Has your company/organisation started virtualisation?

Discussion in 'Polling Station' started by Kitkatninja, Apr 4, 2009.

?

Virtualisation Poll:

Poll closed May 4, 2009.
  1. 100% virtualised already

    7 vote(s)
    28.0%
  2. In progress

    7 vote(s)
    28.0%
  3. Not started, planning

    6 vote(s)
    24.0%
  4. Will not virtualize (eg costs outweight benefits)

    2 vote(s)
    8.0%
  5. Not applicable (eg using SBS, no server, using NAS, etc)

    3 vote(s)
    12.0%
  1. Kitkatninja
    Highly Decorated Member Award 500 Likes Award

    Kitkatninja aka me, myself & I Moderator

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    Hi All,

    Just wanted to see if your company/organisation has started down the virtualisation route for servers.

    -Ken
     
    Certifications: MSc, PGDip, PGCert, BSc, HNC, LCGI, MBCS CITP, MCP, MCSA, MCSE, MCE, A+, N+, S+, Server+
    WIP: MSc Cyber Security
  2. derkit

    derkit Gigabyte Poster

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    Not started, nor planning.

    We've only just completed a roll-out of XP SP2 so I can imagine we may get around to it by 2015 or so!!
     
    Certifications: MBCS, BSc(Hons), Cert(Maths), A+, Net+, MCDST, ITIL-F v3, MCSA
    WIP: 70-293
  3. drum_dude

    drum_dude Gigabyte Poster

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    Where I work they've got a lot of the servers i.e. lotus notes servers, anti-virus sitting on blades running VMWARE. They started doing this about 18 months ago.
     
    Certifications: MCP, MCSA 2000 , N+, A+ ,ITIL V2, MCTS, MCITP Lync 2010 & MCSA 2008, Sonus SATP SBC 1k/2k
    WIP: Hopefully Skype for Business and some Exchange stuff...
  4. AJ

    AJ 01000001 01100100 01101101 01101001 01101110 Administrator

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    Just got the blades and SAN installed, proof of concept completed and pilot about to start when the kids go back.

    Looking to start up around 800 thin clients by the start of term in September. Then we will be virtualising all of our server except for the DC's and exchange server.
     
    Certifications: MCSE, MCSA (messaging), ITIL Foundation v3
    WIP: Breathing in and out, but not out and in, that's just wrong
  5. zebulebu

    zebulebu Terabyte Poster

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    I voted 100% - though there's no way an organisation can ever be 100% virtual (large production DB servers, for instance). We're about as close as its possible to get - 95% of the way there, running ESX on an iSCSI SAN (EqualLogic)
     
    Certifications: A few
    WIP: None - f*** 'em
  6. JK2447
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    JK2447 Petabyte Poster Administrator Premium Member

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    We've got most of our production servers virtualised now running on a few blades. We've also got z890 mainframes running a 120 images of Suse Linux 8)
     
    Certifications: VCP4, 5, 6, 6.5, 6.7, 7, 8, VCAP DCV Design, VMConAWS Skill, Google Cloud Digital Leader, BSc (Hons), HND IT, HND Computing, ITIL-F, MBCS CITP, MCP (270,290,291,293,294,298,299,410,411,412) MCTS (401,620,624,652) MCSA:Security, MCSE: Security, Security+, CPTS, CCA (XenApp6.5), MCSA 2012, VSP, VTSP
    WIP: Google Cloud Certs
  7. Gingerdave

    Gingerdave Megabyte Poster

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    We are no where near that, although the company I work for is very server heavy in comparison to is user base, 1 server for every 5 to 6 people) the partners have been very lothe to, as they see it, "put all their eggs in one basket'

    We managed to convince them to let us try virtualisation and have ESX running on a HP GL380 with a nice big SCSI array and a lot of ram. So far its worked out really well with 11 servers on their at the moment, none of espically heavy use but its working happily with 11 on there.

    The problem we have is where to go from there, the main site would be big enough to have another VM host but the branch offices would not, so to a certain extent we are stuck.
     
    Certifications: A+,MCP, MCDST, VCP5 /VCP-DV 5, MCTS AD+ Net Inf 2008, MCSA 2008
    WIP: MCSA 2012
  8. onoski

    onoski Terabyte Poster

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    We've in the last six months had a HP San monster setup running several of our servers in clusters and 300Gn iSCSI's enclosure's.

    I must say whilst we're still in the process of learning and eventually implement more virtualisation in the organisation it's electricity hungry.

    I'd say all in all we're in progress and well on our way to being much more virtualised:)
     
    Certifications: MCSE: 2003, MCSA: 2003 Messaging, MCP, HNC BIT, ITIL Fdn V3, SDI Fdn, VCP 4 & VCP 5
    WIP: MCTS:70-236, PowerShell
  9. AJ

    AJ 01000001 01100100 01101101 01101001 01101110 Administrator

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    That's the same make os SAN as we're getting. What's the management like for it.
     
    Certifications: MCSE, MCSA (messaging), ITIL Foundation v3
    WIP: Breathing in and out, but not out and in, that's just wrong
  10. nugget
    Honorary Member

    nugget Junior toady

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    We had everything except the DC and exchange virtualised.
     
