[AusNOG] Back of envelope II

Fri Mar 6 14:44:23 EST 2009

Indeed.  I think VMWare's pricing people are stuck 5 years ago when SANs
were outrageously expensive, so anyone who could afford a SAN wouldn't
blink at dropping $20k USD on VMWare licenses.

Things have obviously changed.  I hope VMWare's pricing catches up soon,
as they're putting their most useful features out of reach of most
customers.

-----Original Message-----
From: Skeeve Stevens [mailto:skeeve at eintellego.net] 
Sent: Friday, 6 March 2009 2:37 PM
To: Campbell, Alex; Nathan Gardiner
Cc: ausnog at ausnog.net
Subject: RE: [AusNOG] Back of envelope II

Ouch

--
Skeeve Stevens, CEO/Technical Director
eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists
skeeve at eintellego.net / www.eintellego.net
Phone: 1300 753 383, Fax: (+612) 8572 9954
Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 / skype://skeeve
--
NOC, NOC, who's there?

Disclaimer: Limits of Liability and Disclaimer: This message is for the
named person's use only. It may contain sensitive and private
proprietary or legally privileged information. You must not, directly or
indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print, or copy any part of this
message if you are not the intended recipient. eintellego Pty Ltd and
each legal entity in the Tefilah Pty Ltd group of companies reserve the
right to monitor all e-mail communications through its networks.  Any
views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender,
except where the message states otherwise and the sender is authorised
to state them to be the views of any such entity. Any reference to
costs, fee quotations, contractual transactions and variations to
contract terms is subject to separate confirmation in writing signed by
an authorised representative of eintellego. Whilst all efforts are made
to safeguard inbound and outbound e-mails, we cannot guarantee that
attachments are virus-free or compatible with your systems and do not
accept any liability in respect of viruses or computer problems
experienced.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Campbell, Alex [mailto:Alex.Campbell at ogilvy.com.au]
> Sent: Friday, 6 March 2009 2:32 PM
> To: Skeeve Stevens; Nathan Gardiner
> Cc: ausnog at ausnog.net
> Subject: RE: [AusNOG] Back of envelope II
>
> VI Foundation (the $6k package below) doesn't achieve server
> redundancy,
> as it doesn't include VMotion, HA etc.
>
> To get VMotion you need VI Enterprise which is $19,595 USD for a 6 CPU
> Acceleration Kit.  I don't think that price includes
> support/maintenance
> which is mandatory.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net
> [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Skeeve Stevens
> Sent: Friday, 6 March 2009 2:21 PM
> To: Nathan Gardiner
> Cc: ausnog at ausnog.net
> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Back of envelope II
>
> I disagree.  There are some services/applications that lend themselves
> to clustering and many which do not unless a lot of expensive is
> involved.  Windows Servers, Citrix, Oracle and other DB servers,
> Exchange and so on are not easy to provide hardware redundancy without
> significant cost.
>
> I don't think the costs of VMware are that excessive.
>
>
http://store.vmware.com/DRHM/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayPr
> o
> ductDetailsPage&SiteID=vmware&Locale=en_US&Env=BASE&productID=83617500
>
> VMware Infrastructure Foundation Acceleration Kit for 6 Processors (VI
> Foundation, vCenter Server Foundation) + Gold (12x5) 1 Year Support
> US$3624 / AU$6194
>
> Gives you everything you want.  Not free no, but very reasonably
priced
> for what you get.
>
> I so agree however, if the application is simple and can be dealt with
> by load balancer or reverse proxy, such as web hosting, smtp or other
> simple solutions, then that is the way to go.
>
> ...Skeeve
>
>
> --
>
> Skeeve Stevens, CEO/Technical Director
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Nathan Gardiner [mailto:ngardiner at gmail.com]
> > Sent: Friday, 6 March 2009 1:56 PM
> > To: Skeeve Stevens
> > Cc: ausnog at ausnog.net
> > Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Back of envelope II
> >
> > VMWare ESX is an expensive way to achieve server redundancy, if
> that's
> > your only goal. SAN redundancy can be achieved through multipath on
> > linux with equivalent solutions on Windows. Network redundancy can
be
> > achieved through bonding or teaming of NIC adaptors.
> >
> > The equivalent of what you are achieving through virtualisation is
> > possible by deploying several hosts with the same function and using
