geektime-- Virtualisation

[timwilky]

I currently run VMWare workstation on my laptop to host my development environments, ie windoze 2003, RHEL. and it works well.

But I have 4 servers hosting tiny apps. It is screaming virtualisation.

So I have an AMD9950 with 8GB of RAM, 4TB of disc and a freeby download of ESXi.

I guess this should be enough of a server, only pitfall might be I run simh for VAX/VMS emulation on one of my servers, I throttle it on idle to emulate a null process and release some host CPU. This might be an issue under ESXi, but can anyone who runs VMWare in real life give me any pointers to what else might be an issue.

guess it is time to start frequenting VMWare forums if they exist

holly virtual work stations geekman !!! I Thought I was pretty geeky but even I only got about 3 words in 5 and I know what WMWare is !

In nutshell icant help you dude, but why arent you running linux for your servers ?

[TSM]

ESXi is very very picky about its network cards, they have to be native 64bit, best i found is the broadcom ones, they work right up to ESXi4

At work we have a basic VM setup for testing running 4 OS's. The spec of the machine you have seems tenfold better than ours. I got a little confused as to the rest of the post as I am more DBA/Reporting guy than network mong .

ESXi - is that just the bare OS & VMware software? We have Ubuntu OS running VMWare Server (free). Later on this year we're going to be looking at consolodating some critical servers with full redundancy/resiliancy

Sorry I can't be off much help !

[TSM]

I have a ML370G4 and DL360G5, both run 100% fine with ESXi, if you want the manangment agents then you have to stay with 3.5 as 4.0 does not have them for HP yet

all generaly good, but i have to say the newer cpus with VT are notably faster with certian apps that use SSL.
i have an app that is a SSL-VPN, i moved it to our ML370G4 and it went so so slow, put it on the DL360G5 and it ran wayway faster

I use ESXi 3.5 on the ML370G4 and VMware Server 1 on the DL360G5 which will be upgraded soon.

I have to say that VMware Server 1 itself is good enough for production, it also allows you to still use the host machine OS for other things if you require. They all say thats its not production ready, but its just a repackaged GSX server which was once their enterprise product.

If you try ESXi3.5 and you dont see the HDDs then try ESXi4.0, it supports local SATA/IDE storage, but generaly stay with top notch hardware.

The DL360G5 1xQuadCoreXeon 6GB has 5xWinXP(VID) 2xCentos, mostly runs fine unless people cain the disks
The ML370G4 2xXeons 4GB has 4xCentos, runs fine too

[timwilky]

Originally Posted by TSM

ESXi is very very picky about its network cards, they have to be native 64bit, best i found is the broadcom ones, they work right up to ESXi4

Yes, it did not like the on board realtek, so broadcom card now on order

[TSM]

Originally Posted by timwilky

Yes, it did not like the on board realtek, so broadcom card now on order

From my tests i could not get 3COM/Linksys/Netgear/GenericRealtek to work, aparently people have but it required hacking of the hypervisor.

The exact card i used was a HP NC373T

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by timwilky

I currently run VMWare workstation on my laptop to host my development environments, ie windoze 2003, RHEL. and it works well.

But I have 4 servers hosting tiny apps. It is screaming virtualisation.

So I have an AMD9950 with 8GB of RAM, 4TB of disc and a freeby download of ESXi.

I guess this should be enough of a server, only pitfall might be I run simh for VAX/VMS emulation on one of my servers, I throttle it on idle to emulate a null process and release some host CPU. This might be an issue under ESXi, but can anyone who runs VMWare in real life give me any pointers to what else might be an issue.

guess it is time to start frequenting VMWare forums if they exist

Just remember the Freebie ESXi download is time-limited and that the Management Client is Windows only.

Of course you can get past the last issue by installing VMWare Server on your Linux Box, Install XP on that, then install the ESXi Managment Client on that, then connect to your ESXi Server from there.

It gets instersting when you have to click three times to activate something on the ESXi server when you Ctrl-Alt'd to check email - especially as each machine has a different idea of where the mouse is...

[timwilky]

yeah, read some bumph about editing the CD install to add oem.tgz for install support, but that you also have to start editing packages as well.

TBH I could not be bothered, and bought a Broadcom BCM5721. I just hope it will not then get picky with anything else. It is a bit naughty that the install simply stops because it cannot find an approved NIC.

[TSM]

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

Just remember the Freebie ESXi download is time-limited and that the Management Client is Windows only.

Of course you can get past the last issue by installing VMWare Server on your Linux Box, Install XP on that, then install the ESXi Managment Client on that, then connect to your ESXi Server from there.

It gets instersting when you have to click three times to activate something on the ESXi server when you Ctrl-Alt'd to check email - especially as each machine has a different idea of where the mouse is...

no its not, its unlimited time now, free ESXi, they had to as Citrix has also made their XENServer free with lots more features that VMware still make you pay for. The battle is on.

you can use the API or go into unsupported mode of ESXi to then create run commands directly on the box and enable SSH

All easy.