Comments on: Focusing on the consolidation ratio in planning virtual environments

By: Rick Vanover

Rick Vanover — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:51:29 +0000

Mike: I agree with your comments, and thank you for posting here.

I consider myself a sane administrator, and have done 6022 migrations in one year. I also consider my VI3 installation very successful.
I am doing overcommit in the 3:1 range very happily.

By: MikeDiPetrillo

MikeDiPetrillo — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:45:16 +0000

“how often would a sane IT Admiinstrator use these toys outside of an actual emergency”

Are you serious about this? The vast majority (80% at last count) of VMware’s 120,000+ customers use VMotion all the time every day of the week. I suggest you go post a few questions in the VMware forums (the best place for active VMware users) to see how many people use VMotion all throughout the day. Your statement is either just ignorance on your part or you’re the one throwing FUD (the fear part especially).

“but would you seriously put your enterprise applications in an environment where you cannot guarantee the performance? I can see using over commit to potentially consolidate low-end applications where the uptime and performance isn’t important.”

Uh, overcommitting resources is what you’re doing when you virtualize and consolidate. You overcommit the number of virtual CPUs versus physical CPUs. You overcommit the number of virtual NICs versus physical NICs. Overcommitting memory is now different. As long as the technology is sound and doesn’t impact performance then it’s just as good as the other parts. Most customers out there overcommit today. A survey of VMware customers showed the average overcommit of 1.8:1. A completely independent survey on Tech Target showed most people overcommit in production. Again, this just shows your complete lack of understanding of what virtualization is and the value it delivers.

NOTE: I work for VMware as a Principal Systems Engineers. I’ve been helping people go virtual for 7 years. The opinions expressed herein are my own.

By: Mwmcclure

Mwmcclure — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:57:50 +0000

…but would you seriously put your enterprise applications in an environment where you cannot guarantee the performance? I can see using over commit to potentially consolidate low-end applications where the uptime and performance isn’t important.

The feature fight that VMWare keeps throwing up as FUD against Hyper-V is interesting when you consider things like VMotion. Yes, you can move an application in the middle of the day with milliseconds of transition time… but would you? Microsoft obviously sees VMotion as a customer need as well since LiveMotion is on the roadmap, but how often would a sane IT Admiinstrator use these toys outside of an actual emergency?