[sdw2003] VMWare and NAS architecture

[TJ Galati]

Hola all.

At my office we use Parallels for OS Virtualization.  We use an iSCSI
NAS on a storage network for storage.  My VMs are not in LUNs, but the
data drives that they VMs use are in LUNs.  We backup our VMs separately
and also replicate them offsite, bla bla bla



I want to give a client a VM solution for their simple 20 user, file
server, exch 2003, 2003 AD domain.

I got them the NAS and 2 new servers but am undecided on the setup.
Reason is, I don't want to use Parallels.  I would like to use VMWare as
I have found a lot of things I don't like about parallels and would not
recommend it for them.

Now, considering the VMare solutions, which I know very little about I
have 3 questions regarding the solution I want to provide.

1) The architecture of putting the VMs in the LUNs or not is baffling
me.  Pros and cons?

2) 2 boxes with free ESXi vs Essentials Plus package:
https://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/buy/editions_comparison.html. 

We def want to be able to migrate a VM from one server to another, but
the migration would be manual.  I am unclear as to if I can do this with
the free version or not.  I would think I could just move\activate the
LUN on box B, instead of box A.

3) Backup.  They are still using backup exec 8.6, and NT backup for
Exch.  Not sure if there is some cool VMWare solution for backing up the
VMs, exchange data and file data, or if all of that is separate.  We
need to get something better.  Thoughts

Any comments for 1 or all 3 of these issues are greatly appreciated.

TJ Galati