VirtualCenter

tiersten

I still don't understand why you have to use Windows to host VirtualCenter. Sooooo annoying...

astorrs

VMware's unofficial policy or whatever you want to call it is that you can probably expect a VI client for Linux in the future. But they have absolutely no intention of not requiring Windows for VC. Sorry.

tiersten

Ugh. Needing an entire Windows server just to run VC is a hassle.

The VC box is a single point of failure anyway. Can't cluster it. Can't have failover on it. If your VC DB or VC server dies then you're in a precarious position until you get a replacement up and running.

astorrs

Actually its interesting - there is lots of work is going into VC so that (combined with HA or SRM) it will be preferred that you run VC within a virtual machine itself - you can do it now and its fully supported but somewhat cumbersome.

Most of the large implementations or those who are paranoid about it failing or even those who need geographically separated VCs in case of failure, use something like Neverfail for VMware® VirtualCenter running on physical boxes.

tiersten

astorrs wrote:

Actually its interesting - there is lots of work is going into VC so that (combined with HA or SRM) it will be preferred that you run VC within a virtual machine itself - you can do it now and its fully supported but somewhat cumbersome.

Thats how I run it at home since all the other servers are actually Linux machines and my VMware setup is just for testing. Its a hassle though. I installed 3.5u2 to have a play earlier and wanted to test EVC but you need to have all VMs off in your cluster to do that. But you can't turn your VC VM off to turn on EVC in VC. I had to go into maint mode on one of the hosts. Remove it from the cluster. Shutdown the VC VM. Leave maint mode. Bring the VC VM back up on the now standalone host. Turn on EVC. Finally readd that host Lots of juggling involved.

Also VC is a pain to get autostarting properly if its using a locally hosted SQL Express DB. But thats another rant

astorrs wrote:

Most of the large implementations or those who are paranoid about it failing or even those who need geographically separated VCs in case of failure, use something like Neverfail for VMware® VirtualCenter running on physical boxes.

Yeah. I saw Neverfail before but not actually used it. I'm just surprised that VMware don't have a solution themselves. Not that I should be surprised since the 3.5u2 patch fiasco.

astorrs

Yep, sounds like you've experience the "cumbersome" nature of doing it that way that I was referring to. Such a P.I.T.A.

That's what I meant by they are throwing a fair amount of development effort into shoring up the experience of running it as a VM in 4.x and beyond so that they can have an in house solution to what appears (on paper to the new sale) to be a single point of failure.

jibbajabba

According to some dude in vmware the whole "problem" with VC is .NET Framework .. It requires it (and MSSQL too) and therefore there is no Linux version "possible" ...

Ah well ... we run VC in a virtual machine anyway - no harm done ..

tiersten

Gomjaba wrote:

According to some dude in vmware the whole "problem" with VC is .NET Framework .. It requires it (and MSSQL too) and therefore there is no Linux version "possible" ...

Yeah but they're the ones that wrote VirtualCenter. They didn't have to use .NET. You should be able to run some .NET applications using Mono or DotGNU anyway.

HeroPsycho

Personally, I appreciate the fact that VirtualCenter runs on Windows. It proves VMware is a best of breed company, so they develop their products in a more vendor agnostic way. Linux works better for ESX, and Windows works better for VC. What's wrong with that?

tiersten

HeroPsycho wrote:

Personally, I appreciate the fact that VirtualCenter runs on Windows. It proves VMware is a best of breed company, so they develop their products in a more vendor agnostic way. Linux works better for ESX, and Windows works better for VC. What's wrong with that?

What exactly does Windows do better for VC? They could rewrite the entire thing in Java or use one of the many libraries available to make the code more portable.

HeroPsycho

Then why didn't they? They're in love with Microsoft?! *scratching head*

astorrs

I could see them moving into a Virtual Appliance at some point, but with 3.x they moved to the VI client and .NET (and away from the web console) so I really don't see them reversing that trend.