VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘design’

The free VMware Server does not have the resource pools or shares system like ESX or ESXi. However, you can manually create priorities for your guest VMs to imitate the effects of these features. If you have a Linux host you can use the scheduler to prioritize by PID, or for any host OS, you can modify the .vmx file of each VM to set priority. In effect, both these methods create a “tug of war” design similar to the resource pool design I discussed in my post titled Designing ESX Resource Pools. The details of using both methods are discussed in this post. Read the rest of this entry »

Why is it that migrating to virtual infrastructure (VI) is most often considered to be the responsibility of the server administrators? Anyone who has already done it can tell you it involves much more than servers and hardware. Even for small companies, virtualizing servers potentially (and usually) involves networking, storage, security, and infrastructure services changes. In fact, it is often as involved and complex as moving your physical servers from one data center to another.

So why is there a perception that implementing VI is only a server team responsibility? Obviously, one reason is because on the surface it’s about installing and consolidating operating systems on server hardware. Another reason is because VMware, the source for all the interest in migrating to VI to date, has done such a great job marketing their products as just server installs. Read the rest of this entry »

How do you design resource pools in an ESX Cluster? There are two strategies that are the most popular in my experience. The first strategy creates resource pools based on CPU and Memory shares for host resource conflict management, and the second strategy uses reservations and limits to guarantee physical resources and ensure VM containment. This post will use a 3 ESX host example to explain both strategies. Please feel free to comment on the pros and cons of each or why you think one is better than the other.

In the example scenario three ESX hosts each have 16 GB RAM and 2 dual core 3.0 Ghz CPUs. The three hosts will all be members of the same ESX cluster. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s always an afterthought. The client bought VI3 Enterprise so they know they have VCB. Everybody is talking about live VM backups so what’s the big deal? Sounds like it’s simple to start backing up VMs and maybe even reducing the cost of your backup agent licensing, right? Well, if you haven’t planned for it, then not really.

It’s not that it’s difficult to install VCB. It’s understanding what is needed to use it. I’ve heard VMware themselves say it’s not the whole solution. It’s just a framework of scripts to help integrate the enterprise backup solution with the virtual environment. Here’s how VMware’s Virtual Machine Backup Guide puts it:

Consolidated Backup consists of a set of utilities and scripts that work in conjunction with a third party backup software. To ensure that Consolidated Backup works with specific backup software, either VMware or your backup software vendor provide integration modules containing any required pre backup and post backup scripts. The third party software, integration module, and Consolidated Backup run on the VCB proxy, a physical machine that has Microsoft Windows 2003 installed.

Here’s what you need to configure before you install VCB.

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Storage VMotion – move VM disks without downtime!

Site Recovery Manager

DR Pain points

• lack of reliable plan
• can’t meet RTO or RPO reqs
• expenses for hardware at DR site

VI3 improves DR

• RTO / Cost / Reliability
• Failover / Planning / testing
  • isolate network for live testing
• Hdw independence / encapsulation / boot from san / drs and resource pools / snap shots & vlans
• instant repurposing

Read the rest of this entry »