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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0pt;">Hi,<br>
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-top: 0pt;">Michael Lewinger wrote:</p>
<blockquote
cite="mid:27b952dc1001170749q5b14020vb3be2ef33c9cd546@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr"><br>
<br>
I'd like to ask your oppinion on the virtualization of several WINDOWS
servers installed on a client's medium business server room. There are
about 6 crucial servers (priority, exchange, file server, and some
others) that need to be accessible when they fail. Currently, each
server has its own RAID storage. There is only 300GB of data to be kept
on those servers (mostly exchange and file server). The virtualized
servers should become alive when one of those main servers dies, and
theoretically, no more than 2 VMs should be running in parallel.<br>
<br>
What would be the best virtualization platform for such a requirement ?
Windows 2008 server, or XEN ? <br>
</div>
</blockquote>
I recommend KVM.<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:27b952dc1001170749q5b14020vb3be2ef33c9cd546@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Would a fast single Xeon processor be able to handle
this requirements ? 8GB or 4GB ?<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
Processor power is almost certainly not the bottle neck in your setup.
I would guess it is disk IO. But you really can't tell without
measuring.<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:27b952dc1001170749q5b14020vb3be2ef33c9cd546@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Would you consider VMWARE on top of CENTOS ?<br>
</div>
</blockquote>
I assume you mean vmware server. Putting a critical resource on a
freebie proprietary program on top of an excellent OS but without
formal support contract does not sound like a good plan to me.<br>
<br>
Just get RHEL 5.4 with the (KVM based) server virtualization option. <br>
<br>
We have a setup with earlier version of KVM running for over two years
22/7 (no typo, they sleep nights ) as a critical system with up to 30
VMs at any given time in a demanding setup. We had only a single crash
(and the version we used is two years old) I would run my pacemaker
software on KVM if I could and if I had a pacemaker ;-)<br>
<br>
Gilad.<br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Gilad Ben-Yossef
Chief Coffee Drinker & CTO
Codefidence Ltd.
Web: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://codefidence.com">http://codefidence.com</a>
Cell: +972-52-8260388
Skype: gilad_codefidence
Tel: +972-8-9316883 ext. 201
Fax: +972-8-9316884
Email: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:gilad@codefidence.com">gilad@codefidence.com</a>
Check out our Open Source technology and training blog - <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://tuxology.net">http://tuxology.net</a>
"That is not dead which can eternal lie.
And with strange aeons even death may die."
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