Hi Aaron. We chose not to use vSphere mainly because of licensing restrictions on the Windows versions we'd be allowed to deploy. At least according to our license agreements, we can't use vSphere and a "desktop" class version of Windows. If we want to deploy Windows 7, we have to do it on ESXi or another "standalone" virtualization platform.
Does that mesh with your experience? Are you deploying Windows 7 in your environment? Thanks, -mrj On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 03:08:15PM +0000, Aaron Coburn wrote: > Michael, > > we are using a vCenter cluster for our VMware hosts. In this way, the > vcl knows only about a single VM host, when actually there are several > ESX servers behind the scenes. VMware then manages all of the resource > and load balancing -- the VCL isn't really designed to manage this. > This means that when one server is consuming too much CPU or memory, > then the VM is "vMotioned" to another physical host. > > The downside of this is that it requires the more expensive > (Enterprise) VMware license; also, depending on how you manage your > datastore disk extents, you may run into VMware's 2TB disk limits > (unless you are already using vSphere 5) -- note that you will need to > use shared SAN storage across all of your ESX hosts in order to enable > VMware's Distributed Resource Scheduler (that is what manages the load > balancing). > > Aaron Coburn > > -- > Aaron Coburn > Systems Administrator and Programmer > Academic Technology Services, Amherst College > [1][email protected] > On Oct 23, 2012, at 10:38 AM, Michael Jinks <[2][email protected]> > wrote: > > Hi List. > We designed our deployment with the idea that we could use the VM > limit > setting in the Virtual Hosts configuration page. Since that setting > doesn't actually do anything, now I wonder, what are other sites > doing > in order to manage load on your virtual hosts? > Related to that, any tips on doing load testing to see what our > environment can handle given our expected work load, hardware setup > and > so forth? When we thought we could adjust things on the fly with a > slider, I was less concerned about knowing in advance what a single > host > can take. Now I realize we'll need to be very careful in advance > when > it comes to assigning virtual computers to hosts, so any tips on > planning and testing that would be welcome. > Thanks. > -mrj > -- > Michael Jinks :: [3][email protected] > University of Chicago IT Services > > References > > 1. mailto:[email protected] > 2. mailto:[email protected] > 3. mailto:[email protected] -- Michael Jinks :: [email protected] :: 773-469-9688 University of Chicago IT Services
