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Archive for category VMWare

VMWare standalone server checklist

Apr 30

Posted by admin in Hyper-V, Utils, VMWare, Windows 2008 | 1 Comment

This list assumes a Dell PowerEdge R710 with no SAN. Similar steps would  be required for any VMware host.  After unboxing server and setting it up on the bench boot it up.

  1. Hit f10 to configure  your RAID, if needed. Reboot.
  2. Download and install firmware updates for RAID controllers and backplanes. Reboot.
  3. Enter bios and turn on virtualization support on the processor. Reboot.
  4. Configure iDrac IP settings and password (Ctrl-e at the prompt). Reboot and test access via the web console. Default username/password is root/calvin
  5. Boot to ESX 4.0 installer disc, go through installation prompts with defaults. Remove disc and reboot.
  6. After reboot, log in to the console, set IP information and password.
  7. On a machine on the same network, go to https://<server IP> and download the appropriate vsphere client for the version of VMWare ESXi you are running, if needed. Install the host update utility.
  8. Log in to the server via the vsphere client and enter your serial number. Select the host IP in the left hand panel, choose the configuration tab on the right hand panel, then select “licensed features” on the left and then choose edit in the top right corner. Enter your key. If you don’t have one, get it from VMware.
  9. Configure your NTP server. Exit vSphere.
  10. Open the host update utility, connect to your new host, scan for patches and install them. Run through this process until you can do it twice and find no new patches.
  11. If needed, open vSphere and configure networking (vlans)
  12. Create an ISO directory on your data store, copy needed ISO files to that folder using either the store browser or the Veeam SCP utility.
  13. Build your VM. Configure startup options for the vm if needed.
  14. Install the vmware tools for the server in question.

Hyper-V R2 Vs. VMware vSphere 4.0

Nov 10

Posted by admin in Hyper-V, VMWare, Windows 2008 | No Comments

Windows 2008 R2 is available now and one of the 4 key points of improvement is in the area of Microsoft’s HyperVisor, Hyper-V. What has been lacking until recently is a side by side comparison of the features and limitations of Hyper-V R2 Vs. VMare vSphere 4.0. The killer feature that everyone has been waiting for on Hyper-V has been the live migration, designed to compete with vMotion. The devil is in the details though, and there are lots of details about this feature and others that factor into the decision as to which product is better for your environment. CTI has a great white paper that discusses the differences. You hit the side by side comparison on about page 17 of the paper (no reg required). Bottom line: here are the top 6 differentiators as far as I am concerned:

  1. Memory optimization: VMWare has over-commit protection. Hyper-V really doesn’t. It can reserve RAM, but it is pretty hokey compared to what VMware can do. Who cares right? RAM is cheap! Not so fast. Some RAM on these higher end virtualization and blade servers can break the bank.
  2. Live migration: VMware wins here too. Hyper-V R2 has it, but it can only do one machine at a time, and the way it handles shared storage is weak. VMware has been at the game longer and I expect that this gap will be closed but for now it could be a dealbreaker for those who load their hosts down.
  3. Guest support: Another score for VMware. The only non-Windows guest supported on Hyper-V is Suse Linux. Not a huge deal if you are running Web servers I guess, but those guest tools start to get really nice if you are needing to do any of the more advanced functionality. VMware supports most *ux’s including SCO OpenServer, SCO Unixware, Free BSD, Debian and CentOS. Again, not necessarily a deal breaker.
  4. Ability to hot-add disks: VMware can add them easily. Hyper-V can only add virtual SCSI devices, not IDE
  5. Number of guests: This one is a mix. Hyper-V can have 512 loaded, but only 192 running (“only,” he says). VMware can run 256 at the same time, with up to 8 virtual CPUs and 255GB of virtual memory, compared to 4 CPU’s and 64GB on Hyper-V.
  6. Monitoring: Hyper-V wins here. Since it is based on a Windows Core box that is joined to the domain, you can capitalize on the tools built into Windows, which are legion.

