Vista - Clustering VM's

I have a Dell R905, 4 - 2.0ghz quad core Opteron's, 32gb RAM, connected to
Dell MD3000 array with 2tb storage. I'd like to know thoughts on if we can
run 3 VM clusters and 3 VM standalone servers on a box of this size? I'd
allocate 4gb RAM to each primary server and 3gb to each cluster partner. The
reason for the clusters is completely for software maintenance/patching, the
apps can't be down (yeah whatever). These servers now run on individual Dell
2650's w/Xeon 3.0 ghz 4 gb RAM. I collected 2 weeks of perfmon and the CPU
avg was about 10%, peaks at 35% for short periods. Are there any resources
to gauge how much you can push a box with Virtual Server 2005 or am I
basically on a build it and see adventure?

Thanks for any thoughts!

john

Total of 9 VMs if my count is correct should be able to run on your machine,
with the standard cavet regarding resources. Basically, you have 16
processors with 2 GB memory per virtual machine and you'll have unused
processer and memory for the physical machine. Storage and network IO will
be your major concern.

Keep in mind that building clusters for production work isn't recommended at
this time. For testing and labs it's okay, but for production work your
putting your eggs all in one basket.

"JohnC" <john.corbin@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OKeAEPe8IHA.1196@xxxxxx

On Jul 30, 9:27*am, "Tim Walsh" <tmwa...@xxxxxx> wrote:Tim,

Thanks for your reply. Yes I understand everything is based on
resources. I failed to mention that I *could* also cluster the hosts
if the host can handle the workload, that way I have a way to take
production servers offline to patch with no downtime, and also a fail-
over for hardware failure on the host. We have redundant networks
already. I guess my only worry would be the disk array, which would be
RAID5, so it would take a pretty catastrophic event to knock it all
offline completely. But your right all the eggs would be resting on
that disk array as thats where the VHD's would all reside.

John

John,

Your right a Raid 5 would have to take a major hit to lose your VMs, one
option would be to use VSS and take snap shots of your VMs and back the
snapshot up on a different machine, assuming you have the space available
elsewhere.

I just build a Clustered VM for my developers so they could practice setting
up IIS on it before I give them the new hardware. Their manager wasn't happy
that I wouldn't give them 2 physical clusters and insisted they use a
virtual one to play with. The developer himself is amazed at the virtual
machines performance, and the speed at which I set it up for him, he barely
had time to get a cup of coffee. The MS white papers are great tools when
setting them up.

Regards
Tim
<jcorbin121@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:3121f658-0328-415c-b6bc-7c3c654148f9@xxxxxx
On Jul 30, 9:27 am, "Tim Walsh" <tmwa...@xxxxxx> wrote:Tim,

Thanks for your reply. Yes I understand everything is based on
resources. I failed to mention that I *could* also cluster the hosts
if the host can handle the workload, that way I have a way to take
production servers offline to patch with no downtime, and also a fail-
over for hardware failure on the host. We have redundant networks
already. I guess my only worry would be the disk array, which would be
RAID5, so it would take a pretty catastrophic event to knock it all
offline completely. But your right all the eggs would be resting on
that disk array as thats where the VHD's would all reside.

John

atTim,

Just curious, is that recommendation from Microsoft ?

On Aug 2, 1:35*pm, "Bruce Sanderson" <bsand...@xxxxxx>
wrote:Yes I was referring to the VM's , sorry for getting off track
there......