VMware ESX... Ideal Setup

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civic00typer

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Dec 5, 2003
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I recently stepped into a position where the previous administrator was in the process of setting up a VMware ESX infrastructure. My experience with VMware products is limited to VMware Server and VMware Workstation. Two identical servers were purchased with 2TB of storage (RAID 5) and 4 NICs per box.... nothing special otherwise. I am not sure what he was thinking... (and the VMware representative that helped him). My quick research indicates you need another server to manage ESX (virtual center) and a SAN/NAS for centralized storage. It was purchased as a high availability solution. Any ideas where he might have been headed?
 
If you want to use vmotion, you'll need centrallized storage with a NAS or SAN. You'll also want the ESX servers to have the same exact processor features, down to the SSE instruction sets. That's not a problem as long as your buying them at the same time. When you purchase from different hardware gens, that's when you'll run into issues.

The way I have mine currently setup is minimum local storage to run ESX and the backend on a SAN (BlueArc in the one farm) or NAS (StoreVault on the other). Virtual Center runs on another server and houses your license files and the SQL backend. Go with the full version of SQL for this as you'll run into little issues if you just use the runtime provided by VMware.
 
At work we have a simple HP ML350G5 with 2 quads + 16 gigs of ram running Exchange 2007 + a SQL server on the same box with space/cpu for more. Using local drives for everything. Administration using the vmware console that you install on a regular box and connect via IP. Really easy if you know your computer from a monkey's ass. Good luck! :)

PS: Obviously we can't use vmotion, etc. As you may be planning on doing. So maybe I'm not helping lol.
 
ND40oz said:
If you want to use vmotion, you'll need centrallized storage with a NAS or SAN. You'll also want the ESX servers to have the same exact processor features, down to the SSE instruction sets. That's not a problem as long as your buying them at the same time. When you purchase from different hardware gens, that's when you'll run into issues.

The way I have mine currently setup is minimum local storage to run ESX and the backend on a SAN (BlueArc in the one farm) or NAS (StoreVault on the other). Virtual Center runs on another server and houses your license files and the SQL backend. Go with the full version of SQL for this as you'll run into little issues if you just use the runtime provided by VMware.
Click to expand...

Vmotion and HA are not the same thing, correct? Seens like I am missing some equipment. I don't see how HA will work without centralized storage (iSCSI SAN or alike) and another server to host the virtual center to manage the ESX servers.

The intend was to do a high reliability setup with 2 servers... doesn't sound feasible without something on top to manage.
 
Yes, you'll need centralized disk for both ESX clusters and just the ability to vmotion between ESX boxes. They key is you have the same disk space available to all the servers, local storage won't allow this.

You'll need to add some sort of NAS or SAN as well as the Virtual Infrastructure to tie it all together and centrally manage it. You may want to check with your vendor to see what you bought licenses for, if they sold it to you for HA, you may have all the necessary VMware licensing, you just need storage.
 
QHalo said:
Well I typed up a few things, edited it about 5 times, then I had to ask a few questions.

What size environment is this?
What kind of redundancy do you require? Uptime?
How many servers are you consolidating if you're even consolidating?
Click to expand...

Small-Medium Business
HA or Vmotion functionalities are preferred, 24/7 uptime (or as close to it as you can reasonably get)
Probably 5-6 Windows servers at the least

Right now I am sitting on two identically configured Dell 2950's... I believe this was done in hopes of using the HA functionalities. However, the SAN was never part of the plan.
 
civic00typer said:
Small-Medium Business
HA or Vmotion functionalities are preferred, 24/7 uptime (or as close to it as you can reasonably get)
Probably 5-6 Windows servers at the least

Right now I am sitting on two identically configured Dell 2950's... I believe this was done in hopes of using the HA functionalities. However, the SAN was never part of the plan.
Click to expand...

Heh, ninja caught my edit. No worries I looked at it and then re-read your post and thought my questions were pretty lame and that you gave me enough info already.

Well not to reiterate too much, but as the other gentleman/lady stated you're going to need a shared storage environment. SAN/NAS. iSCSI or Fibre Channel; however with so few VM's Fibre Channel would be too pricey in my opinion.

Just looking over the config and your requirements I'd say they probably intended to run Virtual Center as a VM. You can do this and its a cheap alternative to having a completely seperate server to run Virtual Center all by itself. However it requires you run licensing a bit different. By the way, Virtual Center is licensed completely seperate. It's not included in the VI3 license. For your reference - http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_vc_in_vm.pdf

I'd also venture to say that with all that local storage, perhaps they were going to run a Virtual SAN appliance, say Openfiler to serve up the 2TB disk as VMFS via iSCSI to your servers. This is all hypothetical but comes very close to how a home user would setup an ESX test environment on a budget. For your reference - http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/344

Which version of Infrastructure did you get? Standard or Enterprise? Did you get ESXi or ESX? Yes there is a difference. As you can see from the legend at the bottom, if you didn't purchase Virtual Center, you can't use any of the redundacy/resource items. For your reference - http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/vc/buy.html

Edit - added a link to Openfiler and also for VI feature sets. Again my ADD.
 
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