Installing VMware ESXi

hi,

at this time the plan is to have one reasonably spec'd server to host 4 or 5 virtual machines mostly linux distros and one exchange server (windows 64bit). How does this sound? As for central management do you mean if I wanted to boot up another server or something?

thanks

billy

ok, what i mean with central management is that if you are using more that one ESX server you can manage all the servers by one central management software Virtual center, this will allow you to see all the ESX servers and all the VM's by one console so to say, this will also have options like vmotion, hdr etc. the more expensive versions of ESX can offer. in your case just one server you would not have to install a central management software.
to make it easy to speak about VMware, ESX is the Hardware Server, VM are the virtual machines (linux/windows etc.)

in your case you install 1 server and will manage the esx server and vm's by the server self. so no extra software or licenses, esxi is free as far i can remember, so just play with it, and test if this is the solution for your situation.

Well, if you are going to use ESXi, it would have to be the ESXi 3.5 version and not the vSphere ESXi version. vSphere ESXi is 64bit only. I say this because you say the provider will not support 64 bit. I assume you are referring to a service provider.
To run 64bit guests on top of 32bit host, means that you need to enable either Intel-VT or AMD-VT in the Bios of the host computer. In fact regardless of ESXi version you install - enable this and the No-Execute Bit set. Save you hassles for the future if you ever decide to do the vCenter vMotion, etc.
I would choose ESX over Hyper V on any given day. Depending on the ESXi Host hardware, you should be able to run 6 machines easily. On a dual quad core with 32GB ram, we can normally run around 15 VMs (mix of heavy and light I/O).

If you'd like to stick with Hyper-V, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition 32-bit supports up to 64gb of RAM.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28VS.85%29.aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_server_2008

check this
Save-money-using-Hyper-v-server.pdf

Hi,

Thanks for all your responses! just to confirm the hardware is 64-bit just that they will not install 64-bit OS's for some reason.

Billy

well.. guess its a 64bit OS, but you could try getting them to install it. Most hosting centers doesnt take it that serious if we are talking about something other than windows. and esxi is only in one version.

if they insist get them to install 3,5 as its 32 bit.

Okay,

So once installed. How easy is it to configure virtual machines?

The hardware is a Quad XEON X3353, 2.66GHz, 2x6MB Cache, 1333MHz FSB. 8GB RAM, 2x 1TB Drives in a RAID1 Configuration.

With that said how many virtual machines would run?

The plan is one exchange server (quite high intensive) the rest just small linux machines.

Thanks,

extreemly easy. but you need to make them open for the port 902 in the firewall to your ip. then you just install the client and connect to the server ip.

your biggest limitation is the RAM... we have arround 50 VM's running on one host with 32 gigs of ram (with alot to spare)

an exchange server on the other hand will need alot of ram. i would not recommend anything less than 4 gb.

remember you can overcommit memory on esx hosts, but do not overcommit too much, or the entire host will become slow.

so. 4 gigs for the exchange server.

4 gigs left. devide that by 512megs, and you have 8 linux servers . And if you add more ram, you can add alot more.

what about the processor?

Will the Quad Above suffice?

Thanks

Billy

we have 50 machines on one dual quadcore setup. so it schould be enough for about 25 machines or more. ( its not even hard for the system!)

Just to confirm we have 2 x 7,200 RPM 1TB drives in RAID 1. will this be okay? im aware we should probably  have higher disks but we are just starting out..

thanks

Billy - are you talking for the local storage for the 32mb footprint or the VMs or both?   I don't recommend your storage configuration if you are planning to run a bunch of VMs on a single mirror with just 2 spindles.  First, if possible, get an accurate measure of what your apps are currently doing in regard to I/O, plenty of referrences out there how to set up the perf counters to gather the data.  If this is a new environment you are building and you can't measure the I/O, then get hardware that allows you 5 or more drive bays and fill em up with disk and build a raid array that leverages all the spindles, but leave a spare, you'll thank me later.  The enterprise environments I've worked in create arrays that span an entire shelf of disks on a SAN storage device.  External storage is getting cheaper these days. Lots of folks don't understand how to engineer storage, they only think in terms of how much space they need instead of how much i/o needs to get serviced.  Yes, a mirror will work, but I would highly recommend as many disks as possible in your array otherwise it could be slower than you will like.  I'm ok with slower, 7200rpm disks for ESX, but for the storage housing your VMs you should lean toward faster, 15000 rpm disks.  If ESX and VMs will share the same storage, and you can't afford much, make sure your server hardware can accomodate a larger raid array, the disks might not be fast, but they will still be able to handle larger I/O capicity via more spindles.  What is critical here is that while you are building the server, don't partition the extra space as a VMFS volume during the install, wait till after ESX is built.  log in with the VI client to partition and format the storage, it will give you a VMFS file system that is properly aligned to the underlying storage, this will greatly assist in the handling of I/O - especially for your exchange server.    

you can run from those disks, but it will NOT be fast at all.

if we keep in mind you only have 8 gb of ram in the machine you should be good, but i would recommend to go for faster disks. in the servers where we have around 50 we have 6*15.000 rpm disks in raid 10.

The configuration you have chosen would work fine, to start with but be aware that you have to migrate it all when you get more disks. not that fun :)

if youre running esxi 4.0 you can thin provision and you wont need as much space. i would recommend getting some 15k disks instead.

Think of your configuration as 10 normal machines running off a single disk on your local computer... NOT that fun, but again it all depends on your budget, and what you want to use your system for.

Installed it, very very easy.

No problems during setup.

The only notable thing is when installing Server 2008 R2 I had to enable VT in the machines BIOS but apart fromt that, all was game!

Many thanks.. Only wish I had more points!

Perfect!