Initial thoughts, in no particular order: 3 VM hosts for 8 servers seems excessive You almost certainly won't need 8 cores. RAM and disk IO tend to be bottlenecks before CPU does. Why a SAN and not DAS? If you really need shared storage consider the VMware VSA or HP P4000 VSA. What are you doing for backups?
That is one hell of a whack of money for them to do stuff for you that, respectfully, if you buy the kit and take your time I'm sure you could do yourself and come out the other side having learned a heck of a lot. Personally, and I'm only going off this single email I don't know the history, but I would take a step back and perhaps take smaller steps here before throwing that much money at it. ________________________________ From: David Mazzaccaro [[email protected]] Sent: 16 July 2012 8:36 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: moving to virtual Greetings, Getting very close to moving into the VM world, and have a couple of questions… 1) I am trying to figure out if I should go with 8 core or 6 core processors in my 3 hosts for my upcoming VMware environment. The price is about double. And I’m not sure I need 8 cores. The layout that has been quoted is as follows: 3 hosts connected to a PS4100XV SAN running VMware Essentials Plus Kit. The host servers I am looking at are either: HP DL360 G8 2x Intel® Xeon® E5-2640 (6 core, 2.50 GHz, 15MB, 95W) $5356 each HP DL360 G8 2x Intel® Xeon® E5-2690 (8 core, 2.90 GHz, 20MB, 135W) $10,061 each I currently have 8 physical servers (Win2003, E2003, Citrix 4.0) that we will be P2V’d. After I P2V the servers, the plan is to begin creating new Windows 2008 R2 VMs and migrating each server’s role (2008R2 domain, Exchange 2010, and Citrix XenApp 6.5). I want enough power to be able to run my existing 8 servers in a virtual environment and migrate them to AD2008/E2010/XenApp as well as leave some room for testing and growth. 2 of the vendors said 6 core is fine, another vendor is quoting 8 core processors. 2) The quotes I have for the “services” part of this are: $40,000 ($12k for AD/Exch, $8k for XenApp 20k for VMware) $38,000 (not itemized) $28,000 ($11k for AD/Ex, $6k XenApp, $11k for VM) Do these sound legit? I have ~190 users if that helps. I really think 28k is either too aggressive or simply not realistic. This is the same vendor who quoted me (3) single processor servers, so I have to go back to them and tell them I want dual proc. 3) For the SAN, I have 2 options: PS4100XV (12 600GB 15k SAS) $23,000 NetApp FAS2240 (12 600GB 10k SAS) $22,000 I have 2 vendors pushing the PS4100XV, and the other pushing the NetApp. >From what I have been told, I’ll get better IOPS w/ the 15k drives in the >Equalogic. And fuller feature set. Any one w/ experiences w/ either of these models want to add their $.02? This is a completely new world for me, so any help is appreciated! . ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin -- MIRA Ltd Watling Street, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, CV10 0TU, England Registered in England and Wales No. 402570 VAT Registration GB 100 1464 84 The contents of this e-mail are confidential and are solely for the use of the intended recipient. If you receive this e-mail in error, please delete it and notify us either by e-mail, telephone or fax. You should not copy, forward or otherwise disclose the content of the e-mail as this is prohibited. ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
