VMware for Cyrus?

[John Madden]

>> 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.

We're about to virtualize our environment, albeit on Xen rather than 
ESX.  (It's been my experience that Xen performs better.)  We're also 
moving from a single node to a six-node murder.

I don't think a mail server requires anything different of you than any 
other application -- install the app and test it thoroughly.  Maybe you 
wouldn't be able to handle 2500 connections on a single IMAP server 
anymore but you would be able to under murder?  Maybe the hardware 
running the new hypervisors is new enough relative to your 5-year-old 
hardware to overcome the overhead of virtualization?

FWIW, I won't run anything on hardware anymore unless I absolutely have 
to.  To me, the benefits of running virtualized outweigh the pitfalls -- 
dealing with real OS installs on real hardware, dealing with 
multipathing and SAN (virtual disks are easy), etc.

John




-- 
John Madden
Sr UNIX Systems Engineer
Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana
jmadden at ivytech.edu