On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 07:54:46AM -0600, Marco Peereboom wrote: > > Virtualization is a toy sold as an enterprise solution. The argument > goes like this: you need a domain controller and sequel server so you > need 2 machines. So instead of paying for 2 machines you virtualize > them!!!!! OMGZOMG!!!!11111ONe > > What Mr. dingle berry insultant forgets to point out is that both tasks > will run like ass in a virtualized environment AND can be easily > combined on the same box. Usually lost in the same conversation is > that you need both machines to be up at the same time too to be useful.
Ah, but the dingle berry insultant was probably brought in because management finally listened when they were told 1) The machines with the most compute power and memory are nearly completely idle file and backup servers. 2) The key compute heavy apps are running on 7 year old hardware for which replacement parts are becoming nearly non-existant. So the insultant picks the virtualization topology best suited to bring a second insulting contract for performance detuning... > > I have seen people virtualize a file server and domain controller on a > single machine. Which is awesome because now you get free >30% loss of > IO performance. You know it keeps bandwidth use lower and latency > higher. Exactly what lusers like. We intentionally did this for an environment for application developers so they would find the performance issues with their applications sooner. > > Virtualization is great to develop kernel code and get an idea if it'd > work before moving on to real hardware (and fixing real bugs on real > hardware because virtualization failed to run right). It also works rather well testlabs for software applications. Faster reinstall turnarounds. Smaller budget required for chairs and displays and KVM switches and work surfaces. Higher homicide rates as 5 app developers pile into a cube that isn't large enough for one person all looking at one tiny display for a problem involving 6 different virtual machines and start accusing each other loudly (Previously they had enough space to run and scatter). > > I like to play with old OS' as well so its neat for that but usually > doesn't work. This really is in the toy section though. I find that it's useful to validating procedures before applied to production and for working out a load balanced configuration. -- Chris Dukes
