[AusNOG] Back of envelope II

[Darren Moss]

Hi Shane,

Funny you should mention that.
We don't use virtualisation for "sharing" the same resources, we
generally use it to 'loan' resources for tasks operating on a grunty
server.

For example, we have customers who host their financials and payroll
apps with us.
So, we 'loan' CPU cycles (that they would not normally have access to)
from the app server when utilisation allows.
This means they can run payroll and reporting overnight when nobody else
is utilising CPU cycles.

We also run newsletter broadcast systems (Linux/PHP/Apache/MySQL) and
they run well on VM's.
When we send 100,000 or more emails in a short period, the VM config is
able to 'loan' cycles to the task at hand, which is a feature we don't
have on non-VM machines.

Windows virtualisation has been average at best. Laggy and CPU intensive
just to run basic apps.
Linux has been much better, however we think this is because the OS is
much more capable of multi-threading and does not have the overheads of
a GUI. (horses for courses, of course.. We do have a lot of Windows
boxes and they work fine).

Blades are good.... However we have found you really need to be starting
a new project or moving more than just a few servers to justify the cost
and redesign of infrastructure. Something we've discovered is that we
can re-use the old infrastructure at an alternate datacentre to act as a
backup to the blade server farms.

Cheers.



Regards, 
 
 
Darren Moss
General Manager, Director 
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-----Original Message-----
From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net
[mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of Shane Short
Sent: Friday, 6 March 2009 9:05 PM
To: Skeeve Stevens
Cc: ausnog at ausnog.net
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] Back of envelope II

Ouch is right. :)

I'm one of those not-so-big fans of Virtualisation, but mostly because
most of the workloads I'm used to dealing with consume an entire host
full of resources (mail/web clusters), however if it's one of those low
usage scenarios, then sure, throw it in a VM.

A previous employer of mine recently moved their entire mail/web
clustering (Previously running on Poweredge 1855 blades) into VMware
(which were running pretty hot at the best of times) and I suddenly
start hearing about customers having long mail delays..

I guess it's my ISP background which makes me a bit iffy on the whole
thing, if not done properly it gets expensive and introduces single
points of failure.

If someone other than corp. IT people can convince me its the way to go,
I'll listen. :)

-Shane

On Fri, 6 Mar 2009 14:36:30 +1100, Skeeve Stevens
<skeeve at eintellego.net>
wrote:
> 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
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> 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  
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> message are those of the individual sender, except where the message
states
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>> -----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
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>> http://lists.ausnog.net/mailman/listinfo/ausnog
>>>>
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