virtualization performance

[T G Manikandan]

We have a proposal to consolidate our servers from 9 DL585 G2 servres(mostly dual core)to 3 DL585 G6 (quad core or more ) and use vmware ,for application consolidation.

I see the consolidation as a good point, but I am bit hesitant on recommending them this as :

1. Applications need to be supportive for multithreading , as they can use the quadcore, hexacore advantages with the new servers.

2. Vmware - If I am not wrong ,I think vmware has been always resource intensive, but well we can have a cap on it. I have not worked much on vmware and its performance.

Suggestions welcome.

[Uwe Zessin]

1. You can always create multiple VMs with single virtual CPUs if the applications do not make use of multiple CPUs. That even helps the scheduler in the virtualization layer.

2. VMware has become more and more _efficient_ over the years and their engineering department is not standing still! Of course you need current CPUs, which provide more speed/features, so this is a win/win situation ;-)

[muruganantham raju]

If the applications are not designed to make use of multithreading, they might impact the performance. But you can disable multithreading as per the applications best interest.

With Vmware you can create resource pools and allocate portion of cpu and not the entire cpu. With the complete VMWare packages - ESX hosts 4.x, Vcenter 4.x and vMA 4.x you can lay a robust setup in your DC. The performance glitchups can be resolved through constant moitoring. Also the experience in managing the consolidated setup would bring better lessons.

[T G Manikandan]

Hence for consolidation i am planning to buy DL585 G7 servers 12 core processors.

To achieve this consolidation, what products from vmware do I require?


What is the difference between vmware vsphere and ESXi?

Thanks.

[Jan Soska]

hello,
main difference between ESX and ESXi is there is no service console unted ESXi - so is safer. Vmware states ESX4.1 is latest version available in both versions, all later version will be release only as ESXi.
So if you build on green field, go to ESXi.
Then consider which features do you like, it is described greatly at: http://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore/vsphere_purchaseoptions.html - choose and pay for what you need.
Of course consider backup strategy - if you want backup whole VM's, choose backup software capable of Vmware vStorage API (HP DP6.11 is not yet capable)

Jan

[Uwe Zessin]

vSphere is an "umbrella name" that includes a number of products and their features:

http://www.vmware.com/files/images/diagrams/dgrm_vsphere_R10_800x600.jpg

It is interesting that the "vCenter Suite" is outside of the blue vSphere box, but some features like DRS, DPM or HA need vCenter...

[Rob Buxton]

Why such large servers?
We now use Blades (BL465c, 2 x 12core CPU and 190GB or thereabouts of memory). Similar DL 3xx series servers offer the same expansion. Little or no need to go to the DL5xx series. You'll mainly end up with empty space.

Also, do you have a SAN infrastructure behind this? If you want to use vSphere features like High Availability, Dynamic Resource Scheduling then you'll need a SAN.

If you go for HA, then 4 x smaller servers tends to be better than 2 x larger servers. If a server is removed from the 4 x cluster you lose 25% of resource not 50%.

As for performance, get some stats on how much resource you're currently pulling from the existing servers. Also consider contacting Vmware, they have some capacity planning tools that can help.

[T G Manikandan]

Let me give a brief on the current and what we would need:

We have Oracle/hyperion application running on all 8 servers DL585G2 (
(Dual-Core) AMD Opteron TM Processor 8220 - Logical CPU# 8) and each server with 8G RaM and

I am trying to bring this down to 3 ,after either using a BL465/DL585 G7.

Either I can go for
DL585 G7(4 x12 core ) - 1 no. 64Gb
BL465/DL585(2 x12 core ) - 2 no. 48 each.

or BL465 (2*12 core) - 4 no. 190GB RAM

The data resides on the SAN storage. I would also like to include a failover with VM and dynamic resource scheduling.

Futher clarifications;

How do I setup a VM failover for the 3/4 servers with production - can the failover be on alternate servers?
How does the SAN relate on Dynamic Resource Scheduling?
Do you have any example architecture diagrams on these, any white papers?

[T G Manikandan]

What does I/O storage control and network control do, this is only available with Enterprise plus package.

Why do we need them.

[Matt Palmer_2]

Hi,

not sure how much you have used vmware, but I have recently put in a new environment which appeared to have periodic performance issues. The majority of which were resolved by installing the VMware balloon driver.

Now this has allowed for the VMs to use every possible resource available to it, both from within the guest and from the ESX host perspective to,and if necessary from other VMs in the ESX configuration that dont currently need it.

may not be relevant to your setup, but it really helped me

regards

Matt