Need some Virtualization advice

Here's my situation. We're about to come up with a new backup strategy and order hardware and software. I'm sold on Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery, and it is going to go on our existing 2k3 servers, and an upcoming 2k8 email server. I love the baremetal restore feature, and converting physical to viurtual, and vice versa.

I was originally going to order 2 servers to manage the backup strategy. 1 for the Symantec admin and forefront console, 1 for a cold spare to periodically test the backup strategy.

However, after playing with virtualization, I'm thinking maybe I can just spend a few hundred dollars on a 4TB NAS, store backups on that, and partion several of the hard drives off on a raid 1, and practice the restore routines virtually on just 1 physical server with the NAS.

I've never set anything like this up before. I've set up servers on Microsoft's Virtual PC 2007, and it seems to run fine, but I've never done it for production. I hear everyone else talking about VMware and Hyper-V...which I have no knowledge of, or experience of.

1) How would you do it, if you could choose?
2) What virtualization software would you use?

All advice welcome.

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Comments

mrmcmint

I guess it depends how many servers you have and are looking at virtualising. I have read before on one of hyper-me's posts that if you are not virtualising lots of servers, it would be more cost effective to use hyper-v... apologies hyper-me if I have misunderstood!!

brad-

Less than 20.

Am I missing something, or is this something I could reasonably do with teh free Virtual PC?

mrmcmint

I guess it is, but its not recommended in an enterprise environment. I'm not sure how that would be licensed either... I know hyper-v server 2008 is free, but you need licenses per vm etc.

There are plenty of people much better qualified than me on here to help you out on this one!

hypnotoad

Each copy of 2008 enterprise you buy includes licenses for 4 2008 VMs running on the same box. So two copies of 2008 would give you a total of 10 VM's, fully licensed. This to me is a big selling point over vmware -- unless you're not using windows guests and/or don't care about licensing.

Hyper-Me

I think if you are pinching pennies and arent NEEDing a lot of the advanced features that ESX offers, then Hyper-V is a very solid choice.

We use it at work, and are nearing the ~25 host mark. We will be around 50-60 all said and done.

astorrs

"... two copies of 2008 (Enterprise) would give you a total of 8 VM's, fully licensed."

brad-

Hyper-Me wrote: »

I think if you are pinching pennies and arent NEEDing a lot of the advanced features that ESX offers, then Hyper-V is a very solid choice.

I dont really need advanced features. I plan only to use it to prove the concept of its usefulness regarding backup/restore capabilities in conjunction with BESR.

Down teh road, they may decide to do some consolidation, but not on the horizon.

So tell me if you guys think this is plausable...or if i'm on crack.

With Virtual PC (or hyper-v if the backup server is 2k

- aka a no extra cost solution - there is no problem doing this?

I downloaded VMware onto a test PC with some virtualization, and it is going to have a learning curve. I'm going to buy a trainsignal for exchange soon and it's supposed to come with a free server 2k8 trainsignal...hopefully it'll cover hyper-v, b/c its all new to me.

MentholMoose

Virtual PC and Virtual Server both have horrible performance, if you plan to have any significant production workloads you need to avoid them. There are two free options worth looking into. One is Hyper-V Server. The new R2 edition can be managed by System Center Virtual Machine Manager (not free) if you need better management capabilities. I don't have experience with this.

Another free option is Citrix XenServer. Most of the management capabilities are included, but some advanced features can be enabled by buying Citrix Essentials (HA and better logging come to mind). I have experience with this and can say it is not bad, not on par with VMware Infrastructure or vSphere yet but getting there.

Hyper-Me

MentholMoose wrote: »

Virtual PC and Virtual Server both have horrible performance, if you plan to have any significant production workloads you need to avoid them. There are two free options worth looking into. One is Hyper-V Server. The new R2 edition can be managed by System Center Virtual Machine Manager (not free) if you need better management capabilities. I don't have experience with this.

Hyper-V Server (non R2) can be managed by SCVMM 2007, 2008 and 2008 R2.

R2 hyperv HOSTS can only be managed by scvmm 2008 R2, at the moment.

SysAdmin4066

The biggest advantage with VMWare's ESX brand is that it is proven. Hyper V is fairly new, and not as feature rich as ESX is. I wouldnt put any production equipment on either VServer or VPC. They are not hypervisors and would not give the proper performance required for production hardware virtualization. If money is an issue, they others are right about Hyper V. Windows Server 2008 as far as I know allows for 8 servers on one with Enterprise. This would be a rather expensive license, but would not be as expensive as 9 standard licenses. Nothing out right now can beat the ESX with Virtual Infrastructure though as far as features are concerned. It's a proven, enterprise solution. If I were the manager in charge and my reputation depended on the decision, I would go with the most proven solution, sort of like Dell and Cisco lol.

dynamik

No votes for ESXi? It's free and gives you the option to license the advanced features if you ever need them.

brad-

dynamik wrote: »

No votes for ESXi? It's free and gives you the option to license the advanced features if you ever need them.

