Virtual server FTW

[wfooshee]

We upgraded our servers this morning at work. Had a mail server, an application server, a file server, a remote access server (Citrix,) a voice mail server, and since only the file server was a domain controller, we had in another room a server that did nothing but act as a backup domain controller.

All those boxes came out, and now live as virtual machines running on the 2U box you see on the right in this pic:

Conversion was EASY! VMWare has a utility to convert a running machine to a VM. All 6 machines converted in less than 2-1/2 hours. All 6 machines came right up as VMs, and each one has more disk space and memory, and is faster than before. We had to re-activate Windows on each one because they detected a hardware change (duh!) but nothing else had to be done. Awesome.

And I was dreading this day!

 

[LDRydr]

Nice. Having any backup issues?

 

[LagerHead]

What a nerd.

Signed,

A geek

 

[LDRydr]

What a nerd.

You're just jealous because your rack isn't as big as his!

 

[tmc]

He does have an impressive rack.

Very nice man. Virtualization is where it's at.

 

[dcarver]

LOL, geeks r' us..

Similar story here at the U. Approximately 100 physical boxes have been virtualized. I kind of like not having to worry about hardware upgrades every 3 years now... and with vmotion, it's like having a server farm / cluster. Way cool stuff.

 

[wfooshee]

Nice. Having any backup issues?

Backing up from the machines disk-to-disk to a Buffalo Terastation, and looking into getting Veeam instead of the Backup Exec we're using now.

Veeam is apparently Black Magic for VMWare backup and replication.

This is the first rack we've built with the new angled patch panels. The center of the panel sticks out from the edges, and the cables from the panels go straight to the sides instead of up or down into wire management first. You see those up near the tops of the racks, with white cables on the left for voice, and blue on the right for data. Saves a lot of rack space, but it seems that suddenly we have plenty!!!

 

[SnowAviation]

Mmmmmm.

Computer porn.

 

[feeger]

Nice! We have also been virtualizing our routers, firewalls and load balancers at work.

 

[Blind Squirrel]

Nice. I would suggest you should think of clustering the VM server. Nothing like loosing your entire enterprise because of one hardware failure...

 

[FJRPierre]

+1

 

[wfooshee]

Nice. I would suggest you should think of clustering the VM server. Nothing like loosing your entire enterprise because of one hardware failure...

Not in the budget yet, but the box has as much fault tolerance as can be put into it.

The actual #1 motivation for the owner? His power bill! That room got HOT with all them servers, had trouble holding it down under 80 degrees, with a fan in the door and the door propped open. Closed door would get into the 90s. We left the door closed on this setup and saw 78. Now we don't have to cool the air coming from this room. Whether that makes a difference will be hard to tell, because it's cooling off outside, too, so the A/C bill will be lower anyway.

 

[Crash Cash]

Tweee-wheeew! Nice rack, baby! :dribble:

VMWare is SWEET. I use it to run Windows crap on my Linux box here and at work, so I don't have to dual-boot or keep a Windows box around. It even runs the Suzuki Dealer Diagnostics stuff over virtual USB, which is kind of a shock, because that's very hardware dependent. (Honestly? I just did it to see "New hardware detected: Suzuki SV-650AK8. Drivers loaded" - so I'm a nerd, sue me!)

It's extra sweet because if I want to try something chancy, I just make a copy, so if it's crap, I just blow it away. Plus it's always backed up because it's just a directory of plain ol' files on the Linux box, and so it gets backed up along with everything else. You don't need any of that black magic necessary to back up a bare-metal Windows partition.

At work (Oracle) they use it heavily for servers, which as you see keeps the power and space requirements down. Over 250 physical machines, including heavy-duty Sun (E10K, anyone) & HP hardware, and a 4500KWH UPS. I can snap a pic of the Orlando lab, if you want computer porn.

 

[dcarver]

I can snap a pic of the Orlando lab, if you want computer porn.

I wanna see! I'll show you mine if you show me yours.. lol, glad it's not Friday anymore!