On Thu, Sep 7, 2017 at 8:01 PM, Christopher Cox <c...@endlessnow.com> wrote: > On 09/07/2017 06:33 AM, david caughey wrote: >> >> Hi Folks, >> >> I'm giving a demo of our new 3 node oVirt deployment next week and am >> looking for some high points that I can give to the Managers that will be a >> sell point. > > > Could be hard to sell. It's not like VMware (all in all) is deficient > functionality wise. > >> If you could help with the below questions I would really appreciate it: >> >> Who are the big users of oVirt?? > > > We use oVirt in production. We have about 130 VMs on a 9 node cluster using > Dell blades. It houses both our test and production VMs. We have a > separate oVirt setup for development hosting probably about 20 VMs (maybe > less), it's an 7 node cluster (but much lesser blades there). > > In both cases they are connected to Equalogic iSCSI SAN equipment with > multiple tiers of storage. Each production blade has 4 x 10gbit iSCSI > (multi)paths to storage. The production blade subsystem uses multiple > 40Gbit links, for iSCSI storage and for LAN. Just 10Gbit links and 1Gbit > paths on the development blades and subsystem. > > Both use a dedicated oVirt management host. > > The production(and test) blades run oVirt 3.6 and the dev blades are oVirt > 3.5. > > About 2 years ago we migrated our production blades from oVirt 3.4 on older > blades and older SAN equipment to oVirt 3.6 on new blades and new SAN > storage. We used oVirt's export domain to facilitate the move. > > We will be migrating off the development cluster and we are setting up a new > cluster on the same DC as our production area which will be used to house > both test and development. Thus we are moving to just the one oVirt 3.6 > (we're adding 5 extra blades for that cluster). > > Btw, our VMs include multiple version of CentOS, Windows Server and Windows > desktops (and even some docker nodes, but we're redoing all of that). Our > VMs include about 10 large PostgreSQL database servers, some MySQL, several > Jboss servers, many web microservices (Springboot) servers and lost of > application infrastructure servers. > >> >> Why oVirt and not vMware?? >> (we are a big vMware house so free doesn't cover it) > > > Uh free, and to be honest, that's the best reason to do this IMHO. > >> >> What is the future for oVirt?? > > > Unknown. But pretty sure Red Hat will want to keep RHEV around, which means > oVirt probably will be here for quite some time. > >> >> Why do you use oVirt?? > > > Free. > >> >> Any links or ideas appreciated, > > > oVirt is NOT VMware. But if you do things "well" oVirt works quite well. > Follow the list to see folks that didn't necessarily do things "well" (sad, > but true). > > I inherited this oVirt... not ideal for blades because it's better to have > lots of networks. We just have two blade fabrics, one for SAN and one for > the rest, and it would be nice to have ovirtmgmt and migration networks be > isolated. With that said, with our massively VLAN'd setup, it does work and > has been very reliable. For performance reasons, I recommend that you > attempt to dedicate a host for SPM, or at least keep the number of VMs > deployed there to a minimum. There are tweaks in the setup to keep VMs off > the SPM node (talking mainly if you have a massively combined network like I > have currently).
Do you routinely have many storage operations going on (create/remove vm, create/remove disk, take/remove a snapshot etc.)? If not, do you still recommend a dedicated SPM host? If yes, why? See also: https://www.ovirt.org/develop/release-management/features/storage/decommission-master-domain-and-spm/ It was panned to happen in 4.0, didn't happen yet. No idea about concrete future plans. > > We've survived many bad events with regards to SAN and power, which is a > tribute to oVirt's reliability. However, you can shoot yourself in the foot > very easily with oVirt... so just be careful. > > Is VMware better? Yes. Is it more flexible than oVirt? Yes. Is it more > reliable than oVirt? Yes. In other words, if money is of no concern, VMware > and VCenter. > > We will likely never do VMware here due to cost (noting, that the cost is in > VCenter, and IMHO, it's not horrible, but I do not control the wallet here, > and we tend to prefer FOSS here... and FOSS is my personal preference as > well). > > Companies generally speaking just want something that works. And oVirt does > work. But if money is of no concern and you need the friendliness of > something VCenter like (noting that not everyone needs VCenter or RHEV-M or > oVirt Manager), then VMware is still better. > > If you don't need something VCenter like, I can also so say that libvirt > (KVM) and virt-manager is also reasonable, and we use that as well. But we > also have a (free) ESXi (because we have to, forced requirement). > > The ovirtmgmt web ui is gross IMHO. It's a perfect example of an overweight > UI where a simplified UI would have been cleaner, faster and better. Just > because you know how to write thousands of lines of javascript doesn't mean > you should. Not everything needs to act like a trading floor application or > facebook. The art of efficient UI design has been lost. With that said, > the RESTful i/f part is nice. Nice to the point of not needing the SDK. You might want to have a look at: https://github.com/oVirt/ovirt-web-ui That's a replacement ui (not admin), included in 4.1, will replace user portal in 4.2. > > Finally, VMware can be expensive. It's not a "one time" purchase. It's HAS > TO BE ongoing. And it can get very expensive if not understood. With that > said, if you have anything Microsoft in the enterprise, you already > understand and are prepared to throw cash for IT infrastructure. If you do > go VMware, make sure to use a hefty Vcenter host as upgrades to VCenter > involve a lot of bloat and waste. > > VMware can be a real "pain" support wise. They can deprecate your entire > hypervisor HW stack, especially true in a major release. They can even > deprecate HW in a minor release (I have fallen victim to this). > > Thus, again, if you have money to burn and have relatively short HW life > cycles (less than 5 years for sure), AND that includes OS life cycles as > well, then VMware is probably ok. Not saying there aren't some problems on > the oVirt side as well, just saying VMware has more expensive warts. And > thus "paid support" becomes somewhat humorous (but in a sad sort of way). > > (oVirt community support ROCKS! Just saying...) (If I was from Red Hat sales, I think I'd be quite happy with your reply :-) As an oVirt developer, I'd probably ask, about many of your specific points above: Did you open a bug/RFE about this? Because, you know, opening bugs is also part of being part of the community). Best, -- Didi _______________________________________________ Users mailing list Users@ovirt.org http://lists.ovirt.org/mailman/listinfo/users