> > content switches, or even OSPF/anycast, to allow a single node to be
> > taken down without (any/much) operational impact. Shared SAN storage
> > and clustered filesystems can allow several nodes (with the correct
> > application intelligence) to access the same data volumes.
> >
> > Virtualisation works well and reduces cost, but is not without
> > limitation. High network utilisation can saturate shared network
> > connections, high CPU can cause latency across the host, high SAN
> > utilisation can cause storage latency. High memory utilisation can
> > cause swapping, which in turn causes significant latency. You can
> > always scale VMWare hosts but there is a cost involved - the higher
> > you scale to deal with infrequent utilisation, the less of an
> > advantage you gain by virtualising (not to mention licensing costs
on
> > top).
> >
> >
> > Nathan
> >
> > On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 1:34 PM, Skeeve Stevens
> <skeeve at eintellego.net>
> > wrote:
> > > The ONLY solid way that I know to do good server redundancy is
with
> > Virtual Platforms that support SAN, Fibre Channel/iSCSI with diverse
> > heads.
> > >
> > > We manage multiple instances of VMware ESX/ESXi that have 2+ heads
> > backed into SAN's with both heads fed into Cisco switches - nearly
> > always 3560G/3750G-stacked configurations.
> > >
> > > Those have never gone down, even when upgrading the physical
> hardware
> > - VM's just migrate between heads.
> > >
> > > Some say VM's aren't appropriate for some applications... I would
> > debate that as even in a dedicated VM solution there is not many
apps
> > that wouldn't happily work with that given dedicated NIC, Storage,
> CPU
> > and RAM access.
> > >
> > > ...Skeeve
> > >
> > > --
> > > Skeeve Stevens, CEO/Technical Director
> > > eintellego Pty Ltd - The Networking Specialists
> > > skeeve at eintellego.net / www.eintellego.net
> > > Phone: 1300 753 383, Fax: (+612) 8572 9954
> > > Cell +61 (0)414 753 383 / skype://skeeve
> > > --
> > > NOC, NOC, who's there?
> > >
> > > Disclaimer: Limits of Liability and Disclaimer: This message is
for
> > the named person's use only. It may contain sensitive and private
> > proprietary or legally privileged information. You must not,
directly
> > or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print, or copy any part of
> > this message if you are not the intended recipient. eintellego Pty
> Ltd
> > and each legal entity in the Tefilah Pty Ltd group of companies
> reserve
> > the right to monitor all e-mail communications through its networks.
> > Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual
> sender,
> > except where the message states otherwise and the sender is
> authorised
> > to state them to be the views of any such entity. Any reference to
> > costs, fee quotations, contractual transactions and variations to
> > contract terms is subject to separate confirmation in writing signed
> by
> > an authorised representative of eintellego. Whilst all efforts are
> made
> > to safeguard inbound and outbound e-mails, we cannot guarantee that
> > attachments are virus-free or compatible with your systems and do
not
> > accept any liability in respect of viruses or computer problems
> > experienced.
> > >
> > >
> > >> -----Original Message-----
> > >> From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net [mailto:ausnog-
> > >> bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Michael Bethune
> > >> Sent: Friday, 6 March 2009 12:14 PM
> > >> To: ausnog at ausnog.net
> > >> Subject: [AusNOG] Back of envelope II
> > >>
> > >> Thanks folks for all the responses.
> > >>
> > >> Is it possible to do auto fail over redundant switching and what
> if
> > >> anything
> > >> in the Cisco range would do it?
> > >>
> > >> I remember using a dual cisco catalyst, but you ended up with a
> pair
> > of
> > >> tails, 1 from each catalyst, with a heart beat connecting the two
> > >> catalysts
> > >> together. Has the state moved on to allow you to have transparent
> > (to
> > >> the
> > >> connected hosts) redundant switching?
> > >>
> > >> Michael.
> > >>
> > >> _______________________________________________
> > >> AusNOG mailing list
> > >> AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
> > >> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > AusNOG mailing list
> > > AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
> > > http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
> > >
> _______________________________________________
> AusNOG mailing list
> AusNOG at lists.ausnog.net
> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog