At 6:51 pm +1100 30/11/05, Duncan Guy wrote:
I read an interesting article in a CIO mag about virtual servers.
They use vmware - www.vmware.com
We currently have 6 servers - all new HP ML350's or equivalent and they
have variable load. It seemed that a virtual server arrangement would
cover server crashes, spread load and allow fast recovery from disasters.
Does anyone have experience with vmware or similar virtual server
arrangements ?
According to VMWare...
http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/
they are talking about more OSs on less hardware.
(As opposed to a single "virtual" server with a cluster architecture.)
No experience, except with Virtual PC on Mac - which used to run OK
once upon a time.
... but fail to see how running more than one server OS on a single
physical box does anything good for reliabillity at all.
.. performance of any virtual machine will almost always be less than
a native hardware box, unless the virtual OS is several generations
older than current hardware.
I would imagine that the increased complexity of managing multiple
OSs would only increase licencing and maintenance costs.
Don't you really want clustering functionality???? eg: per
http://www.intel.com/design/network/papers/25157401.pdf
I would like to put a server cluster in our practice with next
upgrade (due soon) to provide bullet-proof redundancy and 100%
uptime. Whether it is feasible on a budget seems a bit tricky, since
we appear to need a single high availability/redundancy RAID storage
device (with hot swap drive capability) and they all cost a bomb
(usually >$10k). In a 6 FTE fully deployed practice, our downtime
costs are significant - and we will estimate then as best we can to
help figure out potential benefits of a high availability system.
Ian.
--
Dr Ian R Cheong, BMedSc, FRACGP, GradDipCompSc, MBA(Exec)
Health Informatics Consultant, Brisbane, Australia
Elected Member, GPCG Management Committee
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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