VMware Questions.

[JstSurrender]

I'm completely knew and just starting research on VMware. I've read through some of the docs provided on the VMware website. Are there more docs that you guys have used/created/know of...that would be helpful in simply understanding more of the pieces and features VMware provides?

The county I work for is looking at VMware and just received the software to test it out. One thing my boss would like to find out about is the failover feature. He stated that after detecting a server failure, VMware could automatically reload/replicate that server onto another virtural/physical machine. If that is correct, can you do this over to another VLAN/Name space?

One thing I was lookin on the VMware site for is more documentation on Vmotion. However, I only was able to find information on the general purpose for VMotion.

Any help would be appreciated, just trying to learn more about VMware and it's capabilities from others that have experience with it.

~Scott

Infrastructure Intern
No Certs, Little experience, wanting to know more.

 

[jfrantz]

Scott,

The VMWare forums are a great place to learn and gain information.

http://www.vmware.com/community/index.jspa

Also check out Mike Laverick's page:

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/?page_id=174

VMWare has free webinars which are good for gleaning "how-to" information. You should be able to find the webinars on their web page. Depending upon where you are located, you may be able to attend a free seminar which will show you exactly what you want to do. I've been to an HP seminar in which a failed blade running VMWare gets automatically replicated to a new blade. Fantastic stuff!!

Also, since you mention that you work for a county, call HP/Dell/IBM and tell them you want a demo. I'm sure they'd jump at the chance to show their stuff. You certainly don't have to buy!

-Jeff

 

[paintballer]

Scott,
When you purchase the software I would go through VMware themselves rather than through IBM or HP. It's MUCH easier to get help right from VMware, rather than having to go through the server vendor to get help. Trust me, it will make life, MUCH easier.

Also, invaluable reading is

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn

which, on the lefthand pan you can get to the knowledge base, documentation, and, best of all, the discussion forums, which are very well moderated and often contributed to.

The failover feature is new with VI3 (Virutal Infrastructure 3) which I think that you're referring to their new HA (High Availablity) and is described in their Resource Management Guide here "

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vi_pubs.html"

, which I always use FoxIT reader to read instead of Adobe's programs. They describe HA as such "The HA cluster feature allows the virtual machines running on ESX Server systems to
automatically recover from host failures. When a host goes down, all associated virtual
machines are immediately restarted on other hosts in the system."

VI3 has many new and wonderful features, read about it, and you'll be sold.

I hope that helps.
Paintballer

 

[Blithespirit]

Vmotion is a great tool, it allows you to move a running VM from one host to another, a few things to remember on Vmotion.


Essentials
Same CPU family on both boxes.
Must have Virtual Centre (obvious I know! sorry!)
Boxes must be in the same farm on Virtual centre
must be connected to the same SAN (whatever storage you are using)storage.
really needs own network to transfer data over (third or more NIC)

the really beauty of Vmotion is hot migration, never mind failover, as much as I love VMWare the cost of failover is high. using traps and alarms can give clear indicators of iminent failover and VM clustering over two EXS servers is much better and resilient.

this is only in my opinion!

thanks