Ease of administration.<\/p>\n
To a sys admin, those 3 words mean a lot. To a decision maker like a CIO or a CFO (often one and the same) they mean nothing.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s rare enough that I find myself working with physical boxes these days. Most everyone is looking for a virtualised service which is cool with me. Over the last 2 weeks I\u2019ve been doing some physical server builds with Windows Server 2008 R2. I know the techniques for a automated installation. I just haven\u2019t had time to deploy them for the few builds I needed to do. Things like Offline Servicing for VM\u2019s and MDT\/WDS (upgrade) are in my plans but things had to be prioritised. I\u2019ve just kicked off a reboot of a blade server. By the time that\u2019s finished it’s POST I\u2019ll have made and half drunk a cup of coffee. After working with VM\u2019s almost exclusively for the last 18 months, working with a physical box seems slow. These are fine machines but the setup time required seems slow. Those reboots take forever! VM reboots: well there\u2019s no POST and they reboot extremely quickly.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s compare the process of deploying a VM and a physical box<\/p>\n
Notes on this:<\/p>\n
Notes on this:<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s assume the VM scenario used a cluster. If the hardware failure crashed the host then the VM stops running. The cluster moves the VM resource to another host (VMM will choose the most suitable one) and the VM starts up again. Every VM on the cluster has hardware fault tolerance. If the hardware failure was non-critical then you can use Live Migration to move all the VM\u2019s to another host (VMM 2008 R2 maintenance mode) and then power down the host to work on it. There\u2019s no manual intervention at all in keeping things running.<\/p>\n
What if you used standalone (un-clustered) hosts. As long as you have an identical server chassis available you can swap the disks and network cables to get back up and running in a matter of minutes.<\/p>\n
Unbelievably worst case scenario with un-clustered hosts: you can take the data disks and slap them into another machine and do some manual work to get running again. As long as the processor is from the same manufacturer you\u2019re good to go in a few hours.<\/p>\n
If a physical box dies then you can do something similar to that. However, physical boxes tend to vary quite a lot. A farm of virtualisation hosts don\u2019t usually vary too much at all. If a DL380 dies then you can expect to put the disks into a DL160 and have a good result. It might<\/em> work. <\/p>\n Most companies don\u2019t purchase the \u201cwithin 4 hours\u201d response contracts. And even if they do, some manufacturers will do their very best to avoid sending anyone out by asking for one diagnostic test after another and endless collections of logs. It could be 1 to 3 days (and some angry phone calls) before an engineer comes out to fix the server. In that time the hosted application has been offline, negatively affecting the business and potentially your customers. If only a physical server was a portable container like a VM \u2013 see boot from VHD<\/a>.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve heard all those sales lines on virtualisation: carbon footprint, reduced rack space, lower power bills, etc. Now you can see how easier administration can make your life easier but positively impact the business.<\/p>\n My experience has been that when you translate techie-speak into Euros, Dollars, Pounds, Rubles, Yen or Yuan then that get\u2019s the budget owners attention. The CFO will sit up and listen and probably decide in your favour. And if you can explain how these technologies will have real positive impacts on the business then the other decision makers will also have your attention.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ease of administration. To a sys admin, those 3 words mean a lot. To a decision maker like a CIO or a CFO (often one and the same) they mean nothing. It\u2019s rare enough that I find myself working with physical boxes these days. Most everyone is looking for a virtualised service which is cool … Continue reading “Virtualisation: The Undersold Truth”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[181,195,196],"class_list":["post-10071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hyper-v","tag-hyper-v","tag-virtualisation","tag-vmm"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\tSummary<\/h4>\n