In a VMware environment VirtualCenter (or vCenter Server) is the management box for handling all your VMware servers and guests. This server *can* be a VM and is supported as such. Some people have nervous twitches about it, but it's perfectly workable.
DAMIEN SOLODOW Systems Engineer 317.447.6033 (office) 317.447.6014 (fax) HARRISON COLLEGE From: David Mazzaccaro [mailto:david.mazzacc...@hudsonmobility.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 2:12 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: New to virtualization Thanks, Right now I have 3 DL360s (dual proc, 4GB, 32bit) for 75 Citrix users and they are taxed pretty hard. I always get alerts for CPU and RAM, and if I physically check the boxes, they usually say 200M free of ram, w/ 6GB pagefile in use. What do you mean by "Virtualizing VirtualCenter"? From: James Rankin [mailto:kz2...@googlemail.com]<mailto:[mailto:kz2...@googlemail.com]> Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 11:48 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: New to virtualization Nothing wrong with virtualizing your Citrix kit, but another thing you'll need to remember the latest Citrix XenApp version (soon to be the only supported one, by July 2013) is 64-bit only, so you'll need to do some heavy app testing to make sure everything will work OK. If it doesn't, you'll have to invest in some other way of getting at those apps (VDI, VM Hosted Apps, etc.) Obviously you won't get as many users on a virtual XenApp system as you do on a physical one (unless your physical ones are highly underpowered) - I've seen round about 30-40 users per box being a ballpark figure dependent on the RAM and processing power you throw at the VMs. The only thing you really maybe need to leave physical is a DNS server, maybe a DC if you want to be able to log in to the domain when everything else is down. Virtualizing VirtualCenter (if you go the VMWare route) isn't that much of an issue. On 13 March 2012 15:04, David Mazzaccaro <david.mazzacc...@hudsonmobility.com<mailto:david.mazzacc...@hudsonmobility.com>> wrote: Hi all, I am starting to investigate moving our aging network infrastructure into the virtual world. ~ 10 servers, 6-7 years old Windows 2003 domain Exchange 2003 Citrix 4.0 farm ~190 users After some initial discussions w/ a reseller, here's what they are recommending: (3) DL 380 G7 servers (to host the VMs) ~$18,000 (1) Net App FAS2240 (this is the SAN that would host 12 600GB drives of storage for the VMs) ~$20,000 VMWare essentials plus kit (VMware software) ~$5200 (3) MS Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise (this would allow the 3 HP servers to run 4 Windows 2008 VMs each) I guess the way it would work is that the VMs would reside on the SAN, and the 3 hosts would call up the SAN to load each VM utilizing the host's CPU, RAM, NIC, etc.)... right? I have meetings scheduled w/ 2 other vendors, but verbally both have started the conversation along the same path as above. Being very new to VM, does the above scenario seem to make sense? It is hard for me to imagine all that traffic going between the SAN and the host servers w/o creating a huge bottleneck (over gig Ethernet) Do people recommend virtualizing every server? Domain controllers? Exchange? Citrix farm (4 server)? Shouldn't something be left physical? Is 7 TB of storage enough (probably only 3 usable after array config)? Is the net app a decent appliance? $20k sounds cheap to me... I have done a little more reading, and from what I understand w/ 3 Windows Enterprise licenses, I would be limiting myself to 12 VMs. However, if I went w/ 3 Windows Datacenter licenses, for a small increase in price - I would get unlimited VMs? Which would allow for actually having a testing environment, and better patch deployment? 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