VM Ware

[Michael172]

Right ive only so much as downl.....got this and installed it. Didnt have a DVD/CD at hand and so didnt install anything with it.

Im guna use it again soon just to play about with it, so so i can say ive used it and know how to use it when it comes to actually needing to use it (IF i need to use it)



Basically what i need to know is......


Im running 4GB of ram in my PC. SO when i install an OS in VM Ware, what does it "go by" so to speak, can VM Ware be set up as an actual machine so to speak where i can say have only 1gb or 2gb of ram.


Thinking of problems when installing 32 bit operating systems.

 

[Michael172]

Nvm was pretty self explanitory, running it now, forgot what XP looked like lol.


Is it possible to run things like MAC OSX and Linux then ?

 

[The Hoff]

Yes.

 

[KDF]

Its also possible to run VMWare on linux and install windows within it lol

 

[theduck]

Its also possible to run VMWare on linux and install windows within it lol

i can run windows within linux? Do tell me how!!

 

[TELFORDS_LURK]

VMWare is great !

The VMWare Server software is free, as is their ESXi Hypervisor. However you have to pay for the workstation version.

Either way in any of the versions you can install your chosen OS, Windows, Linux, Netware, Sun and even Mac OS although I dont think Mac is supported, into a virtual hard disk of a size that you specify when creating the virtual machine (VM). During the setup process you also specify how much RAM you want to allocate to your VM. So if you have 4GB in your physical machine, you can specify the VM to have say 1GB of that.
You then boot the VM and install your OS, either from a physical cd or from an iso file on your physical system.
Once installed the machine acts just like a physical machine, allowing you to use it as you would any installed OS.

Probably not my best explaination of VMWare at this time of night but I use it all the time, full ESX with VMotion and HA at work, aswell as ESXi and VMWare Workstation at home. There are other products out there from vendors such as Microsoft and Xen, but I prefer and know my way around the VMWare products.

Totally free VMWare Server: http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

Trial of VMWare Workstation: http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/

 

[dk]

just finished an 8 day Vmware Cluster install for a customer on HP Blades and an EVA 4400 SAN, ESX Enterprise server with VC, HA, DRS and vMotion and being backed up over fibre with HP Data protector and VCB. Had loads of networking to configure too as they are using quite a complex vlan solution with VRRP switches too.

Its such a good solution, pig to configure sometimes, its a product you really have to know well to get the best out of it, but if you do then its very powerful.

Have never touched any of that free stuff though like vmware server, once you've worked with the enterprise product you can't really suffer going backwards and losing all those features which make it such a good product.

 

[Mike_182]

Have never touched any of that free stuff though like vmware server, once you've worked with the enterprise product you can't really suffer going backwards and losing all those features which make it such a good product.

You keep saying this but until you wake up in the REAL WORLD with REAL BUSINESSES then you'll never see what the majority of businesses use it for - maximising their system utilisation and reducing footprint/running costs.

HA is great, but in the real world there are very, very few places that will stump up the extra for all of that kit when you can build plenty of redundancy into systems using the free ESXi hypervisor.

Bloody installation consultants, wish every once in a while they'd step away from their sales pack and into a server room...

 

[KDF]

i can run windows within linux? Do tell me how!!

But I just did lol !


Install Linux of your choice
Install VMWare then Install whatever OS within the VMWare shell.

 

[Mike_182]

I <3 Server 2 compared to the Server 1/GSX Server. Although TBF Microsoft Virtual Server isn't too bad for it's day - Hyper-V is leaps and bounds ahead of that though, and much more flexible for SMB's that ESX/ESXi as it works on any platform compatible with Server 2008, rather than ESX and ESXi which is allergic to HP DL140 and HP DL160s, which are insanely cheap and great for plugging loads into a SAN to create a cheap HA ESXi environment...

 

[ivegota16v]

You keep saying this but until you wake up in the REAL WORLD with REAL BUSINESSES then you'll never see what the majority of businesses use it for - maximising their system utilisation and reducing footprint/running costs.

HA is great, but in the real world there are very, very few places that will stump up the extra for all of that kit when you can build plenty of redundancy into systems using the free ESXi hypervisor.

