VMware for Cyrus?

[Forrest Aldrich]

Sebastian Hagedorn wrote:
> --On 9. November 2009 14:10:54 +0100 Simon Matter 
> <simon.matter at invoca.ch> wrote:
>
>> While virtualization has advantages it has also disadvantages. One thing
>> is that it introduces an additional layer of complexity into the game.
>> It's my impression that in many areas virtualization gets introduced not
>> because of technical reasons but because of political pressure.
>
> In our case I wouldn't necessarily call it political pressure ... it's 
> more like organizational pressure. We have fewer personnel resources 
> than we used to, and have to run more systems with them!
>
>> For a high power, mission critical system like a mail cluster I'd stick
>> with real iron as long as possible. That may sound old fashioned but is
>> what I would do after everything I've seen. You will need the irons
>> anyway, with or without virtualization. Did I miss something?
>
> Maybe. Ideally you save irons by putting more than one VM on each. For 
> the mail cluster that may or may not be an option. I think it might, 
> because as I mentioned the current boxes are 5+ years old. So I'd 
> think with brand new hardware we would get away with less than 100% on 
> each box.
>
> The main advantage that ESX would offer is in employing VMotion, 
> VMMware HA and such. It adds a layer of complexity, but also a layer 
> of security and convenience.
>   

I wanted to add a note here on this.

We've been deploying ESXi where I work -- in some cases with success, 
such as development systems.   We've noticed significant problems when 
it comes to disk I/O.   Of course, our systems are RAID5 and that almost 
certainly contributes to it; though, I think you're going to see a 
performance hit either way.

Anyone else care to comment on that issue?



Best,

Forrest