Thx D. Trying it out now.

Chivalry1

I would put my vote on the free Citrix XenServer. For a large enterprise environments I recommend VMWare. But for smaller-mid level deployments (20 Servers or less), Citrix Xenserver scales out well.

BTW I currently have 2 windows 2003, 2 windows 2008 servers running 2 Exchange 2010 on the free Citrix Xenserver. Citrix did a great job with this product. Just make sure you have a good backup solution just in case a incident occurs.

brad-

Chivalry1 wrote: »

I would put my vote on the free Citrix XenServer. For a large enterprise environments I recommend VMWare. But for smaller-mid level deployments (20 Servers or less), Citrix Xenserver scales out well.

BTW I currently have 2 windows 2003, 2 windows 2008 servers running 2 Exchange 2010 on the free Citrix Xenserver. Citrix did a great job with this product. Just make sure you have a good backup solution just in case a incident occurs.

Thanks, I'll try it out soon.

I dont need any major infrastructure here. The primary goal i have for virtualization is proof of concept that it can be useful for backup/restore emergencies. Once I saw how easy it was to convert physical to virtual with BESR, it clicked that this is something i should do to shore up our disaster recovery plan.

Arjay

I want to build a VMWARE Lab to learn how to use it.

Do I need a dual processor mother board?

Hyper-Me

The fact that Citrix is developing tons of products for Hyper-V should speak to their own self confidence in their product.

Vmware is fine, and Hyper-V is also fine. I just always find a lot of people downing Hyper-V and their only basis is because ESX offers more features, but they rarely stop to consider whether or not the need for those features is present.

Here is an excerpt from an article at VirtualizationReview.com

“After doing these comparisons of ESX to Hyper-V and XenServer, it’s clear that at the hypervisor level, ESX is optimized for a large number of less-intensive workload VMs. For intensive workloads that may not be optimized for memory overcommit apps, Hyper-V and XenServer should definitely be considered-even if that means adding another hypervisor into the data center.”

Hyper-Me

SysAdmin4066 wrote: »

The biggest advantage with VMWare's ESX brand is that it is proven. Hyper V is fairly new, and not as feature rich as ESX is. I wouldnt put any production equipment on either VServer or VPC. They are not hypervisors and would not give the proper performance required for production hardware virtualization. If money is an issue, they others are right about Hyper V. Windows Server 2008 as far as I know allows for 8 servers on one with Enterprise. This would be a rather expensive license, but would not be as expensive as 9 standard licenses. Nothing out right now can beat the ESX with Virtual Infrastructure though as far as features are concerned. It's a proven, enterprise solution. If I were the manager in charge and my reputation depended on the decision, I would go with the most proven solution, sort of like Dell and Cisco lol.

Dude I dont know where you get your information sometimes.

I think Hyper-V is very proven...its not been around as long as ESX, but its a solid hypervisor. I know of several consulting/service companies that run Hyper-V farms to host virtual servers for customers. We use it at work to manage a large virtual infrastructure, we have about 25 hosts so far.

Also, with Server 2003/2008 Enterprise you get 1 physical and 4 virtual licenses. Standard is 1 physical and 1 virtual. Datacenter is unlimited virtual, 1 physical (per processor)

dynamik

It's neither proven or very proven.

25 hosts isn't a large virtual infrastructure.

Suckering people in with cheap licensing isn't the same as a quality product.

Features do not remotely compare at the high-end.

HeroPsycho

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Dude I dont know where you get your information sometimes.

I think Hyper-V is very proven...its not been around as long as ESX, but its a solid hypervisor. I know of several consulting/service companies that run Hyper-V farms to host virtual servers for customers. We use it at work to manage a large virtual infrastructure, we have about 25 hosts so far.

Also, with Server 2003/2008 Enterprise you get 1 physical and 4 virtual licenses. Standard is 1 physical and 1 virtual. Datacenter is unlimited virtual, 1 physical (per processor)

It's proven you could have virtualized the same infrastructure with half the physical hosts had you gone with VMware.

No memory overcommit, Fault Tolerance, kluge means around NTFS not being a cluster aware file system to do live migrations, worse performance in general, missing DR solutions, missing VM lifecycle management solutions, no DRS...