Bloody installation consultants, wish every once in a while they'd step away from their sales pack and into a server room...

it does make me chuckle how mike seems to think he is the be all and end all for anything remotelyIT related..

reminds me of the saying "if its not my way, its the wrong way"....

 

[Michael172]

However you have to pay for the workstation version.

Errr.....

 

[Tom]

Don't talk about warez please.

 

[dk]

it does make me chuckle how mike seems to think he is the be all and end all for anything remotelyIT related..

reminds me of the saying "if its not my way, its the wrong way"....

LOL, I know, i think he works for a company that hates spending money and so he has to do everything as cheap (i.e. FREE) as possible and as such just can't stand the though of most other companies using the expensive products and making great use of the extra features. hes probably just a first line guy out of university or something and hasn't worked in the real world for long.

I can tell you Mike, you are WRONG, I am pretty much constantly installing VMware Enterprise edition at the moment, I don't have enough days in the week for people wanting it installed, I rarely, infact hardly ever even speak to a customer who uses the free product in production, but I guess you aren't the sort of customers we are keen to deal with, ones that don't like spending money.

We put together some great solutions for people wanting virtualisation and they cost a lot of money but the stuff they can do and the management is amazing and the cost is recouped quicker than they think so they don't mind spending the initial outlay etc.

And to say that hyper-v is better than ESXi because it can run on a crappy DL160 is perfect, it just shows how cheap you are, i'm surprised you don't use Dell! I absolutely hate selling the 100 series range of servers from HP, all they are there to do is combat the Dell market and maybe for a web farm, thats all, all our customers that speak to me end up buying Blades because again, thats all we are selling at the moment, blades are actually starting to outsell rack servers!

Anyway, i won't waste any more of my time on you, you carry on in your own little world, i've jsut finished at 2 week install of vmware, blades and san and then i'm back on it monday morning in canary wharf for another one of the same, all these customers must be idiots spending all this money with a credit crunch on..........................

 

[dk]

I <3 Server 2 compared to the Server 1/GSX Server. Although TBF Microsoft Virtual Server isn't too bad for it's day - Hyper-V is leaps and bounds ahead of that though, and much more flexible for SMB's that ESX/ESXi as it works on any platform compatible with Server 2008, rather than ESX and ESXi which is allergic to HP DL140 and HP DL160s, which are insanely cheap and great for plugging loads into a SAN to create a cheap HA ESXi environment...

tell me this then, what happens when you have 10 servers running off a DL160 and the power supply fails, or windows crashes, or any other component fails for that matter.............

hmmmm, bit stuck then aren't you unless you keep spare servers lying around, even then its not going to be seconds but minutes/hours the servers are offline.

Not an enterprise solution sorry.

 

[KDF]

DK, I'm sure Mike does know his stuff, but any any case do you really think you need to justify yourself to 'some guy' on the internet ?

 

[Mike_182]

TBH you need to re-read what I've put, and 'amend' a couple of your digs. Also, I think an apology is necessary for making it personal. Nowhere did I comment on your abilities or knowledge, simply that you seem to have a very rose-tinted version of how SMBs work.

Banks and the likes on Canary Wharf etc. have extraordinary IT budgets - 90% of SMBs are only just moving away from seeing IT as a 'cost'.

 

[Mike_182]

tell me this then, what happens when you have 10 servers running off a DL160 and the power supply fails, or windows crashes, or any other component fails for that matter.............

hmmmm, bit stuck then aren't you unless you keep spare servers lying around, even then its not going to be seconds but minutes/hours the servers are offline.

Not an enterprise solution sorry.

No, that's why you build resilience into your applications... DCs should come in pairs, use clusters for HA environments like SQL/database servers...

Perfectly suitable for a production environment where HA is required for the end product, not the individual instances.

 

[Mike_182]

tell me this then, what happens when you have 10 servers running off a DL160 and the power supply fails, or windows crashes, or any other component fails for that matter.............

hmmmm, bit stuck then aren't you unless you keep spare servers lying around, even then its not going to be seconds but minutes/hours the servers are offline.

Not an enterprise solution sorry.

