Re: Re: [gentoo-dev] OffTopic: VMWare ESX

Re: Re: [gentoo-dev] OffTopic: VMWare ESX

[Matthew Marlowe]

ESX is a completely different beast than workstation, or GSX for that matter.

Good:
-  Very, very stable
-  The only real vmware software designed for server apps
-  Performance VM QoS for disk, cpu, network, etc
-  Easily run 30-40 VM's on a strong box w/ good mem
-  Deals with lots of NIC's assigned to different vm's
-  Per VM User Access Policies
-  Very nice realtime performance reporting
  
Bad:
- Dont use for apps that really need performance of
dedicated boxes
- Not cheap, especially if get all the management add ons.
- Setting up some of the networking is more complicated than
it needs to be.
- Not very good w/ linux 2.6 kernel support yet (read, dont do it)
-  I don't find the rollback, and cloning functionality as useful
as others.  In fact, I've seen some vm's be corrupted if you
select the "append" mode for disk writes, which creates
a redo log that can get lost if the server hardware crashes.

Matt

--- Original Message---
 To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org
 From: John Mylchreest <johnm@gentoo.org>
 Sent:  5/04/2005  2:16PM
 Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] OffTopic: VMWare ESX

>> Hi there, thanks for getting back to me.
>> 
>> basically, What I was wanting to know is actual hands-on experience.
>> Whats it like? Pros? Cons? What to watch out for? what its exceptionally
>> good at? whats it exceptionally bad at? bugs? all the normal kind of
>> questions really. How is it so different to vmware workstation? what big
>> management (of guest OS and resource allocation) features are there?
>> 
>> Also, if you can, how you use it. what it is you do with it? Application
>> clustering? etc etc.
>> 
>> All the stuff which doesnt come out of press releases, reviews and
>> promos :)
>> 
>> Cheers, in anticipation :)
>> Regards,
>> John
>> 
>> P.S. DK, what happened last fall is water under the bridge.
>> Misconceptions all around, and glad to see your still here.
>> 
>> On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 15:12 -0400, Omkhar Arasaratnam wrote:
>> > John Mylchreest wrote:
>> >
>> > >Hi All,
>> > >
>> > >Apologies for posting my question to such lists, but it hits the exact
>> > >audience I'm after a response from :)
>> > >
>> > >Does anyone at work run Vmware ESX Server? If so, could they please get
>> > >in touch with me so that I might talk about experiences?
>> > >
>> > >Regards,
>> > >John
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > John,
>> >
>> > I've worked with it before and have a number of colleagues in the field
>> > - what's up?
>> >
>> > --
>> >
>> > Omkhar Arasaratnam - Gentoo PPC64 Developer
>> > omkhar@gentoo.org - http://dev.gentoo.org/~omkhar
>> > Gentoo Linux / PPC64 Linux: http://ppc64.gentoo.org
>> >
>> --
>> Role:            Gentoo Linux Kernel Lead
>> Gentoo Linux:    http://www.gentoo.org
>> Public Key:      gpg --recv-keys 9C745515
>> Key fingerprint: A0AF F3C8 D699 A05A EC5C  24F7 95AA 241D 9C74 5515
>> Web:
>> http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x9C745515
>> 
>> 


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gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] OffTopic: VMWare ESX

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

There are also some serious performance issues with I/O. Xen is a much
better way to go in the long run. See

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=70161

for the team that's working to bring Xen to life in Gentoo, and the Xen
home page at

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/performance.html



Matthew Marlowe wrote:

>ESX is a completely different beast than workstation, or GSX for that matter.
>
>Good:
>-  Very, very stable
>-  The only real vmware software designed for server apps
>-  Performance VM QoS for disk, cpu, network, etc
>-  Easily run 30-40 VM's on a strong box w/ good mem
>-  Deals with lots of NIC's assigned to different vm's
>-  Per VM User Access Policies
>-  Very nice realtime performance reporting
>  
>Bad:
>- Dont use for apps that really need performance of
>dedicated boxes
>- Not cheap, especially if get all the management add ons.
>- Setting up some of the networking is more complicated than
>it needs to be.
>- Not very good w/ linux 2.6 kernel support yet (read, dont do it)
>-  I don't find the rollback, and cloning functionality as useful
>as others.  In fact, I've seen some vm's be corrupted if you
>select the "append" mode for disk writes, which creates
>a redo log that can get lost if the server hardware crashes.
>
>Matt
>
>--- Original Message---
> To: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org
> From: John Mylchreest <johnm@gentoo.org>
> Sent:  5/04/2005  2:16PM
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] OffTopic: VMWare ESX
>
>  
>
>>>Hi there, thanks for getting back to me.
>>>
>>>basically, What I was wanting to know is actual hands-on experience.
>>>Whats it like? Pros? Cons? What to watch out for? what its exceptionally
>>>good at? whats it exceptionally bad at? bugs? all the normal kind of
>>>questions really. How is it so different to vmware workstation? what big
>>>management (of guest OS and resource allocation) features are there?
>>>
>>>Also, if you can, how you use it. what it is you do with it? Application
>>>clustering? etc etc.
>>>
>>>All the stuff which doesnt come out of press releases, reviews and
>>>promos :)
>>>
>>>Cheers, in anticipation :)
>>>Regards,
>>>John
>>>
>>>P.S. DK, what happened last fall is water under the bridge.
>>>Misconceptions all around, and glad to see your still here.
>>>
>>>On Wed, 2005-05-04 at 15:12 -0400, Omkhar Arasaratnam wrote:
>>>      
>>>
>>>>John Mylchreest wrote:
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>>>Hi All,
>>>>>
>>>>>Apologies for posting my question to such lists, but it hits the exact
>>>>>audience I'm after a response from :)
>>>>>
>>>>>Does anyone at work run Vmware ESX Server? If so, could they please get
>>>>>in touch with me so that I might talk about experiences?
>>>>>
>>>>>Regards,
>>>>>John
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>          
>>>>>
>>>>John,
>>>>
>>>>I've worked with it before and have a number of colleagues in the field
>>>>- what's up?
>>>>
>>>>--
>>>>
>>>>Omkhar Arasaratnam - Gentoo PPC64 Developer
>>>>omkhar@gentoo.org - http://dev.gentoo.org/~omkhar
>>>>Gentoo Linux / PPC64 Linux: http://ppc64.gentoo.org
>>>>
>>>>        
>>>>
>>>--
>>>Role:            Gentoo Linux Kernel Lead
>>>Gentoo Linux:    http://www.gentoo.org
>>>Public Key:      gpg --recv-keys 9C745515
>>>Key fingerprint: A0AF F3C8 D699 A05A EC5C  24F7 95AA 241D 9C74 5515
>>>Web:
>>>http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x9C745515
>>>
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>
>
>  
>
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] OffTopic: VMWare ESX

[Donnie Berkholz]

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M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> There are also some serious performance issues with I/O. Xen is a much
> better way to go in the long run. See

Did you read his post that said that wasn't an option? I hope not,
because it would be annoying if you posted this anyway.
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