Posts tagged Microsoft
Example cost: Virtual Private Cloud (updated)
Feb 10th
Back in September, 2009, I had written a post with a quick overview of what a private cloud (or infrastructure) looks like and some basic costs and information, including why it is a great product (I am biased).
Since then, Dell has retired the PE2900III model server and items change, this is an update for the basic configuration.
Reminder graphic:
2 Servers, 1 firewall
So, originally, the physical servers were configured as:
- Dell PE2900III (reasonably priced, very reliable, I have spares on the shelf)
- 4 ethernet ports (2 built in, 2 port card installed, more can be added)
- 2 73GB SAS drives mirrored together for booting VMware vSphere 4
- 32GB RAM (48GB is max for this hardware platform)
New servers look like:
- Dell PET610 (reasonable price, very reliable, spares to go onto the shelf)
- 4 ethernet ports (all built in)
- 2 80GB SATA drives mirrored together for booting VMware vSphere 4
- 48GB RAM (192GB max available – very expensive)
The reason for the RAM change is that I am seeing a 2:1 (or higher) ratio of RAM to CPU usage in terms of percentage, and 48GB is a good place for this sized system. Also, the newer Xeon 55xx series processors uses RAM sticks in 3s instead of 2 or 4 at a time. 48GB is 12 4GB sticks of RAM. The newer 55xx series of processors also has working hyper-threading (or H/T) and I am seeing very nice performance on servers deployed using this processor family in our network.
Cost difference? The original posting listed had estimated the cost at $1,600.00 per month (see previous post), and I estimate this to be very close, inching up to approximately $1,700.00 per month, and this number should be high. (for accurate pricing, please contact ipHouse sales people, they can run up a quote based on real numbers)
Windows 7 creates blue screen for your heart
Oct 23rd
Oh it is a joke, don’t take it seriously, but look at what you get in Japan – the Windows 7 Whopper.
Can’t wait until Apple releases OS XI – but with garden burger patties…
Click the link to read all about it and watch the video…
Example cost: Virtual Private Cloud on VMware
Sep 4th
In the last 6 months, I have helped multiple customers achieve their dream of a virtual machine environment built for them exclusively, but with abilities to control their virtual machine setup, configuration, turn up, tear down, etc. These dedicated infrastructure environments are in the ipHouse data center.
This isn’t ‘cloud computing’ as many people think of it (thanks to Amazon EC2 and the like), but it is pretty close to that vague definition, and with far more control available in terms of everything-vm-wise.
What do I mean? With this virtual private cloud, a customer can set up 3 Ubuntu systems, 2 Windows Server 2003, 1 FreeBSD, and 7 Windows Server 2008 systems. There really isn’t anything novel about this (again, reference Amazon EC2 and the like).
What is novel is that the customer can configure these VMs as they wish. Disk space allocation, partitioning, memory configurations, number of vCPUs. Basically, if you can do it on a physical server – you can do it virtually.
Another differentiating feature is that VMware vSphere 4 supports many operating systems while most public cloud providers offer a very limited number in comparison. This choice alone can be enough to warrant looking at this kind of solution.
No per hour fees, no storage fees (above what the customer has purchased), highly available (if configured to do so), dynamic resource scheduling (if configured to do so), bandwidth fees that are predictable. (see VMare vMotion and Storage vMotion, VMware HA, VMware DRS via website)
I’ll build a configuration example offering shared storage between the VMware physical servers. I’ll be doing some cost estimates for the per month fees. These estimates will be high and are purely shown for example. You would want to contact ipHouse Sales to get a real idea for the costs involved.
ipHouse releases VMware based server services
Apr 24th
Virtualization, one of the buzzwords flying around the Internet today, is a method of running separate servers (guests) with separate operating systems on shared physical hardware (the host). I wrote a quick summary back in February, 2009 that should help give some context.
Here at ipHouse, we have chosen to use VMware for our virtualization products. We chose VMware because of its reliability, great support for many guest operating systems, and integrated set of management tools for both the hosts (the physical servers) and the guests (the running virtual machines). In fact, ipHouse is an official licensee of the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP), a requirement to sell virtual server services to 3rd parties (and as far as I know, the only authorized hosting provider in Minnesota, though I would love to be corrected).
Dubbed ‘SV’ internally, there are 4 different server editions available.
But before I get into the servers (and their configurations) themselves, I’d like to list the supported operating systems (and Linux distributions), many of which are ready for quick deployment where only the final configuration options need to be entered.
Immediately we support:
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Standard and Enterprise, 32/64bit
- Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Standard and Enterprise, 32/64bit
- FreeBSD 7.x, 32/64bit
- Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron), 32/64bit
- RedHat Enterprise Linux 5, 32/64bit
These systems are available with and without operating system maintenance handled by ipHouse, and if you choose to maintain your own system(s), we have an interface in place to facilitate your needs for a virtual console that will give you the ability to power on, power off, and reset the system, as well as doing recovery in case of a configuration error.
How does this work? Here is a tutorial I whipped up (with editing help from Ben) using the client tools we will supply.
(and it was fun to make, but really needs a voice over)
Virtualization War II (VWII)
Apr 4th
Oooh, the virtualization wars are reaching a new level, and with this new video from Microsoft we have reached a new level of marketing misdirection with some future capabilities included.
The video focuses on 10 items that VMware says they have over Hyper-V…that are being refuted by the marketing and tech guy in the video.
Right away the viewer is presented with the first (of many) misdirection(s). There is a claim that Hyper-V supports live migration (compared to VMware vMotion), but you need to listen closely, it is in Windows Server 2008 R2, which hasn’t been released yet. They even say that, but it is quite subtle and could easily be missed. To do this kind of feature, a clustered filesystem is needed, which they talk about in the video…but it also is not released yet. This is just marketing for future enhancements, it isn’t a fact fighting battle, it is more of a tweedle beetle battle.
Two items are are ‘announced’ within the first 90 seconds. Ignore the techno error of Windows presenting the same LUN – Windows isn’t doing this, the SAN is doing so.
There is more, but I don’t want to ruin your viewing pleasure. So check it out, giggle where you need to, learn something new where you can.
One item in Microsoft’s favor is hardware support – only requirement is Hyper-V requires Intel-VT or AMD-V, otherwise, whatever Windows Server 2008 supports works out of the box. No issues on whether you can use straight SATA disks or this random RAID controller from the corner computer store. If it has a Windows driver…you can virtualize.