Seriously, dude, I know you love it so much you named yourself after it, but good lord...

Hyper-Me

HeroPsycho wrote: »

It's proven you could have virtualized the same infrastructure with half the physical hosts had you gone with VMware.

No memory overcommit, Fault Tolerance, kluge means around NTFS not being a cluster aware file system to do live migrations, worse performance in general, missing DR solutions, missing VM lifecycle management solutions, no DRS...

Seriously, dude, I know you love it so much you named yourself after it, but good lord...

We dont have them all in a single location, there is generally 1 per site. The one place we have more than 1 is running in a cluster.

Plus licensing VMware was ridiculous compared to getting hyper-v for free, which was the largest "selling" point.

I know you are a VMware fanatic and think that any company or non profit should spend 1000$ per processor to run vmware, reguardless of their needs, so we dont need to continue this discussion.

dynamik

So what's your argument against ESXi?

Hyper-Me

dynamik wrote: »

So what's your argument against ESXi?

None, I said it was a fine choice.

All I said was that some people dont need all of the features that ESXi offers, yet there are some people on here who demand that they purchase an expensive ass license just because they get off on it being vmware.

Hyper-V is fine. ESXi is fine.

HeroPsycho

Hyper-Me wrote: »

We dont have them all in a single location, there is generally 1 per site. The one place we have more than 1 is running in a cluster.

Plus licensing VMware was ridiculous compared to getting hyper-v for free, which was the largest "selling" point.

I know you are a VMware fanatic and think that any company or non profit should spend 1000$ per processor to run vmware, reguardless of their needs, so we dont need to continue this discussion.

You absolutely do not need to spend $1000 per processor to run on VMware. ESXi is potentially free. That's been well stated.

And you don't decide when I'm finished talking about this. You can stop whenever you like.

If you're seriously suggesting I side with VMware only because it's VMware, you must have missed how certified I am in Microsoft products. I recommend the best solution. VMware right now is a better virtualization platform, period. Everyone can take advantage of memory overcommit, and transparent page sharing for example. Those features have been in VMware for years, and Microsoft still doesn't have it.

Licensing costs aren't the only thing to take into consideration. If it were, why are you running anything made by Microsoft?

VMware is proven all the way up to heavy duty loads with true enterprise applications and with true enterprise level workloads. Hyper-V R2 is not at this point. You can claim all that you want that it worked well for you, and I have no reason to question that, but it's gotta be pounded on for quite sometime before that's accepted within the industry. Before you say that Hyper-V has been out for a long time, understand as an example that radical klugey duct taped workarounds to overcome NTFS not being a clustered file system in R2 to allow live migrations has certainly not been proven at this point to be reliable. VMotion has been in VMware for years and has been proven to work very reliably.

Characterizing VMware as a proven, robust virtualization platform for almost any workload, while Hyper-V (particularly R2) isn't at this point is a completely fair and accurate statement. And I won't keep saying that if Hyper-V proves itself over time.

HeroPsycho

dynamik wrote: »

So what's your argument against ESXi?

Simple, he has none, and he apparently missed that you were pointing out ESXi is potentially free to use.

dynamik

Hyper-Me wrote: »

All I said was that some people dont need all of the features that ESXi offers

So even if it doesn't cost anything, they should go out of their way to avoid it because they don't have an immediate need for those features? You're losing me here...

I guess it would be terrible to have a product you could grow into...

Hyper-Me wrote: »

I know you are a VMware fanatic and think that any company or non profit should spend 1000$ per processor to run vmware, reguardless of their needs, so we dont need to continue this discussion.

Like HeroPsycho, I am ridiculously certified in Microsoft technologies. I also hold the Hyper-V certification, which I earned that by passing the beta. There were no study guides at that time, and I went through every nook and cranny of the program, meticulous notes, and labbed every feature. I would wager that I'm far more acquainted with it than you are. On the flip side, I'm also a VCP. Given the circumstances, I'd like to think I'm in a pretty neutral position. On the other hand, I've seen you do nothing but champion Hyper-V regardless of the circumstance, and you seem to not even have foundation-level knowledge of VMware products.

Hyper-Me

dynamik wrote: »

I've seen you do nothing but champion Hyper-V regardless of the circumstance.

Hyper-ME wrote:

ESXi is fine. Hyper-V is fine.

Stellar reading skills, bud.

The features of ESXi im talking about are some of the paid for stuff.

You have to remember that not every application of virtualization out there is a multibillion dollar fortune 100 enterprise that needs the absolute best and most advanced features and is willing to pay for it.

For instance....we didnt NEED live migration at work, because what we are hosting on the cluster can be down for the 30 seconds it takes to perform Quick Migration. We arent losing any real functionality from instant to 30 seconds...users wouldnt even notice it.

