vmware question ? any ideas

itdaddy

Hey guys

can I convert a Esx 3.5 vm to say the free vmware enterprise vm version?
will the vm work in that.

What it is is we have a couple of important servers that this IT company
put on one Esx3.5 machine. It has some servers on it. I want to make a clone and put it on another server just in gas that one dies. I can
just turn on the clone while I say fix the primary. I want these server independent of each other okay.

These are only gateway servers they do not do much but provide gateway services and think this will work great for redundancy and trying to keep cost down. I mean we do not have many things but the things we do a few of them need to be redundant in nature for failover even it it means me just click a mouse. better than nothing or better than 100,000 virtual SAN. Yeah it is nice but we dont need that here.

so can it be done take the clone and bring it up thru the free version of vm or no? or do I have to create the server again in the free version?
thanks

blargoe

By free vmware version are you talking about ESXi?

I think you can just run VMWare Converter against each VM on the ESX server, and make the destination be the ESXi server.

itdaddy

blargoe


I have the free vmware server. It says vmware infrastructor web access.
but is there an Esxi version free. and you think i can convert the vm from Esxi3.5 to the free?

thanks

we have some gateway servers only at work and I want to place them on
a VMBACKUP server and if our VM machine dies, our high priority servers
can be turned on from the VMBACKUP server. cheesy but we cannot afford 100K san solution and really we dont need it so I want to make clones of our blackberry BES server and our online banking gateway server
and place the vms with the free version on robust server. and if we lost our vm machine we can just turn on the robust VMBACKUP server and bam
we are up again until I fix the vm infrastrucer server. trying to be cost effect but smart.

azjag

itdaddy wrote: »

blargoe


I have the free vmware server. It says vmware infrastructor web access.
but is there an Esxi version free. and you think i can convert the vm from Esxi3.5 to the free?

Yes there are free versions of VMware Esxi. Both 3.5 (32bit hardware only) and 4.0 (64bit hardware only). They can be downloaded from here:
VMware ESXi
After registration of course.

Once you have a esxi server in place you can use the Vcenter standalone converter to transfer the VM's to the new esxi server. Update the VM tools and you should be good.

itdaddy wrote: »

blargoe
we have some gateway servers only at work and I want to place them on
a VMBACKUP server and if our VM machine dies, our high priority servers
can be turned on from the VMBACKUP server. cheesy but we cannot afford 100K san solution and really we dont need it so I want to make clones of our blackberry BES server and our online banking gateway server
and place the vms with the free version on robust server. and if we lost our vm machine we can just turn on the robust VMBACKUP server and bam
we are up again until I fix the vm infrastrucer server. trying to be cost effect but smart.

Option 1.
Buy some off the shelf External Sata storage with about 4tb of storage in a raid configuration. Configure your server with a decent e-sata card. Install esxi on the local hard drive on the server and attach the E-sata device to hold the VM's. Setup another server in the same configuration as a backup. If something goes wrong with the first server you move the E-Sata device to the backup server, power it on, connect the storage and import the VM's into the esxi server. You won't have the throughput of the of a SAN, but there are many different configurations you can work with.

Option 2.
Find out what it is worth management and how much downtime is acceptable. Use that as justification to buy some servers, low end san and licensing. 2 decent servers to run these VM servers $5k each. 8TB iSCSI san $7k. VMWare Licensing that will allow you to have high availability and load balancing $7k per physical processor. Add in some required cisco gear that i have no idea how to price and you are looking at $50k to have minimal downtime and redundancy.

Option 3.
An idea that somebody else comes up with.

Good luck

itdaddy

blargoe
dude you should write books;
very well details sounds good.
But we are ready for full blow san. but some day we will be
thanks super ideas

meadIT

azjag wrote: »

Option 2.
Find out what it is worth management and how much downtime is acceptable. Use that as justification to buy some servers, low end san and licensing. 2 decent servers to run these VM servers $5k each. 8TB iSCSI san $7k. VMWare Licensing that will allow you to have high availability and load balancing $7k per physical processor. Add in some required cisco gear that i have no idea how to price and you are looking at $50k to have minimal downtime and redundancy.

With 4.1 out and only 2 servers, you can also do the Essentials plus kit that covers up to 3 servers with 2 processors each for a total of $3500. 4.1 includes vMotion and High Availability features. You can set up a basic setup for less than $25k.