Allow me to inventory our environment for you (just what's been put in this year):

EVA 4400
8 DL380s specced to the back teeth
12 DL360s specced to the back teeth
40 DL140s specced to the back teeth
10 DL160s specced to the back teeth

Last year, 30 Dell 1855 Blades went in with 6 PowerEdge 2950 head units on a Clariion 2GB SAN.

All of it put in by a 'first line guy fresh out of university' (who, incidentally, didn't go to university and has worked for the likes of RBS in his history).

I've not thrown weight into this thread but if you wish to make it personal I'm afraid you'll have better luck with those suggesting that a defrag on a laptop will stop it hanging on bootup...

 

[ivegota16v]

defrag doesn't fix boot issues? a feck.......

 

[Michael172]

Don't talk about warez please.

k

 

[dk]

TBH you need to re-read what I've put, and 'amend' a couple of your digs. Also, I think an apology is necessary for making it personal. Nowhere did I comment on your abilities or knowledge, simply that you seem to have a very rose-tinted version of how SMBs work.

Banks and the likes on Canary Wharf etc. have extraordinary IT budgets - 90% of SMBs are only just moving away from seeing IT as a 'cost'.

banks have no money whatsoever at the moment, this is an SMB I am doing this for and the co-hosting site for replication is in canary wharf.

and i think you made it personal with this comment:

Bloody installation consultants, wish every once in a while they'd step away from their sales pack and into a server room...

I'm always in a server room, its where i work, i kitted out our internal datacenter (SMB 180 users) but I also have experience of much larger customers and used to work for HP, I think you missed the point when you put installation consultant and then sales pack, are you categorising me in the same section as a general sales person..........

 

[dk]

No, that's why you build resilience into your applications... DCs should come in pairs, use clusters for HA environments like SQL/database servers...

Perfectly suitable for a production environment where HA is required for the end product, not the individual instances.

but what you are doing can be done with vmware, its a different way of doing it but has the same end result, you buy 2 servers for resiliancy, we provide 1 with VMware (in a farm obviously, not just a single server).

So you say you do all this and then knock the way I do it, whos to say your way is right (like you keep shoving down our throats).

I implement plenty of SQL and Exchange clusters, in the right environment.

 

[dk]

Allow me to inventory our environment for you (just what's been put in this year):

EVA 4400
8 DL380s specced to the back teeth
12 DL360s specced to the back teeth
40 DL140s specced to the back teeth
10 DL160s specced to the back teeth

Last year, 30 Dell 1855 Blades went in with 6 PowerEdge 2950 head units on a Clariion 2GB SAN.

All of it put in by a 'first line guy fresh out of university' (who, incidentally, didn't go to university and has worked for the likes of RBS in his history).

I've not thrown weight into this thread but if you wish to make it personal I'm afraid you'll have better luck with those suggesting that a defrag on a laptop will stop it hanging on bootup...

right, so you are going to play on my lighthearted comment (make obvious by the smiley to make sure you didn't get the wrong idea and take as a pinch of salt) and then throw something totally random into the discussion of my weight, now that really is making it personal, but i guess unlike you and your reasoning, I am comfortable with who I am so it doesn't bother me, you just have really stooped as low as I expected when the dared to question your answers.

With that many servers, you don't strike me as an average SMB so I can only imagine you buy that many servers to make up for your lack of resiliancy in your estate and therefore could actually benefit from the exact solution I am implementing for so many other companies but you fail to see past your own opinion and take into account someone elses suggestion who might actually know a bit more about the subject than you do yourself, now calm down, I did say might and it is just an example.

I don't confess to know everything about what I do, but I base my suggestions on experience and knowledge based on other companies in the same scenario and they seem to have been pleased at the end result, which i'm sure after spending up to a million would have them coming back to us if it didn't do exactly what we said it would do for them.

I just don't understand why you feel the need to point out at every opportunity that paying for vmware is a crime and people should do it the cheap way, their success and growth over the past few years has not come from the software they give away now has it.

 

[dk]

DK, I'm sure Mike does know his stuff, but any any case do you really think you need to justify yourself to 'some guy' on the internet ?

you're right KDF, but I am a passionate person and really don't like people who won't listen to another opinion, its their road or the high road.

