Virtualization: ESX/Vsphere vs. Xen Server

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Zeon

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#62049 28-May-2010 14:03

Hey Guys,
So I'm looking at improving our current server environment. Currently we run 2 ESXi servers and a normal VMWare Server 2 on 2003 x64 host. Details:

- Auckland Head Office - 2x quad core CPU + 16GB Ram on ESXi (10 VMs)
- Wellington Branch Office - 1x dual core CPU + 4GB RAM on ESXI (3 VMs)
- Datacenter - 1x quad core CPU + 8GB RAM on VMware server

ESXi is pretty good for free but I'm interested in changing Auckland head office to a high availability set of servers with shared storage (iSCSI). Also, we want to choose a more integrated platform e.g. Vsphere on VMware with all the servers in one place, active directory integration etc.

To replace Auckland's current single server I'm looking @:

VM server 1: 1x 8-core AMD, 16GB RAM
VM server 2: 1x 8-core AMD, 16GB RAM
SAN: 1x 8-core AMD, 4GB RAM, 4x 2TB HDD in RAID 10 System. 10x 2TB HDD in RAID 5 Storage, Shared network Folders etc.

I'm currently seriously looking at switching to Xen Server as the pricing is heaps better and I've head many good things about the speed. Anyone have advice, experience input and does my above config look OK?

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#335801 28-May-2010 14:22

XenServer is very good, been running it for a look time and for a smaller environment it's perfect functionality and price wise.
If you can, hold off until XS 5.6 (currently in beta) because they have added a lot more functions that 5.5 doesn't correctly have.
XenServer is very fastly catching upto VMware as a better hypervisor than ESX.

Regs

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Snowflake

#335822 28-May-2010 15:53

a client of mine is using Xen- speedwise everything is sweet. he finds it a lot harder when he runs into problems though, as the supportbase is a lot smaller than vmware and hyper-v. things such as iscsi confguration and network trunking were painful, i'm told.

i've never worked on it myself, so cant vouch for the accuracy of this information...

have you considered Hyper-V at all? performance wise, it is stacking up just as well as the other two. generally currently better suited to MSFT guest operating systems, but there are integration components for linux distros being released with the next service packs too.

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Zeon

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#335830 28-May-2010 16:07

Regs: a client of mine is using Xen- speedwise everything is sweet. he finds it a lot harder when he runs into problems though, as the supportbase is a lot smaller than vmware and hyper-v. things such as iscsi confguration and network trunking were painful, i'm told.

i've never worked on it myself, so cant vouch for the accuracy of this information...

have you considered Hyper-V at all? performance wise, it is stacking up just as well as the other two. generally currently better suited to MSFT guest operating systems, but there are integration components for linux distros being released with the next service packs too.

Hmmm yea I guessed as much. TBH I have never really had any issues with ESXi, kinda like a set and forget. It may just be worth while paying for a support contract. However setting up iSCSI etc. is gonna be important so thats a little worrying.

TBH I haven't really considered hyper-v as I have thought of it as very MS centric. About half of our VMs are Linux or FreeBSD so I would feel we may be disadvantaged?

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amanzi

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#335889 28-May-2010 18:49

Zeon: TBH I haven't really considered hyper-v as I have thought of it as very MS centric. About half of our VMs are Linux or FreeBSD so I would feel we may be disadvantaged?

Microsoft officially only supports one or two Linux distributions on Hyper-V, but my understanding is that others 'should' work. One of the advantages of Hyper-V is that you can use the free version of Hyper-V R2 Server and get a virtual environment set up with live migration and fail-over. So it might not be for you if you want official support for Linux of FreeBSD, but could be worth looking at.

insane

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#336151 29-May-2010 22:11

Zeon:
Regs: a client of mine is using Xen- speedwise everything is sweet. he finds it a lot harder when he runs into problems though, as the supportbase is a lot smaller than vmware and hyper-v. things such as iscsi confguration and network trunking were painful, i'm told.

i've never worked on it myself, so cant vouch for the accuracy of this information...

have you considered Hyper-V at all? performance wise, it is stacking up just as well as the other two. generally currently better suited to MSFT guest operating systems, but there are integration components for linux distros being released with the next service packs too.

