stevie_350z Posted September 17, 2007 Share Posted September 17, 2007 Did anyone from here go? If you did or if you didn't, and want to access all the presentations (slide decks and audio using Camtasia, which is easy to access) go to here. You need to register to get all of them, but there's some great stuff - not just sessions, but labs too! Not all of them are uploaded yet (the conference only finished last Thurs) but it shouldn't take them long. If you want to hear my dulcet tones, I did IO17 - Breaking down barriers to VMware technology adoption! An hour on what can go wrong! Cheers Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sl114 Posted September 17, 2007 Share Posted September 17, 2007 Nice dude, will be forwarding this round to my team today to read. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinbad Posted September 17, 2007 Share Posted September 17, 2007 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sl114 Posted September 17, 2007 Share Posted September 17, 2007 too advanced for you ruby? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_Quads Posted September 17, 2007 Share Posted September 17, 2007 Kept an eye on it - Was interested in the ESX 3i thing for blades. We have a bladecentre I was looking to get ESX running on and that would probably be the best way. Not looked at costs - guessing it costs even more than ESX which is the stopper for me at the mo. Quite hard to justfy the cost of the full bladecentre again just for ESX on all the blades. Never know VMware could do us a parner deal lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sinbad Posted September 17, 2007 Share Posted September 17, 2007 too advanced for you ruby? errrrr just abit! haha I'm sure if i read it fully i'd understand it but just scanning the page is confusing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted September 18, 2007 Author Share Posted September 18, 2007 Kept an eye on it - Was interested in the ESX 3i thing for blades. We have a bladecentre I was looking to get ESX running on and that would probably be the best way. Not looked at costs - guessing it costs even more than ESX which is the stopper for me at the mo. Quite hard to justfy the cost of the full bladecentre again just for ESX on all the blades. Never know VMware could do us a parner deal lol ESX 3i is $495, not sure why that is expensive? You get "foundation" for that, and to use the other tools like vMotion, HA, DRS, you just need the extra licenses - no code changes, or upgrades, they are "enabled" by the license. BTW, when you say it is expensive, are you comparing it to the total savings in a TCO? The CapEx and OpEx savings are ridiculously enormous if you get the right utilization rate / Guest : Host ratio? Just picking one customer I know they avoided capex of $1.3M, reduced power by 18%, improved deployment times to one business day, etc. Add all that up and money is never an object.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted September 18, 2007 Author Share Posted September 18, 2007 too advanced for you ruby? errrrr just abit! haha I'm sure if i read it fully i'd understand it but just scanning the page is confusing. It's straightforward once you "get it"... and we've all had to "get it" at some point Best way to understand virtualization is to try VMware Player/Server for free, or buy VMware Workstation (PC) or VMware Fusion (Mac) and try it out. For example, with Fusion you can use your MacBook for work with your corporate Windows XP running on the same laptop in a virtual machine. All you need to do is clone your XP hard disk into a virtual disk (tools for that), power it up on your Mac and you are away! No need for two laptops, use your favourite laptop, and the corporate bods @ IT will be none the wiser! Unless they are like a bank and really lock down everything to specific hardware (boo!). Cheers! Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_Quads Posted September 18, 2007 Share Posted September 18, 2007 Kept an eye on it - Was interested in the ESX 3i thing for blades. We have a bladecentre I was looking to get ESX running on and that would probably be the best way. Not looked at costs - guessing it costs even more than ESX which is the stopper for me at the mo. Quite hard to justfy the cost of the full bladecentre again just for ESX on all the blades. Never know VMware could do us a parner deal lol ESX 3i is $495, not sure why that is expensive? You get "foundation" for that, and to use the other tools like vMotion, HA, DRS, you just need the extra licenses - no code changes, or upgrades, they are "enabled" by the license. BTW, when you say it is expensive, are you comparing it to the total savings in a TCO? The CapEx and OpEx savings are ridiculously enormous if you get the right utilization rate / Guest : Host ratio? Just picking one customer I know they avoided capex of $1.3M, reduced power by 18%, improved deployment times to one business day, etc. Add all that up and money is never an object.... Ah thats interesting - Wonder if they will sell it as an add-on - I have heard that it might be only available with hardware i.e. when people buy blades etc. When I talked about cost I was talking about the full ESX - the main capability I would be looking at is the vMotion - to get ESX on all 14 blades and it was going to cost around $70K due to the $5750 retail pricing of VI Enterprise - when you think you can buy another fully loaded dual-QuadCPU bladecentre for that its a hard one to justify. Unfortunatly we are in the System test area so lots of small machines are not really beneficial - for me I would love to see a VM that could have 8/16 cores etc - just one of our x3950s