Hardware scaling for 8 Virtual machines

[jfk8680]

Hi,

We are looking to run 8 virtual machines inside a VMware Server (on 1 physical server).

These virtual machines are going to run Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition. The virtual machines are going to be used for staging and testing of our database application which uses the Pervasive transactional database engine. There are going to be approx. 2 to 4 concurrent users per virtual machine but I expect no more than 10 concurrent users in total.

Can anyone give me some insight in how to scale this server. I have configured 4 Proliant servers (DL380 and DL385):

Single CPU Dual Core Xeon 2.8Ghz with 5Gb RAM
Dual CPU Dual Core Xeon 2.8 Ghz wth 6Gb RAM
Single CPU Dual Core Opteron 280 2.4Ghz with 5Gb RAM
Dual CPU Dual Core Optreron 280 2.4Ghz with 5Gb RAM

The Dual Opteron server is approx. € 2.000,- more expensive compared to the single CPU Xeon machine.

I find it pretty difficult to determine the amount of horsepower this server is going to need. Of course more is better but can anyone give me some good arguments based on their own experience?

Thanks a lot!

Jeffrey

 

[comtec17]

You are designing the wrong way. It is almost impossible to say "I want this many VM's on a VMWare server" without knowing the workload. You will want to either put 1 VM on and check its usage prior to placing another VM on.

If possible, collect and use performance of CPU, RAM, Disk, and NIC from your current dev servers.

If you are planning to use ESX server than the single CPU servers will not work.

 

[spi200]

Hi

Ram is the Key to adding more servers, we run 20 Servers on one ESX Server with no problem, but it is optioned to the max.
I have herd of ne bank who put more than 50 test servers on one esx server. There is a performance hit with esx server of around 5 to 17% depending on what your running.

Regards

Dave

 

[jfk8680]

Since we are setting up a new test enviroment it is quite difficult to do performance tests like comtec17 is advicing.

I am not going to use ESX server but (the now free) VMWare Server. I calculated 512mb for the host OS and 512Mb for every VM.

I think we are going for the single CPU dual core Intel Xeon with 5Gb RAM. Since the machine will already be multi-processor due to the dual core, upgrading the machine with a second CPU will be very easy (no need to change the Windows kernel etc.)

Thanks for the input...

 

[comtec17]

Keep in mind by using "VMWare Server" aka GSX, you are only running an application ontop of an OS. You should take around 30% of your resources away since the main OS will use them.