Hmmm yea I guessed as much. TBH I have never really had any issues with ESXi, kinda like a set and forget. It may just be worth while paying for a support contract. However setting up iSCSI etc. is gonna be important so thats a little worrying.

TBH I haven't really considered hyper-v as I have thought of it as very MS centric. About half of our VMs are Linux or FreeBSD so I would feel we may be disadvantaged?

Setting up VMware ESXi / vSphere with an iSCSI SAN is childs play, especially with something like a Dell Eqalogics SAN. VMware have some pretty complete documentation on it to ensure your environment complies with best practises. If you're running fewer than 32 guests then you could even look at using a Dell MD3000i.

Just have to remember that for ESXi you'll need to have access to a CMA to configure the iSCSI switch and vmkernel ports, uplinks and to set things like jumbo frames and MPIO

Could always look at transferring your VMs to a hosting provider who already runs a vSphere environment, but I know you don't trust people who take part in that DIA scheme so that probably counts me out :D , but it would means that your VM's get all the features of vSphere Enterprise plus that you may not able to afford on your own.

Zeon

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#336242 30-May-2010 11:43

Setting up VMware ESXi / vSphere with an iSCSI SAN is childs play, especially with something like a Dell Eqalogics SAN. VMware have some pretty complete documentation on it to ensure your environment complies with best practises. If you're running fewer than 32 guests then you could even look at using a Dell MD3000i.

Just have to remember that for ESXi you'll need to have access to a CMA to configure the iSCSI switch and vmkernel ports, uplinks and to set things like jumbo frames and MPIO

Could always look at transferring your VMs to a hosting provider who already runs a vSphere environment, but I know you don't trust people who take part in that DIA scheme so that probably counts me out :D , but it would means that your VM's get all the features of vSphere Enterprise plus that you may not able to afford on your own.

Hmmm.. I am leaning more towards Xen Server at the moment as pricing up VMware its hugely expensive. The thing is that with these server we pretty much require it to be onsite as we need 1gbps connectivity at least and as much up time as possible. If we lost connectivity our business would basically stop. So I'm not sure on relying on a fibre line that could be cut etc. would be very smart.

And yes - DIA is evil!!!

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insane

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#336389 30-May-2010 21:37

Zeon:

Setting up VMware ESXi / vSphere with an iSCSI SAN is childs play, especially with something like a Dell Eqalogics SAN. VMware have some pretty complete documentation on it to ensure your environment complies with best practises. If you're running fewer than 32 guests then you could even look at using a Dell MD3000i.

Just have to remember that for ESXi you'll need to have access to a VMA to configure the iSCSI switch and vmkernel ports, uplinks and to set things like jumbo frames and MPIO

Could always look at transferring your VMs to a hosting provider who already runs a vSphere environment, but I know you don't trust people who take part in that DIA scheme so that probably counts me out :D , but it would means that your VM's get all the features of vSphere Enterprise plus that you may not able to afford on your own.

Hmmm.. I am leaning more towards Xen Server at the moment as pricing up VMware its hugely expensive. The thing is that with these server we pretty much require it to be onsite as we need 1gbps connectivity at least and as much up time as possible. If we lost connectivity our business would basically stop. So I'm not sure on relying on a fibre line that could be cut etc. would be very smart.

And yes - DIA is evil!!!

Of course a fully hosted solution doesn't work for everything, but that's why there is this coming together of the 'private and public cloud' so to speak. Sorry I hate using the term 'cloud' but you can't escape it now.

You can manage a single environment with some servers on site at your office (file stores etc ) and then host say terminal services and maybe email from a data centre for higher uptime.

I've only played a little bit with Xen Server, from what I've seen its pretty darn good and more than enough for most peoples needs. to be honest it looks like a total rip off of vmware though, their layout and naming of features is rather similar. If you do choose to use both then it just makes it another playform you have to master and manitain.

Do share with us your experience when you finally do ahead with this, will be interesting to know of what to watch out for and things to look forward to.

