# Oh I don't know **URL:** \ **Category:** Chatting over the Back Fence\ **Created:** [January 25, 2012, 7:19pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130 "2012-01-25T19:19:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![System1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/51bf81/32.png) [@System1](https://forums.suse.com/u/System1)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 7:19pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/1 "2012-01-25T19:19:51Z")
What do you want to talk about? ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 7:53pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/2 "2012-01-25T19:53:03Z")
On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:19:51 GMT Bob Crandell [bob@donttreadon.me](mailto:bob@donttreadon.me) wrote: [color=blue] > What do you want to talk about?[/color] > [http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/international/6307611/Fear-of-flying-Don-t-watch-this-video](http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/international/6307611/Fear-of-flying-Don-t-watch-this-video) – Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890) openSUSE 12.1 (x86\_64) Kernel 3.1.0-1.2-desktop up 2 days 17:43, 5 users, load average: 0.29, 0.14, 0.14 CPU Intel i5 CPU M520@2.40GHz | Intel Arrandale GPU ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 10:07pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/3 "2012-01-25T22:07:57Z")
The old days – Kim - 1/25/2012 1:07:48 PM ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2012, 10:10pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/4 "2012-01-25T22:10:49Z")
kgroneman wrote:[color=blue] > The old days[/color] Can it be that it was all so simple then? – Regards, Ben A L Jemmett. [http://flatpack.microwavepizza.co.uk/](http://flatpack.microwavepizza.co.uk/) ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 12:13am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/5 "2012-01-26T00:13:37Z")
Knees. On 1/25/2012 11:19 AM, Bob Crandell wrote:[color=blue] > What do you want to talk about?[/color] ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 12:20am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/6 "2012-01-26T00:20:36Z")
Virtualization… What is a good Dell/HP server for virtualizing a small oracle database and an application server? Currently is running on an old AIX server ~512MB memory, dual 800Mhz cores. Database is small enough to fit on a USB pen drive so storage needs to be only big enought to hold the virtual machines and the wee bit of data. Don’t care for fancy storage options, local storage is fine but I would like it to run ESX and have Vmwotion between two identical boxes. Pricing needs to come in under $40k all in. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 12:31am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/7 "2012-01-26T00:31:09Z")
On 25/01/12 22:20, GofBorg wrote:[color=blue] > Virtualization… > > What is a good Dell/HP server for virtualizing a > small oracle database and an application server? > Currently is running on an old AIX server ~512MB memory, > dual 800Mhz cores. Database is small enough to fit on a USB > pen drive so storage needs to be only big enought to hold the virtual > machines and the wee bit of data. > > Don’t care for fancy storage options, local storage is fine but > I would like it to run ESX and have Vmwotion between two identical boxes. > > Pricing needs to come in under $40k all in. > > [/color] How a bout this 3 X DL360G5 2 disks each. 3 NIC’s each 1 for storage 1 for access 1 for mgmt setup on of the 360’s and a OSS SAN somehting like opennas etc… create an NFS share for the vMware servers. Install vcenter on a vm in esx p2v your other vm. Done vcenter license (this is expensive ) depending on your budget I would try to get 3 vm hosts so you don’t get split brain. Hope this helps Lance ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 1:32am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/8 "2012-01-26T01:32:18Z")
Sort of what I was thinking except not sure why I would need or want a SAN other than being able to mount the same set of disks under all three servers. I’m rather fearful of the all eggs in a basket scenario with SAN but then again all eggs are in a RAID array as well and I’ve had more than one RAID array go bye bye over the years. I was thinking of a two box setup with arrays in each machine with a nightly rsync of the main VM to the secondary box which would act as a repository of the production system. The second box would be available for v-motion as well. Am I wrong thinking here? I’ve done a bit of virtualization but nothing sophisticated. I like the idea of having a live spare or two as it were. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 2:27am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/9 "2012-01-26T02:27:36Z")
On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:13:37 +0000, Mary Wood wrote: [color=blue] > Knees. > > On 1/25/2012 11:19 AM, Bob Crandell wrote:[color=green] > > > What do you want to talk about?[/color][/color] Thine knees or bees knees? ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 2:30am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/10 "2012-01-26T02:30:35Z")
On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:53:03 +0000, malcolmlewis wrote: [color=blue] > On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:19:51 GMT > Bob Crandell [bob@donttreadon.me](mailto:bob@donttreadon.me) wrote: > [color=green] > > > What do you want to talk about?[/color] > > [http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/international/6307611/Fear-of-flying-Don-](http://www.stuff.co.nz/travel/international/6307611/Fear-of-flying-Don-)[/color] > > t-watch-this-video Looks like fun. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 3:24am UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/11 "2012-01-26T03:24:20Z")
Mary Wood, [color=blue] > Knees.[/color] I see what you did there. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 4:23pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/12 "2012-01-26T16:23:41Z")
vMotion can only be used with shared storage, it moves the running processes and active memory, not the VM on disk. There are several options for turning local storage into shared, though I don’t have much experience with anything other than Lefthand VSA. Now, thinking out loud, I don’t think rsync would be an option… unless maybe the ‘SAN’ is NFS. Still, I’m not sure reading the large VM files would be healthy without the vmware system being aware. You could go third party like Veeam or other backup plug in, that would work. There are several multi-node licensing bundles for vMware that are very affordable and they do have a storage component now as well just for these types of environments. On 1/25/2012 5:32 PM, GofBorg wrote:[color=blue] > Sort of what I was thinking except not sure > why I would need or want a SAN other than being > able to mount the same set of disks under all three > servers. I’m rather fearful of the all eggs in a basket > scenario with SAN but then again all eggs are in a RAID > array as well and I’ve had more than one RAID array go > bye bye over the years. > > I was thinking of a two box setup with arrays in each machine with a nightly > rsync of the main VM to the secondary box which would act as a repository > of the production system. The second box would be available for > v-motion as well. > > Am I wrong thinking here? I’ve done a bit of virtualization but nothing > sophisticated. I like the idea of having a live spare or two as it were. > [/color] ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 7:21pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/13 "2012-01-26T19:21:43Z")
Currently on another setup I am using a system where the VM gets suspended in the middle of the night and the vmware directories get rsync’ed to another server. That is using KVM on Linux, not sure it would even be possible with ESX. It works well, but I was thinking it might be nice to have a setup where if a server failed it would switch to another running system. However, with the information that I am getting now it sounds like it will only protect against the loss of a server ‘box’ meaning motherboard, power supply, memory issues, NIC where the server goes away. Doesn’t address anything at the disk array level which is where nearly 100% of the failures I’ve experienced occur. I’ll have to revisit my strategy. Maybe clustering with HA is more what I need. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 8:02pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/14 "2012-01-26T20:02:38Z")
Yep, suspending a VM before copy would work… and there are ways to do that in the ESXi world. Its not linux though and its not an open architecture. HA basically restarts a VM on another host from the shared storage if the current host goes down or becomes otherwise unresponsive. FT (big licensing) runs 2 VM’s in ‘lockstep’ on two hosts at the same time - from shared storage. Neither of these protect against storage level failures. I know you know this, but I’m saying it anyway. Similar to the OSI model, the hypervisor sits on top of the hardware layer. It doesn’t care if the disk is FC, iSCSI, SAS, SATA, etc… It just needs disk. We see individual drive and power supply failures as our #1 and #2 maintenance items. Both are easily overcome by a level of redundancy. Then again, I also refuse to white box storage arrays (and pretty much anything but my own personal systems). I’ve only had to deal with two array failures in 15 years over countless systems, a record that I think is good. One was due to bad firmware and the other was just a stray cosmic ray that struck during a hot drive change. On 1/26/2012 11:21 AM, GofBorg wrote:[color=blue] > Currently on another setup I am using a system where the VM gets suspended > in the middle of the night and the vmware directories get rsync’ed to > another server. That is using KVM on Linux, not sure it would even be > possible with ESX. It works well, but I was thinking it might be nice to > have a setup where if a server failed it would switch to another running > system. However, with the information that I am getting now it sounds like > it will only protect against the loss of a server ‘box’ meaning motherboard, > power supply, memory issues, NIC where the server goes away. Doesn’t address > anything at the disk array level which is where nearly 100% of the failures > I’ve experienced occur. > > I’ll have to revisit my strategy. Maybe clustering with HA is more what I > need.[/color] ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 8:03pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/15 "2012-01-26T20:03:30Z")
GofBorg wrote: [color=blue] > Virtualization… > > What is a good Dell/HP server for virtualizing > > Pricing needs to come in under $40k all in.[/color] Have you looked at this? It’s not Dell/HP but it sure has some nice features. [http://www.intelmodularserver.com/](http://www.intelmodularserver.com/) – Kevin Boyle Calgary, Alberta Canada ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 9:20pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/16 "2012-01-26T21:20:18Z")
> Yep, suspending a VM before copy would work… and there are ways to do[color=blue] > that in the ESXi world. Its not linux though and its not an open > architecture.[/color] > That is something that keeps me out of the VMware camp actually. I love > the product otherwise. I still use Workstation on my PC. > [color=blue] > HA basically restarts a VM on another host from the shared storage if > the current host goes down or becomes otherwise unresponsive. FT (big > licensing) runs 2 VM’s in ‘lockstep’ on two hosts at the same time - > from shared storage.[/color] > I will propse two different configurations and let the bean counters decide. > [color=blue] > We see individual drive and power supply failures as our #1 and #2 > maintenance items.[/color] > That would be the same for me. > [color=blue] > Both are easily overcome by a level of redundancy.[/color] > The problem I’ve ended up with is multi-drive failures in an array. > It seems like once the array gets X years on it, the drives go on strike. > My record is about the same as yours. 2 arrays in 15 years, but even 1 > is painful enough. The system I am working on replacing is now 15 years old, > obviously a lot has changed since then. I’m just gathering information > to propose a new system that will have the same level of reliability with > added flexibility and at lower cost. Having worked with virtualization for > a number of years now, it is my opinion that being able to port virtual > machines around across hardware would provide a significant additional > capability. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 9:27pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/17 "2012-01-26T21:27:45Z")
A headline in Programmers Paradise: The NEW VMware Workstation 8 Run a full web or cloud environment right on your PC! Does that make it vaporware? ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 9:44pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/18 "2012-01-26T21:44:18Z")
> A headline in Programmers Paradise:[color=blue] > The NEW VMware Workstation 8 > Run a full web or cloud environment right on your PC! > > Does that make it vaporware?[/color] Well, they do allow ‘instance sharing’ now as well. You could build a cloud on your PC, all the elements are there, and if you stuck it in a co-lo somewhere…well there ya go. Here is what I think happened. VMware slowly allowed VMware server/GSX to all but die but realized that they needed something to compete in the small server space with the growing popularity of MS, KVM etc so they did a bit of tweaking to the licensing and interface of Workstation and voila’. Problem is, I don’t trust them anymore. I can see getting an envrionment set up and based around workstation only to have them pull the rug out on that idea. I have a hard time with companies that have policies that change like the wind. One reason we never heavily invested in Novell products outside of Netware, you never new if they were really committed to the product. ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 10:56pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/19 "2012-01-26T22:56:18Z")
Most of the workstation 8 improvements are spun really hard by marketing. They Basically made it so Workstation 8 and ESXi work together better, but not seamlessly. Workstation 8 can act as a partially featured administration client for VM’s on an ESXi cluster (but not hosts) and can easily send VM’s to that cluster. Going from Cluster to local Workstation 8 install still isn’t any different (shutdown and copy). One kind of wonders why it took 5 (#'s of esx/i) versions to get that functionality… But yeah, its here. Your comment on Novell’s product commitment is ironic considering Novell walked away from NetWare and not its other core products like GroupWise, IDM and Zen. You win some, you lose some I guess. 😃 On 1/26/2012 1:44 PM, GofBorg wrote:[color=blue][color=green] > > A headline in Programmers Paradise: > > The NEW VMware Workstation 8 > > Run a full web or cloud environment right on your PC! > > > > Does that make it vaporware?[/color] > > Well, they do allow ‘instance sharing’ now as well. > You could build a cloud on your PC, all the elements are there, > and if you stuck it in a co-lo somewhere…well there ya go. > > Here is what I think happened. VMware slowly allowed VMware server/GSX > to all but die but realized that they needed something to compete in > the small server space with the growing popularity of MS, KVM etc so they > did a bit of tweaking to the licensing and interface of Workstation and > voila’. Problem is, I don’t trust them anymore. I can see getting an > envrionment set up and based around workstation only to have them pull the > rug out on that idea. I have a hard time with companies that have policies > that change like the wind. One reason we never heavily invested in Novell > products outside of Netware, you never new if they were really committed to > the product. > > [/color] ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex022/uploads/suse/original/2X/5/5012ba89e3ffb5220dac47d5ea0ba032e2fe1cb6.png) [@system](https://forums.suse.com/u/system)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2012, 11:33pm UTC](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130/20 "2012-01-26T23:33:10Z")
GofBorg wrote: [color=blue] > Don’t care for fancy storage options, local storage is fine but > I would like it to run ESX and have Vmwotion between two identical > boxes. > > Pricing needs to come in under $40k all in.[/color] Last year I ordered three new Cisco UCS servers, fully loaded with dual 6-core processors each FC HBAs, the works and I think all three combined with 3-year 24x7x4 Smartnet came in at under $40k. I didn’t have much local storage. Then again… if you want VMotion you can’t really use local storage. You need shared storage. Could probably do a config like what I did, but with the the third server put a ton of storage in it, install SLES, and make it a cheap iSCSI SAN. (Could even put in iSCSI HBAs into the other two servers.) – Does this washcloth smell like chloroform? [Next page](https://forums.suse.com/t/oh-i-dont-know/22130.md?page=2)