VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘hp’

Michael Healey over at InformationWeek has written an article that demonstrates real world pricing scenarios comparing the cost of a SAN with replacing physical servers and local RAID 5 storage. ROI Analysis: Virtualization uses an example of 10 physical servers at their “end of life” and focuses on hard cost savings that will even make sense to the CIO. Read the entire article, but here’s the results:

“Scenarios under consideration:

1. Replace with 10 traditional servers: Ten HP ML350 boxes with mirrored boot drives and RAID 5 storage–$62,100.

2. Virtualize 10 servers using three physical servers with local storage: Three HP ML350s with more memory and RAID 5 storage running VMware ESX (licenses included)–$49,300.

3. Same virtualized servers in a cluster that boots to a 1-TB SAN: Three HP ML350s with more memory, boot drives, and VMware Enterprise, plus a Hitachi SAN for storage–$52,730.”

As Michael points out, migrating to virtual infrastructure and spending $3500 extra for a SAN (scenario 2 versus 3) are options that should make sense to even the most cost conscious IT departments!

I ran into an issue today with the open console command from the VI Client. I was already connected to a stand alone ESX3.5 host. I had just finished creating a new VM, configuring the virtual CD to use the OS install media .iso, and I had powered on the new virtual machine. When I right clicked on the VM and selected “open console” I got the following error message:

“error connecting: can not connect to host x.x.x.x: a connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.”

Once again the VMware Communities forum came to the rescue. Read the rest of this entry »

VMware announced officially today that Site Recovery Manager will be available for order next week and then generally available within 30 days. As I mentioned in my Site Recovery Manager Overview post last week, a requirement to using SRM will be a Site Recovery Agent (SRA) from the various storage vendors. VMware’s announcement reveals what vendors will provide SRAs initially:

“VMware Site Recovery Manager leverages customers’ investment in storage replication software from VMware’s leading storage partners including 3PAR, Dell, EMC, FalconStor, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, IBM, LeftHand Networks and NetApp. VMware is working with partners across its storage partner ecosystem to ensure that customers can use Site Recovery Manager with their storage system and software platform of choice.”

As expected, several reports surfaced on the Internet today Read the rest of this entry »

This weeks edition is centered on the topic of quick migration versus VMware HA and VMotion. We start with a post from the Windows Virtualization Team’s blog site and then explore some responses from a couple popular blogs in the virtualization community. Finally, if you have not seen Microsoft’s Quick Migration in action then check out the video at the end of this post. Links to the full posts are provided by clicking the section titles. Enjoy!

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For those that are preparing to take the VCP Exam, be aware that questions on ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5 started appearing on the test as of March 1, 2008. So, what study material is available to prepare for the new exam? I’ll summarize what sources I recommend in this post. Please leave a comment if you know of others. Read the rest of this entry »

VMware VirtualCenter comes with built in alerting and a handful of alerts preconfigured. Unfortunately, alerting for disk space usage of either the ESX hosts or the virtual machines is not included. Administrators continue to use common physical infrastructure monitoring and reporting applications such as NetIQ and MOM for VMs, or SNMP capable programs like HP Openview or IBM Director for ESX host monitoring. A less complex and less expensive ( cost of installing and configuring agents on each VM OS ) alternative would be to tap into VirtualCenter’s central management ability to monitor, alert, and report on disk space. This post lists a few free solutions that can already use VC2.x or quickly be configured for ESX hosts and therefore save administrators time and money. Hopefully, a future feature of VC2.x will include vital disk space metrics and alerting.

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Like all bloggers, I have accumulated a bunch of links in my drafts that are sitting there collecting dust. In an effort to clean some of those drafts out I have combined several online calculators into this post. Each of these calculators can help administrators and IT departments understand and budget for a virtualization project. Enjoy!

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