runs 8 cores (16 through hyperthreading) and they can be bolted together to present 32/64!) That would give us much more capability as we could run what ever we wanted on the hardware as we needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted September 18, 2007 Author Share Posted September 18, 2007 So what's the alternative to buying and running VMware? If you had 14 blades with four CPUs ( 2 x dual core) then you could run, conservatively assuming 4 VMs per CPU 4 x 4 x 14 = 224 VMs for about $100K + server hardware, which means about $446 each (plus s/w costs). Not bad for a dynamic, highly-available, agile etc. platform! Assuming up to 8 VMs per CPU, you can get 448 VMs for about $223 each. Add on to that the OpEx savings like manpower, the sheer ease of use which in my SysAdmin days was the most important (Smart and Lazy ), not to mention the drastic improvement in customer service as they can get servers in a day instead of six weeks, and the higher utilization you get / RoI because you are using all of the servers, and you'll be saving the planet by not having to use all the power required for 448 physical servers (instead you'll be using 14!). No brainer! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_Quads Posted September 18, 2007 Share Posted September 18, 2007 I can't run 4 VMs per CPU - I need to run 2CPU sometimes 4CPU images etc. I am using many of the blades as database servers etc which are servicing large machine being used for stress testings. Thus in total I may only be running 15/18 images in total on a bladecentre. The main reason to use ESX is to use VMotions ability and the ability to switch the systems between platforms as and when they are required i.e. run windows for a week then switch it over and use linux the next week etc The alternative to me is buy a second bladecentre and then run all the database etc in HA - but this requires much more skills as it would mean running DB2, Oracle, Sybase, SQLServer, WebSphere, Tivoly etc all under HA. Thats a lot of skills and stuff to maintain but a ESX system is effectively 1 HA system to learn which would give us coverage on all platforms As you can see - it now harder to justify the extra cost to those on high. With sums like yours above its easy but when you are talking about skills, maintenance etc those that count the pennies don't really get the picture Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted September 18, 2007 Author Share Posted September 18, 2007 Agreed, Rob, good luck mate! ANything I can do to help, just shout Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_Quads Posted September 18, 2007 Share Posted September 18, 2007 Do you know if its possible to get a copy of whats on the memory key that was given out at VMWorld? Whats your position. I've been speaking to one of the guys in the US about getting an extended VirtualCentre for VMServer demo but he seems to be away at the moment. Do you know if ESX 3i is going to be made available aftermarket? I've not seen any pricing on any of the sites either - whens it due for release? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_350z Posted September 18, 2007 Author Share Posted September 18, 2007 Who's your VMware rep? They should be able to sort it for you? 3i, AFAIK, is only shipped with h/w, not sure about downloading it... although it was available @ VMworld on a key - but I didn't get a key as a lowly employee... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_b Posted September 19, 2007 Share Posted September 19, 2007 Rob, I know where you can get a HA solution for Win/AIX/HP-UX/Sol & Linux and runs "exactly" the same way so management is very simple. Have HA agents for DB2, Oracle, Sybase, SQL webshere etc etc. I can make sure you certainly would not be paying anywhere near list for it and you can run active/active DB's with dynamic work-load balancing. You could buy under a flex program to move the licenses between different platforms as and when needed to test different setups. There is always multiple ways to skin a cat, but without doubt VMWare is great product and we have just won awards for Clustering and Backup of VMware so we are 100% pro VMWare if you go that way. Steve I can't run 4 VMs per CPU - I need to run 2CPU sometimes 4CPU images etc. I am using many of the blades as database servers etc which are servicing large machine being used for stress testings. Thus in total I may only be running 15/18 images in total on a bladecentre. The main reason to use ESX is to use VMotions ability and the ability to switch the systems between platforms as and when they are required i.e. run windows for a week then switch it over and use linux the next week etc The alternative to me is buy a second bladecentre and then run all the database etc in HA - but this requires much more skills as it would mean running DB2, Oracle, Sybase, SQLServer, WebSphere, Tivoly etc all under HA. Thats a lot of skills and stuff to maintain but a ESX system is effectively 1 HA system to learn which would give us coverage on all platforms As you can see - it now harder to justify the extra cost to those on high. With sums like yours above its easy but when you are talking about skills, maintenance etc those that count the pennies don't really get the picture Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob_Quads Posted September 19, 2007 Share Posted September 19, 2007 At a guess your going to say VCS? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steve_b Posted September 19, 2007 Share Posted September 19, 2007 PM sent to save going off-topic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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