Yup, I've got a DL-380 here - with 8x SAS drives on that one too, but only
10k.
I/O is good on it, though, you're right. A far better choice than
the 145 with only a pair of SATA drives.)
Moving a VM to new hardware is fairly simple. If you're running Hyper-V, you
should export the VM and then move the files, and import on the target end.
If Virtual Server, you just move the files, and recreate the VM, pointing to
the VHDs. In both cases, you're likely to have to recreate the networking to
match. (That first boot of the VM can be a bit slow if you don't match it up
exactly.)
Another alternative, and one I really like, is using SCVMM to manage VM
locations. It does a really good job of moving VMs and managing which ones
are where. You'll need the (soon to be released) 2008 version to handle
Hyper-V. The 2007 version only does VS.
--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/blogs/xperts64 http://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/charlie.russel
"Geb" <geb@_nospam.com> wrote in message
news:e$WZJtGCJHA.1224@xxxxxx
Quote:
> Charlie Russel - MVP wrote:
> Quote:
>> Yup, gives me a good picture.
>>
>> You're I/O bound. SATA drives are simply getting more than they can
>> handle. Honestly, Virtualization is a great thing, but it seriously
>> stresses the I/O subsystem. Then you've put all your stuff on the
>> system drive, creating additional load. And finally, to compound the
>> problem, you've got 4k clusters - I like something more on the order
>> of 16k clusters or even larger on VHD storage.
>>
>> If you're going to use SATA drives, you've be FAR better off having
>> more, but smaller drives, configured in an array. I don't know what
>> your physical server looks like, but if you can put in an array of 6
>> or 8 smaller SATA (or better yet, SAS) drives, you'll change the
>> picture completely. To give you an idea, here's how my main Hyper-V
>> server is configured. (It's an HP ML-350G5 with dual 5130 CPUs and a
>> SmartArray P400 controller, plus an additioanl Adaptec SAS
>> controller.)
>>
>> 2 - 36 GB SAS drives - RAID-1 - C: drive, system
>> 2 - 320 GB SATA drives - RAID-0 - D: drive - temporary, disposable
>> storage. ISOs, etc.
>> 8 - 72 GB, 2.5", 15k SAS drives - RAID-5 - E: drive - my VHDs reside
>> here.
>>
>> Even that isn't perfect - I'd do better with RAID-10 for the VHD
>> drive, but it would mean swapping out the 72GB drives for 144's and
>> the budget won't handle that right now.
>
>
> Thanks for the info. I usually get DL380s which have better disk I/O
> but I had to resort to using a DL145 for the virtual server.
>
> Btw, how is easy/hard is it to move a VM to another physical hardware,
> would it be just moving a few files (vhd, etc)?
>
> Thanks.
>
>
>
> --
>