So who wins? Honestly, it depends on who is judging. For implementations of 30 Windows virtual servers and under, I don’t see why you would pick VMware, honestly. It comes out cheaper by most people’s math, you have fewer vendors to beg for support from, and you have fewer new interfaces to learn. For larger implementations, it depends a lot on how heavily you intend to stack the VM’s on the hosts and what kind of downtime you can tolerate should one of the hosts fail.

As far as dollars are concerned, most calculators will show that the initial cost for Hyper-V is cheaper for similar implementations. Most, of course, except for the one that VMware provides (big shock).

Dollars for initial implementation are small potatoes though, compared to supporting a poorly planned implementation. It is always going to be good to bring in an experienced party that can help guide you through some of the pitfalls.

Microsoft Virtualization Calculator

Oct 28

Posted by admin in Hyper-V, Utils, VMWare, Windows 2008 | 1 Comment

MS has released a calculator to help you figure out exactly what you will need in terms of licenses and dollars in order to meet your virtualization requirements. They have two calculators, one of which requires Silverlight (guess which one I did).  The calculators are VM-technology agnostic (meaning that they are the same whether you are using  hyper-v, VMWare, or VirtualBox)

On calculator 2, you can either put in the number of servers you have with the avg. VMs per server, or you can list each server individually, which is more likely to be the best scenario for smaller shops. In the below screencap, I entered in one dual Proc (note that cores are immaterial) physical server running 3 virtual machines.

Virtualization Results Example

Virtualization Results Example

It reports that we will need either 3 Standards, 1 Enterprise, or 2 Data center licenses (since Data center is licensed per proc).

The pricing columns report that the cheapest way to do this is with the 3 std licenses, but it you wanted to add a 4th vm, the Enterprise license would be cheaper. If you wanted to expand way beyond that in terms of Vm per physical server and core pair, the data center starts to be more cost-effective.

Both calcs are available here

Virtualization rights for Windows Server 2008

Oct 15

Posted by admin in Hyper-V, VMWare, Windows 2008 | No Comments

Microsoft has made their licensing much more friendly to virtualization with the release of the 2008 server product. It is still confusing, especially with the differences between Hyper-V and VMWare/VirtualBox/EverythingElse.

Basically, if you are running the Hyper-V role on Server 2008 standard, you get two installations of Windows 2008 for the price of one. One acts as host (and that is it. it only acts as a hyper-v host) plus you get one free Virtualized OSE (operating system environment). If you are running Enterprise, you get 1 free host (running just hyper-v and nothing else) and up to 4 free virtual OSE’s. With datacenter, you get unlimited free VM’s.

Since products like ESXi are free as well, it has been asked what advantage this really gives you. Well , if you are running a Core install of server 2008 as your hyper-visor, you can monitor the services, automatically patch, and apply security policies to your hosts, just like you can with regular windows servers, but you don’t give up the low resource usage and reduced attack surface of a more stripped down OS like the Linux that serves as the basis for ESXi. Plus, if it breaks, you call Microsoft and they fix it for $250, rather than having a whole separate licensing scheme and updating process for ESXi. There is nothing worse than building your environement on two vendors and having them point their fingers at each other.

If you are running a different product, you are similarly limited. The wording is complicated, but basically they say you get one VM per license. If you are running Standard server on VMWare ESXi, you burn that license on the first one and have no extras.

“If a server is running ESX as the virtualization technology, then Windows Server is not deployed as a host operating system in the physical OSE. However, a license is required for every instance running in a virtual OSE.

If you have assigned a single license for Windows Server 2008 Standard to a server running ESX, then you may run one instance of Windows Server 2008 Standard at a time. The right to run an instance of Windows Server 2008 in the physical OSE cannot be used in this case since ESX runs on the physical OSE (and as a result, Windows Server 2008 cannot be deployed as the operating system on the physical OSE.

If you have assigned a single license of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise to the server running ESX, then you may run up to four instances at a time of Windows Server 2008 Enterprise. You may not run a fifth instance under the same  license since that right requires that the fifth instance be running hardware virtualization software and software managing and servicing the OSEs on the server.”

From the horse’s mouth (Word 2007 required):

http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/C/A/FCAB58A9-CCAD-4E0A-A673-88A5EE74E2CC/Windows_Server_2008_Virtual_Tech-VL_Brief-Jan_09.docx