In my experience, most vendors don't want to support a system where another product could change the configuration. To me, with them, it's not about the hardware or the processing power - in most cases, it's about the internal configurations of the OS or software. They usually make perfect VM guests.
From: Jon Harris [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, December 29, 2008 9:52 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: Virtualization Questions Personally I have am using local but wish I had a SAN. I suspect if they wanted a dedicated server then a virtualized dedicated server would work. I did that to a server we had to run for our library for several years. I never told the vendor as they never asked but we never had any issues with that setup and that was using software ported over from NT4 to 2000. Ours actually ran smoother in the virtual environment than in the physical but that may have been a result of hardware issues. I have SCE, DC/NAP/NDS/DHCP, File, Web/Print/FTP/SMTP, AV, and SQL all running virtual. The AV is on one machine the rest on another. I will also say that the SQL is not a high volume machine and except for running out of space is happy. I don't do clusters so will leave that to smarter people than me. My logic is best machine to do the work but I don't put Printing on the same machine as File services I try to get machines to do logically what is similar things on the same VM. I could have put the AV on my SCE but I am new to that technology and had the spare license so I split the two. It will make changing AV vendors easier at a later point. Some things just should be on their own when ever possible, like DC's and File should not share and File and Web app's should not share if you have the license and space to keep them separate. I am a bit old school about that. I am under orders to decrease my heat/AC and electrical draws as well as the numbers of Physical machines we support. Some vendors like ESRI require access to dedicated hardware that can not be done in a virtual environment but other than that I have been successful at virtualizing most things tried. One thing to keep in mind that you already know is nothing goes on the host but what you absolutely have to have on the host. That causes more issues than any I have had to this point. Jon On Mon, Dec 29, 2008 at 9:30 AM, Roger Wright <[email protected]> wrote: Taking a look at the potential implementation of virtualization and have several questions: 1. Does/should utilization of a SAN have a direct impact on virtualization decisions? Is it better to go with local or SAN storage? 2. Do vendors who normally require a dedicated server accept a virtualized server as equivalent? 3. What type of servers (DB, Oracle, F&P, etc.) don't make good candidates for virtualization? I would think that SQL/Oracle would probably be least recommended. 4. Is clustering still possible with VMs? 5. What kind of logic determines the best combination of host/guests? IOW, is it recommended to put all F&P servers together on one host, or should it be a combination of F&P, DB, etc.? TIA! Roger Wright Network Administrator Evatone, Inc. 727.572.7076 x388 ET E-mail Signature Logo _____ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
<<image001.jpg>>
