VMware and Windows Server Standard

[snootalope]

So beings Microsoft Server Standard only supports 4GB of RAM, that means at the most, no matter what I do, I'd realistically only have maybe 3.5GB of RAM left for the VM's I plan to run on any one Standard server....Is this right? Or, is there a way around this to allow more memory to the VM's, even though the host OS doesn't accept more than 4GB?

Thanks for any info! We're really considering the VM route, just trying to get a better understanding..

 

[biglebowski]

ESX uses a slimmed down version of red hat linux as it's host and is capable of supporting up to 64GB ram with each vm running up to 16GB. You can also configure the vm's to have a total memory double that of the physical ram i.e on a host with 8gb you could have 4x vms with 4gb each.

The figures may have increased but that is what our version will support.

When I was born I was so suprised I didn't talk for 18 months

 

[biglebowski]

Just checked and it looks like the spec has doubled for 3.5

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/esx_datasheet.pdf

When I was born I was so suprised I didn't talk for 18 months

 

[TheLad]

I think the poster is using VMWare Server (GSX) installed on Windows Server not ESX, is this correct?

I would assume that is correct with Windows, I don't think the PAE switch would even make any difference on Windows Server 2003 Standard.

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"Insert funny comment in here!"
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[snootalope]

Correct, I don't have ESX. If I remember correctly, ESX isn't free.. ESX may be a possibility for us, but I'm just trying to see how far we can get with the free version.

 

[theravager]

Don't forget to checkout Hyper V. If you are doing a large deployment its several orders of magnitude cheaper on the cost department and the only thing you are going to miss out is the ability to hot swap vm's between hosts in seconds, (hyper-v is about 2-3 minutes but will support this in around 1st quarter 09)

The O/s licensing really makes it cheap if you are using 2008 as your base o/s

 

[MasterRacker]

The lowest version of ESX, ESXi was made free a few weeks ago. You might want to try that out.

http://www.vmware.com/products/esxi/

_____
Jeff
[small][purple]It's never too early to begin preparing for [/purple]International Talk Like a Pirate Day
"The software I buy sucks, The software I write sucks. It's time to give up and have a beer..." - Me[/small]

 

[ArizonaGeek]

The features that ESX has over ESXi, are things like VMotion, DRS, and HA plus 24/7 support, where ESXi only offers forums and email.

I highly recommend it, you don't have to deal with Microsoft's OS overhead!

Cheers
Rob

The answer is always "PEBKAC!

 

[snootalope]

well, I took you're advice and downloaded ESXi version 3. Burnt the ISO to a CD and tried installing it on one of our test servers.

Thing loads and starts the install, but it keeps going to a purple screen that says "press esc to enter the debugger" - apparently it doesn't like something.

Server has an 80GB hdd and 1GB of RAM. No raid or anything of the sort, just a single IDE drive.

Just a couple of snipits from the debugger:

@BLUESCREE: NOT_IMPLEMENTED/build/mts/release .........

NETCOALESCE: 1666: invalid NET_COAL_HDLR_PCPU1

This log file is huge, those are just two lines that jumped out at me.

Google didn't return anything helpful and neither did the vmware forums. I've been through the getting started guide, admin guide, as well as the compatiblity guide, and I can't find anything that tells me why I'd get this purple stop screen. I swear, nothing ever works the first time. ugh..

 

[snootalope]

ah ha! just found this:

"You use the ESX Server 3i CD?ROM to install the ESX Server 3i software onto a SATA,
SAS, or SCSI hard drive. Installing on a USB drive, an IDE/ATA drive, or a SAN?based
drive, such as FC SAN or iSCSI SAN, is currently not supported."

IDE drives are no go.. darn.