Virtual Environment Hardware Requirements

monthehoops

I'm looking to create a virtual environment with two ESXi servers and at least one Ethernet switch between them. It's for a Software Defined Networking projet I'm looking into. I've tried going down the route of getting a grant for this but it's a no go unfortunately so now I'm looking into purchasing it all myself.

I won't have huge environments running on both ESXi servers, the majority of the work will be done in the switching. Would it be feasible to just wipe two old laptops and install ESXi on there and spend the money on a powerful Ethernet switch or do I need to buy two decent servers to make it all worth my while. I think realistically I'm going to need uniformity in the hardware here so looks like I'll have to purchase

Thanks for any help in advance. I'm not looking for direction but rather options if possible.

brianwalshcork

Why not spend your money on one decent computer/server and create your environment within esxi on that? I.e. Virtualise what you mentioned in the op.

Have you considered Hyperv or does it have to be vmware?

Brian

monthehoops

It doesn't HAVE to be vmware, but for ease of use down the line it' the better option for me.

So you're suggesting buying the one server, virtualising the two environments in there and communicating both via the Ethernet switch?

brianwalshcork

Yes, i'm suggesting buying one computer/server, but I'm also suggesting using virtual switches aswell.

It really depends on what you want to achieve, and what you can avoid buying hardware wise, especially if you are paying for it yourself!

monthehoops

brianwalshcork wrote: »

Yes, i'm suggesting buying one computer/server, but I'm also suggesting using virtual switches aswell.

It really depends on what you want to achieve, and what you can avoid buying hardware wise, especially if you are paying for it yourself!

The reason I need the Ethernet switch is because I don't want to use the virtual switches since this is a proof of concept around software defined networking. Basically I am opening the control plane of the Ethernet switch

brianwalshcork

the single server should still work out for you, but it's not something I've done. You're going to need more nics on your physical machine, you'll probably need to go for a quad port network adapter.

Brian

allanon

I agree with Brian, if phy switch is your requirement, I would go for one physical machine with at least two network cards. I am not really familiar with VMware but I know for sure on Citrix XenServer you can dedicated network card per virtual server and communicate them over your physical switch.

Allan.

monthehoops

Any ideas of a spec of server I should be looking at, or any bargains floating? I'm gonna buy one server with 2+ NICs and I assume lots of RAM

brianwalshcork

Hi Monthehoops,

It really depends on what you want workloads you will need to run.

From the info you've given so far, you need to run esxi directly on the hardware, and two more instances of esxi on top of this, but what will run within these instances?

The hardware spec might be a lot lower then you'd guess. If you only need one "end user" VM running withing each instance of esxi to generate your network traffic, then you'd get away with 1 GB per VM.

Maybe even less with dynamic memory (or whatever the VMware term for this is) - I've just booted a Windows server 2008 R2 x64 file server to the desktop and it's only consuming 550 MB of memory. Another file server that has been running for a month with 50+ connected clients and approx 2500 open files is only using 350 MB - although it did peak at 800 MB.

If I were you I'd start the other way around, define what you need to run, see what's required by each workload, see if your workloads can take advantage of and then spec your server according to that.

You should watch out for your disks (size, spindle speed raid/non raid etc) aswell as just the memory though.

If you can post back with more info then you'll get a better answer!

Brian

monthehoops

Thanks Brian, and apologies for the lack of info.

I need to purchase one server I think, with 2-4 port NIC. I need two - three instances of ESXi running on it and just a handful of VMs within it so what you've described sounds like I would get away with 8GB of RAM. I'm not looking for much processing but rather have the switch do all the work. Thanks for all your help.