 

[Mike_182]

With that many servers, you don't strike me as an average SMB so I can only imagine you buy that many servers to make up for your lack of resiliancy in your estate and therefore could actually benefit from the exact solution I am implementing for so many other companies but you fail to see past your own opinion and take into account someone elses suggestion who might actually know a bit more about the subject than you do yourself, now calm down, I did say might and it is just an example.

Actually, we aren't the average SMB. 80% of our estate is tied up in Citrix servers. Our core application uses 25 of those Blades for publishing alone, as twice a year we need to be able to cater for up to 1000 users comfortably. They did used to use all 30 of them, but after I redesigned and optimised the farm we managed to get capacity for nearly 2000 users with the 5 blades spare that I wanted for virtualisation. A legacy NetBIOS application which can only be published once from a single server, which I had to bodge onto Windows 2000 as it's an NT4 application!

If I had my way, yes we'd have the full VMware solution. Hell, that's what I designed a year ago and asked for budget for. Unfortunately, HP then had their offer on the 140s which meant that the VMware solution cost 5 times what the physical server solution cost, which even in my head makes it a no brainer.

As for lack of resiliency in the estate, I could walk in and turn 75% of our servers off, and as long as I picked the right ones (obviously, as I could walk into one of your environments and kill it by turning 75% of the right servers off - otherwise it's thoroughly over engineered!) then the end users wouldn't even know. We use farms of DL140s to provide resilience where alternatively we could pay £100,000 in licences to provide that resilience. Web farms, authentication servers, backup head units, Citrix servers... All use DL140s as the software allows for resilience to be built in. Our clusters run in pairs on the DL380s, and less critical applications on the DL360s standalone. Again, these tend to be in pairs or run our Domino database, which is replicated elsewhere and can be switched in 30 seconds.

I don't confess to know everything about what I do, but I base my suggestions on experience and knowledge based on other companies in the same scenario and they seem to have been pleased at the end result, which i'm sure after spending up to a million would have them coming back to us if it didn't do exactly what we said it would do for them.

Ditto - I already gather that you have a wealth of knowledge and can use it to it's potential. Unfortunately in the role I'm in at the moment (finishing at the end of the year, hopefully the new one will have some money to chuck around!) I have to get your results with no money. Now yes, I confess that it's not the 'right' way by VMware's book, but it uses best practise from all software houses to ensure that resiliency is kept to the same level...

I just don't understand why you feel the need to point out at every opportunity that paying for vmware is a crime and people should do it the cheap way, their success and growth over the past few years has not come from the software they give away now has it.

Ah no, see you misunderstand. I'm simply providing input into the discussion where you've inferred that not paying for VMware makes it crap... It doesn't give you the wealth of (really cool) HA stuff, and it makes it more difficult to manage, but ultimately we achieve the same result with less initial cost.

Unfortunately, initial cost is all the Nestor Healthcare Group sees. Running costs go out the window unless (like one of my VMware projects there) it pays for itself in hardware support, air conditioning and elctricity savings twice over in the space of a year...

 

[Mike_182]

you're right KDF, but I am a passionate person and really don't like people who won't listen to another opinion, its their road or the high road.

Never have I turned down your opinion - more from frustration you won't listen to mine because it's not how VMware say you should spend your money...

I've always said that your full VMware installation is the 'right' way to do it, but in my experience the only place that have ever done the 'right' solution is RBS.

You run Exchange on the VMware instances? Oooo naughty boy - you know MS best practise is to run two seperate arrays on two seperate array controllers? :clown: Again I think RBS is the only place in the world that actually did that...

 

[ivegota16v]

i would love to see the electric bill for your place!!! dont your guys use total cost of ownership? (really i should say "dont you managers listen to total cost of ownership!" the initial outlay of a server is only 10% of its cost over its lifetime!

all i pray is that your using intel, at least you get decent performance per watt!!

 

[Adam K]

i would love to see the electric bill for your place!!! dont your guys use total cost of ownership? (really i should say "dont you managers listen to total cost of ownership!" the initial outlay of a server is only 10% of its cost over its lifetime!

all i pray is that your using intel, at least you get decent performance per watt!!

they are using intel, denoted by the fact that they have 140's, 160's, 360's, and 380's. AMD server equivilant model numbers end in 5's.

