VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘vmotion’

How many VMs should run on each ESX host? The answer is determined mostly by the physical resources of the host’s platform (storage, ram, cpu, etc.). Before VI3 introduced ESX Clusters with DRS and HA squeezing as many VMs on each ESX host as possible was acceptable. Today it’s not just ESX host capacity, but ESX Clusters need to be take into consideration. Planning Cluster capacity means ensuring availability of VMs while maintaining acceptable host performance in a fail over scenarios.

First, what is a fail over scenario? The first thing that comes to mind is a problem. One or more of your ESX hosts unexpectedly crashed. This is considered unplanned downtime. Another fail over scenario to consider is planned downtime such as rebooting after applying ESX patches. For both of these types of scenarios you want to make sure your VMs stay online.

VMware’s solution for planned downtime is VMotion. The solution for unplanned downtime is the HA feature of ESX Clusters. When determining your ESX capacity be sure to allow room to leverage these features.

VMotion migrates a VM to a different ESX host without users losing connectivity. Evacuating an ESX server by VMotion enables you Read the rest of this entry »

I get asked this all the time. “How many NICs does ESX need? 2, 4, 6 or more?”

Well, it’s not really about how many NICs ESX needs. I’m not recommending it, but the fact of the matter is that VI3 really only needs 1 NIC per ESX host. It’s just smarter for a company to build some redundancy and load balancing into their VI design. So, let’s say then that ESX just needs 2 NICs minimum.

The real question is “How many NICs does your network infrastructure and VI performance require?” Do you have or will you have: Read the rest of this entry »

Are you using IBM System X servers to run ESX? Are you planning on expanding your current VI with new IBM X series servers? Not sure which blades are compatible? Use this guide to make sure you do not create a vmotion boundary!

Although this is an IBM publication it does cover general processor compatibility. There are 3 tables. Table A is for IBM server compatibilties, Table B (incorrectly labeled as the first Table C) is for all Pentium processor compatibilities, and Table C is for all AMD processor compatibilities.

VMware VMotion Compatibility Guide for IBM System X and BladeCenter Servers

Unfortunately I slept late Thursday morning. Waking up at 7:30 am in Hayward, CA meant that there was no way short of a helicopter I was going to make it to San Francisco before 9. I’m pretty sure my company would not let me expense a helicopter so I decided to catch up on some email from the hotel until traffic burned off. I also had “Smash Head” from the party Weds night!

blog.scottlowe.org has some great notes on this session. Here’s my thoughts on what I missed. Read the rest of this entry »