VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘highavailability’

I received an email today with a new VDI promotion from VMware:

Subject: VMWare Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Starter Kit Promotion

Customers who purchase a VMware license are entitled to a “free” VDI Starter Kit. Interested? Keep reading… Read the rest of this entry »

Sure, you can run Virtual Center Management Server as a Virtual Machine. VMware supports it and has published a technical note about doing it – http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_vc_in_vm.pdf. A lot of companies have built their VC2 server this way, but is it really wise to have “the manager” of the environment running in the environment it is managing?

Think about it. Virtual Center provides VMotion which in turn enables DRS and HA. Agents running on each ESX host are communicating back to VirtualCenter for these features to work. A lot could go wrong with some pretty severe consequences. This is even worse if a company has completely virtualized their network services such as DNS. I’ve personally seen where a client “shot themselves in the foot” because Virtual Center and all networking services where provided by VMs.

In my opinion the VMware tech note is a not exactly a “glowing endorsement” for installing VC2 in a VM. It is best practices guide that explains critical design criteria.

First, why would you put VC2 in a VM? The tech note begins by offering some good reasons: Read the rest of this entry »

With the new release of VI3.5 yesterday VMware is offering special pricing in the form of Acceleration kits designed for small and medium sized businesses. The kits consist of licensing for multiple ESX hosts packaged to get you started with virtual infrastructure. The acceleration kits offer discounted pricing when comparing the cost of buying single ESX licenses which are sold in 2 processor increments.

The following are descriptions of the kits from a VMware marketing email I received: Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

These are my notes I used to prepare for a discussion with a client about implementing a secondary site for DR fail over. The client has already virtualized their production data center and is wanting to leverage VI for DR. The point of my discussion is that VI is too often viewed as a “silver bullet” for tough projects like back up and fail over. Yes, there are some specific areas that are easier to implement with VI, but careful consideration and planning must be executed if the overall DR plan is to be successful.

Goals and Objectives – the customer must make important decisions first !

· Recovery Time Objectives – acceptable time to start up systems and allow user access

requires server by server analysis

· Recovery Point Objectives – acceptable point in time recovery or start up at secondary site

requires application by application analysis

· Mission Critical Services

which applications & services must be available first.

Read the rest of this entry »