If you're here, you've probably been working on server virtualization projects. But, just how much of your organization is still physical vs. virtual? Are you going "all in" on the server side?
For my own organization - Westminster College - we're still running some physical workloads with active plans underway to eliminate as many of these physical servers as possible. We're about 70% to 75% virtual.
We still have some physical machines for specific purposes - i.e. our IP camera security system requires massive disk space so we house the separately. Our database server - soon to be a cluster - is physical. Finally, our backup server is physical and is housed elsewhere on campus.
Now it's your turn! Tell us about your environment.
I would not normally resurrect an old post, but it looks kind of dead around here.. :O
We're an IT consulting company with about 90% of our server infrastructure virtualized. We have 22 Windows servers, 19 of which are virtual. The physical servers include a pair of TMG Firewalls and a server that runs vCenter and Backup Exec. It's all backed by a 4G FC SAN with about 18TB of storage. We use two HP DL380-G5's with dual quad-core processors and 32G RAM to host ESX 4.1.
The physical servers: 1. W2K8r2, DL360 G4, 4G - TMG Firewall - This is our front firewall and is physical simply because we now have more than 4 network connections to it. In the past, we used ISA-2K6 on a VM.
2. W2K8r2, DL360 G4, 4G - TMG Firewall - This is our back firewall. Originally a VM, we experienced some performance issues that were not present in the original ISA-2K6 system it replaced.
3. W2K8r2, DL360 G4, 4G - Management - I felt more comfortable with a physical server for vCenter, and we needed a physical server to communicate with the tape library.
We have a couple of small clients who were 100% virtualized. 3-5 Windows servers and half a dozen to 10 XP clients on ESXi was typical. Either Wyse or Linux-based thin clients were used. They now have a few laptops for the outside salespeople and senior staff, so aren't at 100% any more, but still have a high level of virtualization.
Most of our mid-sized clients have embraced virtualization, with 3-4 VM hosts replacing 10-30 physical systems. Only a few still have physical servers, mostly due to special hardware requirements such as Fax, multiport serial, or Phone/Voice cards, high-load SQL services, and old software with license restrictions.
This is great information! Thank you for sharing. We're much like the clients you mentioned in your posting. We have around 50 or so VMs running on 4 VM hosts. Our primary limiting factor is RAM in the hosts. As we replace the hosts, we'll get new ones with a whole lot more memory.
With Backup Exec, are you doing backups of the individual virtual machines as if they were physical (agent-based) or doing something else to back them up?
I would not normally resurrect an old post, but it looks kind of dead around here.. :O
We're an IT consulting company with about 90% of our server infrastructure virtualized. We have 22 Windows servers, 19 of which are virtual. The physical servers include a pair of TMG Firewalls and a server that runs vCenter and Backup Exec. It's all backed by a 4G FC SAN with about 18TB of storage. We use two HP DL380-G5's with dual quad-core processors and 32G RAM to host ESX 4.1.
The physical servers: 1. W2K8r2, DL360 G4, 4G - TMG Firewall - This is our front firewall and is physical simply because we now have more than 4 network connections to it. In the past, we used ISA-2K6 on a VM.
2. W2K8r2, DL360 G4, 4G - TMG Firewall - This is our back firewall. Originally a VM, we experienced some performance issues that were not present in the original ISA-2K6 system it replaced.
3. W2K8r2, DL360 G4, 4G - Management - I felt more comfortable with a physical server for vCenter, and we needed a physical server to communicate with the tape library.
We have a couple of small clients who were 100% virtualized. 3-5 Windows servers and half a dozen to 10 XP clients on ESXi was typical. Either Wyse or Linux-based thin clients were used. They now have a few laptops for the outside salespeople and senior staff, so aren't at 100% any more, but still have a high level of virtualization.
Most of our mid-sized clients have embraced virtualization, with 3-4 VM hosts replacing 10-30 physical systems. Only a few still have physical servers, mostly due to special hardware requirements such as Fax, multiport serial, or Phone/Voice cards, high-load SQL services, and old software with license restrictions.
Glenn
I've bookmarked your web site as well due to the fact that I realized it is actually educational and I enjoyed reading your posts.
What kinds of business benefits are your clients seeing from virtualization? Was their primary driver reduced infrastructure cost, or were they looking at some of the other possibilities, such as improved availability and service flexibility?
I always like to find out what key business needs people are meeting with their virtualization initiatives.
Since I originally made this post, we've moved to beyond 90% virtual. We P2V'd some existing physical machines and then decommissioned the hardware. We're getting there!
If you're here, you've probably been working on server virtualization projects. But, just how much of your organization is still physical vs. virtual? Are you going "all in" on the server side?
For my own organization - Westminster College - we're still running some physical workloads with active plans underway to eliminate as many of these physical servers as possible. We're about 70% to 75% virtual.
We still have some physical machines for specific purposes - i.e. our IP camera security system requires massive disk space so we house the separately. Our database server - soon to be a cluster - is physical. Finally, our backup server is physical and is housed elsewhere on campus.
Now it's your turn! Tell us about your environment.
If you're here, you've probably been working on server virtualization projects. But, just how much of your organization is still physical vs. virtual? Are you going "all in" on the server side?
For my own organization - Westminster College - we're still running some physical workloads with active plans underway to eliminate as many of these physical servers as possible. We're about 70% to 75% virtual.
We still have some physical machines for specific purposes - i.e. our IP camera security system requires massive disk space so we house the separately. Our database server - soon to be a cluster - is physical. Finally, our backup server is physical and is housed elsewhere on campus.
Now it's your turn! Tell us about your environment.
We have around 600 windows servers, out of which 80 are virtualized on Hyper-V. Target is to acheive 50% virtualization in two years. The other 50% are either scattered in peripheries or are not supported under virtualized environment. However most of these would retire in a year or two, the new versions of these would be on virtualized environment.
Are you starting to look at all at Hyper-V 3.0? For Hyper-V shops or those that want to consider Hyper-V, take a look. It's going to being a lot of vSphere feature parity and a ton of new features.
We're much like the clients you mentioned in your posting. We have around 50 or so VMs running on 4 VM hosts. Our primary limiting factor is RAM in the hosts. As we replace the hosts, we'll get new ones with a whole lot more memory.
Server virtualization penetration in your organization
The significant cost, power and efficiency advantages of virtualization have accelerated its penetration within the organization. With the use of these tendency comes the potential for all IT infrastructures of organization to become virtual estates.
For these tendencies there lot of third party service providers will available.
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