We would have needed to purchase vCenter to manage as many hosts as we have, and VMware was unwilling to give any decent public sector pricing on it, whereas MS gave us SCVMM for next to free.

Money isnt the only factor, but sometimes its the greatest factor. Especially when the cheaper option gives us more than enough functionality than we require to get the job done.

For the requirements in the original post on this thread, Hyper-V would work fantastic, as would ESXi, and im sure XenServer would too (never used it).

HeroPsycho

Hyper-Me wrote: »

You have to remember that not every application of virtualization out there is a multibillion dollar fortune 100 enterprise that needs the absolute best and most advanced features and is willing to pay for it.

For instance....we didnt NEED live migration at work, because what we are hosting on the cluster can be down for the 30 seconds it takes to perform Quick Migration. We arent losing any real functionality from instant to 30 seconds...users wouldnt even notice it.

For the requirements in the original post on this thread, Hyper-V would work fantastic, as would ESXi, and im sure XenServer would too (never used it).

HyperMe, you need to understand that a lot of this started because you went after someone for stating what is correct. Hyper-V is not as proven as VMware. That is absolutely true. You guys went with Hyper-V, and if it worked out for you, great, but it was a choice to go with a cheaper solution that was not as proven nor as robust as VMware.

The exact quote you attacked someone for saying that got me into this was:

"The biggest advantage with VMWare's ESX brand is that it is proven. Hyper V is fairly new, and not as feature rich as ESX is."

You said you didn't know where he got that information. VMware is more proven than Hyper-V. It's been around longer, has been used to virtualize applications far more demanding than Hyper-V has shown so far to be capable of, and does in fact have more features. It's internal workings have not had nearly the radical changes as what R2 has just to add functionality VMware has had for years.

It is still the de facto product in virtualization. I don't know a single person other than Hyper-V evangelists who would argue against the above. I've even heard Microsoft evangelists even speak of Hyper-V as not as proven as VMware. Are you saying Hyper-V is just as proven as VMware and has as many features?

My objection to you in this thread was not to say that he needed the features of ESX that Hyper-V didn't have. It was against you for saying that Hyper-V is as proven and is as feature rich, and saying it with a smug attitude. It's a little late now to try to go back and say he didn't need said features.

Hyper-Me

The "dont know where you get your information" was more directed at the fact that he totally missed the correct licensing terms for windows server, and acted as if Hyper-V is in beta or something.

I never said Hyper-V was better, or more feature-rich than ESX.

For small to medium business that needs a good hypervisor and, generally, at a lower cost Hyper-V is fine. I'm not saying its better than ESXi.

Maybe my "proven" comment was taken differently than I meant it. If I can deploy it in the environment we have, plus know that several large consulting and hosting companies are using it to provide reliable services to customers then that proves the technology to me, and I guess to them.

I havn't yet seen any reason to call Hyper-V "unreliable", but I havnt been pushing it to its limits either.

HeroPsycho

Hyper-Me wrote: »

The "dont know where you get your information" was more directed at the fact that he totally missed the correct licensing terms for windows server, and acted as if Hyper-V is in beta or something.

Dude, he said VMware brand is proven, where as Hyper-V is fairly new. That's exactly how most anyone I know would assess the comparison of the two speaking historically and truthfully.

You interpretted that as implying beta. He didn't say at any point Hyper-V was beta quality software. And on top of all that, you're criticizing fair comments with an attitude. You criticized him, dynamik, and I for pointing out two key points that are undeniable:

VMware has more features
VMware is a more proven product than Hyper-V

I get that you and dynamik have had repeated run ins with each other, so to some degree, the hostility is there between you two and that bled into this thread, but then copping an attitude with two other people who have no bones to pick with you, calling me out as an alleged VMware fanboy for restating facts that I don't even think Microsoft employees themselves would argue.

dynamik

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Stellar reading skills, bud.

My reading skills are fine; I was referring to every other thread where this has come up. You can't cheer-lead something for months and expect me to believe that you're unbiased because you throw out an "ESXi is fine" when pressured. Either stand by what you say or let it go.

No one ever said don't user Hyper-V under any circumstances; they were just correcting your erroneous statements.

HeroPsycho wrote: »

I get that you and dynamik have had repeated run ins with each other, so to some degree, the hostility is there between you two and that bled into this thread, but then copping an attitude with two other people who have no bones to pick with you, calling me out as an alleged VMware fanboy for restating facts that I don't even think Microsoft employees themselves would argue.

You know I can't sleep when something is wrong on the Internet.

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