 

[dk]

i would love to see the electric bill for your place!!! dont your guys use total cost of ownership? (really i should say "dont you managers listen to total cost of ownership!" the initial outlay of a server is only 10% of its cost over its lifetime!

all i pray is that your using intel, at least you get decent performance per watt!!

see now there I have to disagree, AMD processors are much more efficient!

Intel are going the AMD way with their new chips and alsot he next generation of Intel HP servers are moving away from Fully Buffered Dimms and back to DDR with DDR3 as the FBD's use too much power!

The best way with intel is to go for the low voltage 50w processors like the L5420 but they are only available in certain servers (such as blades) and still use FBD unless again you go for the low voltage memory.

The G6 servers will be a lot more efficient though, so roll on next year.

 

[The Hoff]

All out servers have been plumbed into a lamp post

 

[dk]

Never have I turned down your opinion - more from frustration you won't listen to mine because it's not how VMware say you should spend your money...

I've always said that your full VMware installation is the 'right' way to do it, but in my experience the only place that have ever done the 'right' solution is RBS.

You run Exchange on the VMware instances? Oooo naughty boy - you know MS best practise is to run two seperate arrays on two seperate array controllers? :clown: Again I think RBS is the only place in the world that actually did that...

I think what has happened here is that we both actually have the same views, but are not really coming across too well and we seem to both be going to the extremes to prove points!

Would it surprise you to know that when I re-did our own datacenter 9 months ago, I decided NOT to use vmware, even though my profesional services manager wanted to!

I went for a chassis of blades with 1 app per blade, clustered SQL servers, Exchange 2007 with a clustered Mailbox store and then 1, yes a single vmware server to house crap like sophos, ghost etc.

But then we don't pay for our hardware so all that and the EVA san were all pretty much free so I didn't feel the need to use vmware.

BUT, in the right scenario I do think its absolutely the right way to go and its what is making me very busy and in a decent job at the moment. But please don't think that I think VMware is the only solution at the moment as I really don't, I love setting up windows clusters and prefer it to the vmware sometimes, still not cheap though when you have to factor in the enterprise MS licensing.

p.s. I would personally never recommend running SQL on vmware.
p.p.s. and lets not forget that MS don't support apps with problems running in a virtual environment, they require you to re-create the fault on physical servers first, although all much change now they have joined in as a major player i'm sure.

 

[Mike_182]

Group hug!

Re: PS - It's not *too* bad, although I wouldn't run a performance-critical SQL instance on a Virtual instance.
PPS - I think that's changed lately, as they also revised their SQL Virtual licencing to reflect the number of vCores you run SQL on instead of the number of physical cores your VMware host(s! if you use VMotion) can run on...

 

[ivegota16v]

see now there I have to disagree, AMD processors are much more efficient!

Intel are going the AMD way with their new chips and alsot he next generation of Intel HP servers are moving away from Fully Buffered Dimms and back to DDR with DDR3 as the FBD's use too much power!

The best way with intel is to go for the low voltage 50w processors like the L5420 but they are only available in certain servers (such as blades) and still use FBD unless again you go for the low voltage memory.

The G6 servers will be a lot more efficient though, so roll on next year.

no way!! our harpertown chips give you much better performance to watt than amds, but then are you comparing the harpertowns to the shanghais? if so shanghais are as good, but thats their catch up chip

check out these spec results http://www.intel.com/performance/server/xeon/eep.htm


when nehalem ep is launched next year i guarantee you it will blow away EVERYTHING in every single bench mark, and use less power

intel also didn't move from fdimm to ddr3 purely cause they used to much power, the new nehalems can shift so much throughput via the QPI's etc that they need DDR3 ,

i wish i could quote you the exact figures on through put and performance but you'll just have to wait

GP

 

[dk]

no way!! our harpertown chips give you much better performance to watt than amds, but then are you comparing the harpertowns to the shanghais? if so shanghais are as good, but thats their catch up chip

check out these spec results http://www.intel.com/performance/server/xeon/eep.htm


when nehalem ep is launched next year i guarantee you it will blow away EVERYTHING in every single bench mark, and use less power

intel also didn't move from fdimm to ddr3 purely cause they used to much power, the new nehalems can shift so much throughput via the QPI's etc that they need DDR3 ,

i wish i could quote you the exact figures on through put and performance but you'll just have to wait

GP

oh right, an intel page to say how great they are, what a surprise they come to that conclusion

I was at a HP even recently for geeks (MASE's) and we had talks from both Intel and AMD and they both have a very good story and obviously they both say they are better than the other, and statistics can be made to say anything you want at the end of the day.

