What tools are on your Swiss Army knife?
Xy User Group web server now running as a virtual machine
We are pleased to announce that the XyUser group website has been successfully moved over to a virtual server.
Software
Our weapon of choice is VMware's ESXi , a free bare metal enterprise-class hypervisor with an incredible 32 MB disk footprint on the Host.
Hardware
We purchased a pretty low spec dual Xeon 2 x 3.4GHz with 3Gb DDR2 SDRAM Dell Poweredge 1850 which we picked up from the popular online Tat bazaar we all know and love for a very reasonable £200.
Results
We have managed to squeeze 3 VM's on this host so far and are pleased with the results. The user group website is certainly running faster than it was before.
We are now in the process of monitoring the performance charts and resource allocation to see how we can scale up from here.
2 users commented on " Xyug.org is now virtual! "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackHedley,
It certainly runs faster than before.
Thank you for that.
Virtualisation is the way to go.
Don’t know how much the Ram modules cost you can push into that machine, but I would invest in at least 4 GB extra, certainly if you want to run more than 1 VM on it.
Bart
Hi Bart,
yes, virtualisation is definitely the way to go.
It still seems to be half magic to me though and we are continually having “aha!” moments when we realise what it means to us not only in terms of hardware consolidation but also Disaster Recovery.
This server is a pretty low spec one in today’s market so we aren’t expecting wonders from this. It is more a lab testing device to allow us to see the benefits of VM’s without any huge outlay. The PowerEdge 1850 can hold up to 16GB of Ram so there is plenty of room for improvement here and as it connects to the iSCSI SAN box through embedded initiators (brilliant!), storage isn’t an issue either.
Up until recently my only concern was the lack of USB support in the ESX range, not just for storage but for hardware dongles as well as our Pre-flighting software uses these. We have since found some USB Network Software from http://www.fabulatech.com and also a hardware solution from http://www.digi.com that neatly gets round this. Belkin also supply a unit but lacks any drivers for 2000/2003 so is only really a desktop solution.