[sdw2003] VMWare and NAS architecture

[Lawrence]

Check with you reseller on the new Vmware Essentials licensing coming out
along with View 4 on Nov 19.
Great news for Remote/Branch offices where Essentials Plus is sufficient,
and you want to tie into a full vCenter elsewhere (currently Essentials is
restricted to vCenter Foundation (included in price), but not after Nov 19) 
Essentials Plus is $2,995 list price for 6 processors

To be more specific, you will want all of the VMDK (virtual machine disk
files) on your shared storage to enable Vmotion (movement of a running VM
from one physical host to another with no interruption to users)

2 HP DL380G6 with Xeon 5500s and a SAN/NAS can do wonders.  NetApp has new
pricing on their FAS2020 as well, which includes CIFS, NFS, etc.

With vSphere, some of the restrictions on NAS/NFS datastores have been
removed (but not all)

Depending on this clients budget and desires, the new feature to consider is
Fault Tolerance (basically cluster non- cluster-aware apps/OSes).  Resource
impact but if they really don't want unexpected downtime from hardware
issues, in interesting option - and MUCH cheaper than any other cluster
solution.

Windows Server 2008 R2 has some new virtualization options (obviously much
cheaper at a base level, like ESXi free version).  However, once you start
wanting decent mgmt, etc, you'll pay MS or VMware.  For a real small 2
server solution, I wouldn't be surprised if the MS solution is cheaper (but
you get what you pay for usually).  Depends on what functionality you are
looking for.

Lawrence
San Diego VMug Leader and now VCP as of Fri Nov 13   www.sdvmug.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Bac Nguyen Sent: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 9:11 PM
To: San Diego Windows 2003 User Group
Subject: Re: [sdw2003] VMWare and NAS architecture

TJ,
1. For storage, if you want to use HA (High Availability), DRS (Distributed
Resource Scheduler) and these features required "shared storage" - SAN/NAS.
Note, DRS leverage VMotion to "live migrate" VM from one physical host to
another. But, from reading what you describe you might not need DRS.

2. For the license, I should buy VMware Esential Plus to have HA and VMwae
Data Recovery (VDR) - quick way to back up and restore your VMs which not a
lot of people know about. However, it's version 1.0 and the limitation is
you can not restore at a file level, yet - VMware is working on it. More
info from the link below
http://www.vmware.com/products/data-recovery/overview.html

I beileved the Essential start at $168/CPU - note VMware has changed their
license with the released of vSphere - from license per dual-CPU to single
CPU.

As for migrate VM from one physical server to another, you can do that as
long as that VM is shut down. However, without shared storage (SAN/NAS) you
will need to move the al the virtual disk(s) belong to that VM which will
take time depending on the size of the virtual disk. If the VMs are on
shared storage then all you need is change the ESX/ESXi host that manage it.
Which is one more benefits of shared storage. Again, for live migration VM
you need VMotion which required Advanced edition 3. For back up, again the
Essential Plus included VDR which can do the backup and restore fairly well
for VMs.

As a note, the Essential/Esssential Plus is limited to 3 servers max. Also,
you can buy the vCenter (foundation) for $1495 - again it license to support
up to 3 ESX/ESXi servers. The vCenter normally cost $4,995 but it can
support up to 200 ESX/ESXi and 2000 VMs.

Let me know if you have any questions.

PS: As a side note, Boeing has been gear up to hiring VMware/Network
administrators to support CANES (US Navy) - you can look up CANES and find
out more about it. Boeing is the front runner and expect to win this
contract which is worth 1.5 Billions. So, if you thinking to learn VMware
and get certify as VCP. You need to get the ball rolling. For VCP, you need
to attend VMware 4-days training class which is pretty good and pass the
exam. The class cost $2,995 and they have class in down town every other
month. The VCP exam cost $175.00

Check out VMware jobs in San Diego
http://www.indeed.com/q-VMware-l-San-Diego,-CA-jobs.html

Cheers,
On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 3:43 PM, TJ Galati <tj at cresinsurance.com> wrote:

> 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