cluster with 64 bit VMs
• iSCSI disks are not supported. NAS disks are not supported.
• you can only use 2 node clustering
• the boot disks for the VMs must be on local storage
• clustered VMs can not participate in an ESX cluster and use VMotion, DRS and HA

So how do we design a clustered VM application that can fully leverage VMotion, DRS, and HA? Read the rest of this entry »