Clustering Multiple Servers?

Hello to all! I am just diving into the world of Virtualization and am hoping to learn all I can.

It recently occured to me that I have a bunch of HP DL360 G3's and G4's around. I also have a vSphere / ESXi liscense. Is it possible to cluster these boxes together and run a hypervisor across all of them?

Would the clustering be done in ESXi? Or would I have to run Unix, build the cluster, then put a hypervisor on top of that system?

I'd appreciate any constructive input! Thanks!

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Comments

jibbajabba

What type of license have you got ? In order to cluster the hypervisor you will need a vCenter Server license.

VMware vCenter Server Virtualization & Server Management Software

dave330i

You install ESXi per server. You cluster the servers using vCenter.

Akaricloud

Just to expand on what the others have said:

You install the hypervisor, ESXi, on each server without any other OS. These are then linked together by a vCenter Server that can either be standalone physical or a VM on one of the ESXi hosts.

ESXi is free to use but vCenter is not. VMware offers a 60 day trial that will allow you to get some experience with it along with some of the more advanced features.

Corndork2

Thanks for the input! I have ESXi liscenses now, but do not have vCenter. I'll have to look into getting that. Hope the pricing isnt too bad!

Akaricloud

You're probably going to want to just use the 60 day trials. Otherwise to get all the features that you should be playing around with you're going to need enterprise plus licensing which is anything but cheap. I just spent over $100k on VMware licensing at work if that says anything.

Essendon

Get the 60 day trial, why blow money on a real license? And you can keep renewing the trial using this: Information about Cloud Computing (IaaS) and VMware Technologies: vCenter Reinstallation after 60-Days trial expires without losing Database Contents