    Certifications: A+ | Network+ | Security+ | MCP (270,271,272,290,620) | MCDST | MCTS:Vista
    WIP: MCSA, 70-622,680,685
  11. zebulebu

    zebulebu Terabyte Poster

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    Awesome compared to the NetApp ****e. That NetApp Java WebUI is the worst thing I've ever used to manage anything - anywhere - ever. The EqualLogic is an absolute breeze to manage. We've had ours in running our VMFS for our ESX environment, plus some LUNs for Exchange for 18 months now and apart from one blip a couple of months back where a firmware bug knocked it out for 20 minutes, we haven't seen a single problem with it. Also, when we were lookimng at either adding a shelf to our current NetApp, or buying an entirely new EqualLogic SAN for our the database that serves our products we found that the NetApp was somewhere in the region of twice as much - just for the shelf of disks. No brainer.
     
    Certifications: A few
    WIP: None - f*** 'em
  12. zebulebu

    zebulebu Terabyte Poster

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    What's preventing you virtualising your DCs and Exchange, Nugg? We did ours about a year and a half ago and everything's been rosy ever since. We absolutely muller our Exchange server as well - 400 users, hardly anything in the way of mail limits hence enormous mailboxes, something like 1300 SAN IOPS at peak - yet never had even a murmur of performance problems.
     
    Certifications: A few
    WIP: None - f*** 'em
  13. Theprof

    Theprof Petabyte Poster

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    We have a pretty huge VM environment as well, although we don't have too many servers, I would say around 60, we did virtualize a good 70% of them... We also started around 18 months of so ago and we still want to virtualize more servers...

    In our environment, exchange is setup in a cluster, we have the main physical server running exchange and we have the backup which is ran in VMware. I don't know much about exchange but from what I was told is that the reason we didn't put exchange fully in VM is because of the I/O of our exchange server.
     
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    WIP: VCAP5-DCA/DCD | EMCCA
  14. BrizoH

    BrizoH Byte Poster

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    I've just moved to a new company as IT manager and I'm hoping to implement virtualisation there in the year ahead.

    Actually I've got a few questions and this seems as good a place as any to ask so I'm hoping the VMWare gurus can help out

    The current setup is 3 physical servers - 1 x DC/File Print, 1 x Exchange/Backup/AV and 1 x Terminal Services. All on Win 2k so after migrating to virtual machines a Windows 2008/Exchange 2007 migration will be in order

    My thoughts are to bring in 2 physical boxes with some direct attached shared storage (SAN would be nice but budget will be extremely tight so probably not an option).

    Convert the existing physical boxes to VM's, adding a second vm as domain controller/wsus and leave capacity to expand by at least a few more VM's (SQL a possibility plus whatever other requirements may arise)

    I'd probably split the VM's to 2 per ESX server, with each physical box having a bit of extra grunt so that in a server down scenario we can run all vm's on 1 box (albeit at reduced performance)

    Question time :biggrin

    Does anyone have any recommendations for the hardware/storage to use? Cost is going to be the biggest limiting factor, it has to be relatively cheap. My experience is with Dell so I was looking at a couple of Poweredge 2960's with MD3000 DAS but I'm definitely open to other options

    Backup solution - what are you guys using to backup ESX/Virtual machines? Ideally I'd like something that can back up/restore to file level for routine jobs (i.e file/folder/mailbox restores) - however in the future DR will be something I have to look at, so a solution to back up virtual disks would also be ideal. My thoughts are Arcserve for individual VM's and I've read good things about ESX ranger for DR

    All thoughts appreciated
     
    Certifications: CCNA, CCNA Security
    WIP: CCNP
  15. Kitkatninja
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    Kitkatninja aka me, myself & I Moderator

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    We're going to be using Windows 2008's Hyper-V, so can't help you with the VMWare or Citrix questions (just incase you haven't considered Citrix). However on the hardware side, we're most likely going to be using this: Intel's Modular Server. It's a Blade and SAN solution in one, you can even expand the SAN with additional storage.

    -Ken
     
    Certifications: MSc, PGDip, PGCert, BSc, HNC, LCGI, MBCS CITP, MCP, MCSA, MCSE, MCE, A+, N+, S+, Server+
    WIP: MSc Cyber Security
  16. Modey

    Modey Terabyte Poster

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    I wonder, if we go all virtual at our place, will my job also become virtual? What about my pay? :)
     
    Certifications: A+, N+, MCP, MCDST, MCSA 2K3, MCTS, MOS, MTA, MCT, MCITP:EDST7, MCSA W7, Citrix CCA, ITIL Foundation
    WIP: Nada
  17. Kitkatninja
    Highly Decorated Member Award 500 Likes Award

    Kitkatninja aka me, myself & I Moderator

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    You mean yours hasn't already? :tongue

    -ken
     
    Certifications: MSc, PGDip, PGCert, BSc, HNC, LCGI, MBCS CITP, MCP, MCSA, MCSE, MCE, A+, N+, S+, Server+
    WIP: MSc Cyber Security
  18. Modey

    Modey Terabyte Poster

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    I see a number on a screen briefly say 'C' after it at the end of the month, then it says 'D' for the rest of it. That's virtual I suppose. :)
     
    Certifications: A+, N+, MCP, MCDST, MCSA 2K3, MCTS, MOS, MTA, MCT, MCITP:EDST7, MCSA W7, Citrix CCA, ITIL Foundation
    WIP: Nada

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