What was interesting though was that the average processor is only ever running at about 5-15% and so its at these levels of power that the debate really should be at, but the figures don't represent that, and this is an area where AMD kill Intel, I can't remember the exact reasona nd technology off the top of my head, but I remember at the time thinking, wow, I never thought of it like that, it does make a lot of sense.

And again, for the FBD's, apparently, the main reason intel have moved away from them is that they consume way too much power and heat, they have massive heat sinks!

Each time one of them brings out a new processor it makes the leap over the other and they keep doing this, but really, at the end of the day, processors are so powerful now that it really doesn't matter what the majority of companies buy for their generic apps, they are way more powerful than they need to do the job, its just all about have the latest and greatest and fastest!

I nearly always recommend the L5420 for blades so as to save power and at 4 cores of 2.5Ghz its certainly no slouch and faster than anything that was available a year or 2 ago anyway, people get too hung up on processor speeds!

 

[dk]

Group hug!

Re: PS - It's not *too* bad, although I wouldn't run a performance-critical SQL instance on a Virtual instance.
PPS - I think that's changed lately, as they also revised their SQL Virtual licencing to reflect the number of vCores you run SQL on instead of the number of physical cores your VMware host(s! if you use VMotion) can run on...

i didn't know that about the sql license thing, but then i never do sql vmware installs tbh, will need to look into that though.

 

[ivegota16v]

oh right, an intel page to say how great they are, what a surprise they come to that conclusion

I was at a HP even recently for geeks (MASE's) and we had talks from both Intel and AMD and they both have a very good story and obviously they both say they are better than the other, and statistics can be made to say anything you want at the end of the day.

What was interesting though was that the average processor is only ever running at about 5-15% and so its at these levels of power that the debate really should be at, but the figures don't represent that, and this is an area where AMD kill Intel, I can't remember the exact reasona nd technology off the top of my head, but I remember at the time thinking, wow, I never thought of it like that, it does make a lot of sense.

And again, for the FBD's, apparently, the main reason intel have moved away from them is that they consume way too much power and heat, they have massive heat sinks!

Each time one of them brings out a new processor it makes the leap over the other and they keep doing this, but really, at the end of the day, processors are so powerful now that it really doesn't matter what the majority of companies buy for their generic apps, they are way more powerful than they need to do the job, its just all about have the latest and greatest and fastest!

I nearly always recommend the L5420 for blades so as to save power and at 4 cores of 2.5Ghz its certainly no slouch and faster than anything that was available a year or 2 ago anyway, people get too hung up on processor speeds!

it was indeed one of the reasons for moving away from fbdimms, but not the only!

I love intel, but then again i do work for them in SPG im the guy that does exactly what u saw at the HP event!

GP

 

[Rasclart]

You keep saying this but until you wake up in the REAL WORLD with REAL BUSINESSES then you'll never see what the majority of businesses use it for - maximising their system utilisation and reducing footprint/running costs.

HA is great, but in the real world there are very, very few places that will stump up the extra for all of that kit when you can build plenty of redundancy into systems using the free ESXi hypervisor.

Bloody installation consultants, wish every once in a while they'd step away from their sales pack and into a server room...

Someone needs to get laid or chill out a bit LOL. Right moody cnut arent we LOL

 

[Michael172]

SO

Moving on tbh.


Whats it like setting up networks n stuff, wanna install citrix and novel and the likes to see how they work.

Ive not set about this yet.

 

[dk]

SO

Moving on tbh.


Whats it like setting up networks n stuff, wanna install citrix and novel and the likes to see how they work.

Ive not set about this yet.

which version are you using, vmware server or esxi?

i'm guessing its server as you say you are running it on your pc?