Also spot my ninja edit, I was meant to say VMA and not CMA above.. been playing around with checkpoint too much lately :P

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CB_24

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#336457 31-May-2010 08:54

XenServer 5.6 is now out, go for it!

icepicknz

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#336466 31-May-2010 09:14

I'm personally running iSCSI using open-e and 2 XenServers, running nicely and don't have issues with it.
The free version of XenServer has nice features like xenmotion which allows you to move servers from one to another without shutting them down, this is quite handy, though vmware may have this for free now days but I havent used vmware for a long time.

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browned

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#338442 5-Jun-2010 08:22

I setup Windows Server Datacenter core with hyper-v, cost $8K for a dual cpu license, but that now gives us the right to use any Windows OS on the box for free (no license required), you still need to buy CAL's but our initial setup didn't require any as we already have the CAL's for 2003 server.

Backup addon cost about $1k less than the VM version.

The box is a HP DL385 G6, 2 x Amd 6 core CPU's, 16GB Ram (expandable to 144GB), and it can take 2 x 8 disk cages for 2.5" SAS HDD, we are only running 6 x 146GB at the moment. Total cost for it all was $20k and we currently have 15vm's and no real need for more at the moment. Server also comes with 4 x NIC ports + one iLO Management.

I was surprised at it all really, once I had done the figures the VMware option was way to costly, all of the 15 VM's are Windows and some moved from old ESXi boxes, and some new installs so the savings in Windows Licenses would already be about $10k, and it also helped with license compliance as we had got ahead of ourselves.

I see HP have the DL385 G7's out that can take the 12 core AMD cpus.

Home Server: AMD Threadripper 1950X, 64GB, 56TB HDD, Define R6 Case, 10GbE, ESXi 6.7, UNRAID, NextPVR, Emby Server, Plex Server.
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insane

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#338574 5-Jun-2010 17:48

Can I ask why do you think the VMware option would have been any more? You can still pay for the MS Datacentre volume licence for the ESXi host (might need 1 licence per socket) and then run any other lesser MS OS with volume licencing without reporting them. At least that is how I understand it and our MS rep agreed as well as the auditors who recently checked things out.

I'm not sure what product you're using for backups but from what you've said that is the only thing that sounds like it could cost more for you.

browned

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#338789 6-Jun-2010 14:16

The license for Datacenter AFAIK specifically states the Datacenter OS must be running on a physical machine. The free Windows Licenses must also be running as virtual machines on the datacenter so running datacenter as a virtual machine on ESX is not an option.

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#338926 6-Jun-2010 23:40

browned: The license for Datacenter AFAIK specifically states the Datacenter OS must be running on a physical machine. The free Windows Licenses must also be running as virtual machines on the datacenter so running datacenter as a virtual machine on ESX is not an option.

I would have a talk to your MS Licenncing rep to give you some clarification around it

From the SPUR this this the paragraph in questions.

Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter and Datacenter for Outsourcing and Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium Based Systems and Windows Server 2008 R2 for Itanium Based Systems for Outsourcing. You need one software license for each physical processor on a server, which permits you to run on that server, at any one time,

i. one instance of the server software in one physical operating system environment, and

ii. any number of instances of the server software in virtual operating system environments (only one instance per virtual operating system environment).

You may run on the licensed server an instance of Web, Standard or Enterprise in place of Datacenter in any operating system environment.

I know MS do show some favoritism to Hyper-V over VMware when it comes to P2V'ing of machines and the licencing which goes around that, in particular OEM licencing.

browned

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#338972 7-Jun-2010 10:34

That license is for a service provider I am not an SP and I believe the OP is not a SP as well.

Datacenter licensing info http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/licensing-datacenter.aspx

Regs

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#339165 7-Jun-2010 21:38

browned: That license is for a service provider I am not an SP and I believe the OP is not a SP as well.

Datacenter licensing info http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/licensing-datacenter.aspx

i'm pretty sure you can roll out VMWare and Xen with the data center licenses too. Nowhere in your link does it say you have to run it as the physical host.

SQL Server also comes with a data center license.. thats certainly not limited to hyper-v.

Better check with your MS licensing rep....

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