Jeffrey, No we are sized to 450 VM's, to date we have only had 319 VM's active at one time. What makes the RAM possible is a feature of Vmware ESX Server. We allocate each VM with 2GB of physical memory. What actually happens is that they can borrow memory if needed. Each Session creates a VM Swap area equal to the memory allocated. The physical memory is cached in this file for two purposes. First if you suspend the VM, then the current state is stored. Secondly if one VM is only using 1 GB of physical memory, the other VM's can share the memory. In the worst case scenario, the VM can run on the 2GB cache. The 320GB of RAM is managed by a cluster, the VM's that are running will share this pool.
As for the 70GB of Disk for each VM this is also smoke and mirrors. We are using a Netapp Cluster, we have one 70GB Aggregate disk that is our master image. Each VM is has its own LUN that points to a vmx file. The vmx file will only be as big as what is different from the master image. To date the most growth we have seen is 1.4GB. We have been in production for about a month. We have had a big problem with the New Type 7 Keyboards going to sleep permanently. This problem however is better since we applied a firmware upgrade. On the performance side, we are not having any problems with memory, our problem is Disk I/O when the students are viewing large map files. Since the map data does not change, all the users in a classroom hit the 70GB aggregate file. We are looking at having one image for each classroom, but have that will create other problems. Our filer is also using SATA drives vice Fiber Channel, we will be switching. We have also in the process of ordering 4600m2's with 128GB of RAM. Overall, besides the map issue the VM's are working superb. I will let you know how we solve the map problem. Thanks David Partington -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jeffrey Karpenko Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2007 7:10 AM To: 'SunRay-Users mailing list' Subject: RE: [SunRay-Users] RE: Wow... To: David Partington @us.army.mil This VMware & SunRay configuration sounds impressive but when I run the numbers it doesn't add up. I was wondering if you could clarify this for me. 450 simultaneous VM sessions each using 2GB RAM & 70GB storage = 900GB RAM total 31.5TB Storage total . . . Yet your resources are 5 X4600 with 64GB RAM each = 320GB RAM and you have 27TB of storage available. How is that? I can only imagine your 450 number is what you plan on having in the future and you are currently running something like 150 as assigning 2GB RAM per VM session uses 300GB leaving 20GB for the servers. (Or is my math way off here?) It's been over a month since you posted those specs, have you had any RAM/Storage upgrades? Have you reached that 450 mark yet? Thanks Jeffrey > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:sunray-users- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Partington, David R Mr (NGIT) > USAIC&FH > Sent: Monday, January 08, 2007 10:49 AM > To: [email protected] > Cc: Ellis, Mike > Subject: [SunRay-Users] RE: Wow... > > Mike, > We have close to 3000 Sun Ray's in production at Ft Huachuca. We have > some Solaris Desktops, but the majority is Terminal Server Desktops. > The problem with terminal servers is that the individual students dont > have individual Windows IP's, and a few apps don't work well terminal > services. To solve this issue we conducted a couple of pilots running > Windows XP VM's with VMWARE ESX. The pilot was very successful and we > were able to establish a baseline for scalablity. What we determined > was that we could run 80 users on a single 4600. Our (5)4600's have > 64GB of Ram and 8 dual core CPU's. > Each > 4600 has 8 4GB FCAL ports attached to a 27TB file Server. For each VM > session, we have allocate 2GB of RAM and 70GB of Disk. On the five > 4600's we are provided 450 simultaneous XP VM's. The XP VM are served > out to the Sun Ray's via the uttsc windows connector. The cost savings > over a FAT client is 70%. I will post more results later. If you have > any further questions E-mail me. > > Thanks Dave > > -----Original Message----- > From: Ellis, Mike [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2007 12:43 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Wow... > > I'm sorry to hear about the problem you're having. Hopefully it's a > quick fix. > > If you don't mind me asking, is there anything you can share about the > 5x x4600's you're running VMware on? I would assume its virtualized XP > instances, or something along those lines. Any experiences you can > share with VMware on such a large platform (with boatloads of > instances?) would be much appreciated. > > Thanks, > > -- MikeE > > Michael J. Ellis ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) FISC/UNIX Engineering 400 > Puritan Way (M2G) Marlborough, MA 01752 > Phone: 508-787-8564 > > > -- > > I am running 3 Sun T2000's in a failover, with non smart card CAM Mode > connecting to 5 Sun 4600 ESX (VMWARE Servers) via RDP. The SR Servers > are running Solaris 10 with SRSS 4.0. I don't know if this is a > keyboard issue. > Has anyone else seen this problem, and is there a work-around. > _______________________________________________ > SunRay-Users mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.filibeto.org/mailman/listinfo/sunray-users _______________________________________________ SunRay-Users mailing list [email protected] http://www.filibeto.org/mailman/listinfo/sunray-users _______________________________________________ SunRay-Users mailing list [email protected] http://www.filibeto.org/mailman/listinfo/sunray-users
