Holy heck, now I am nervous

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Mackintire

2[H]4U
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Jun 28, 2004
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So I've been asking and suggesting to our manager to Virtualize the one server machine for a while now. There are actually 4 machines that I would like to eventually virtualize, but that is not going to happen overnight.

We're basically running on a shoestring budget at the moment. So here's what I have going on.


Dell 530 (which is on the whitebox list as known to run)


Storage will be RAID 10 via 4 500GB RE4 drives on a HP P400 with 512MB and BBU.

Host OS will be ESXi 4.1

I will be using the onboard nic for management and a Intel EXPI9301CT for everything else.

For the moment this machine will have (1) OS on it.

I will be given a month to get this up and running.

Any advice? This will be my first ESXi machine. I am familiar with VMware workstation, and server.

I've read some info on how to add the HP support for the P400, but any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
Go buy a good book. For what you need the vSphere for Dummies book (Disclaimer: I was the technical reviewer) is a good book. If you plan to move to a cluster Mastering vSphere by Scott Lowe is very good.
 
I would but I have near 12K pages of stuff to digest by the end of this year. This is something I will have to configure after hours.
 
So what's your plan? Go grab the Dummies book and read it in a couple hours...you'll spend far more than that coming on here asking questions every 5 mins like some others do. ;)
 
There's an idea..... No seriously I was looking for ...... watch out for X...good luck.

This shouldn t be too difficult of a setup. Its only one VM with everything is on the whitebox list as verifed working. I'm more nervous about backups and network performance. But then again the origional machine was so pathetic that the bar is not being set very high. The only reason that I am willing to port this machine to the virtual world is that some of the licenses are tied to hardware. If the hardware is virtualized and the machine breaks we can more the VM over to another ESXI machine and boot it there, without licensing hassles.
 
afraid you're not really adding much more complexity than running on native hardware since your plan is 1-4 VM's running on one host with local storage.
it's going to be very similar to VMware workstation.

you might want to double check with the vendor's stance on running the software on a VM as it could be unsupported, however.

otherwise, as corny as it sounds, the best way to learn is just dive right in.
clustering multiple hosts to shared storage to take advantage of HA/DRS and such is when things become complex, and much more expensive.
 
NetJunkie said:
So what's your plan? Go grab the Dummies book and read it in a couple hours...you'll spend far more than that coming on here asking questions every 5 mins like some others do. ;)
Click to expand...

rofl

It is actually really straight forward, I suggest you set it up in tandem with a good book. Depending on how quickly you pick things up you could have a VM up in running in a couple of hours from scratch if you know nothing starting... this type of stuff is so second nature after a while you can do it in 20 minutes later on :p.
 
I'm thinking about the first VM and its data.

It has a C: drive that consists of the OS and various services.

It also has an E: drive that is basically file storage

Since the computer case only has room for (2) drives and I need redundancy this will start out as a RAID 1 array.

Is my only choice at this point adding both C: and E: as one VM? Thats going to be a fairly large virtual machine file is it not?

My long term intent is to place the E: drive out on a SAN and connect it to the VM via iSCSI

The OS is about 12GB and data partition is about 250GB.

Idea II

Possibly build the machine using other hardware that is similar but allows me to add 2 more drives.

Place the data on the Hardware RAID array and attach it via hardware passthrough. Virtualize the OS and place it on a single drive. Make daily snapshots to a partition on the second drive. If the boot drive dies I have daily snapshots on the second drive. Another way I guess I could do it would be to direct attach the second drive and have acronis true image send daily backups to the second drive.

Please comment on any opinions pro's or con's and angles I may have missed.
 
And this is why I keep telling people to invest in some books. ;)

When you build a VM you get to choose where to put each drive. C: is one file (vmdk), D: is another, E: is another. No reason to get all this complex. Put them where ever you want.
 
Two thoughts.....

I feel better now.

and the company will be buying a copy of vSphere for Dummies.
 
Mackintire said:
Ok now I have a new question that is not going to be in the book.


To control and see the HP P400 controller in ESXi:
http://virtualfuture.info/2009/06/howto-manage-hp-p400-raid-controller-in-a-vsphere-whitebox/

Is there a reason I should download and use the x64 drivers instead of the x86 drivers. Both show support for EXSi 4.1 Isn't ESXi a 64 bit host?

Thanks for the help.
Click to expand...

If its going to work out of the box, it will work because it is on the HCL. Actually that is covered in the book :). I believe the P400 is on the HCL. No need to download drivers.
 
I think you are misunderstanding.


The HP Proliant P400 storage controller card, works out of the box as it IS on the HCL.

But the control for rebuilding the array INSIDE the ESXi console are not present in version 4.0 without doing the steps listed in my previous post. I am not aware if HP's management console is integrated with ESXi 4.1, but I would guess it is not.

If you read the blog, the issue is that is the RAID array fails you have no way of knowing without rebooting the computer and seeing in the RAID BIOS.

With the installation package the RAID Management console will be integrated into ESXi and you are invoke a rebuild or verify from the ESXi console.
 
I understand what you're trying to do better. There is no method to do what you're talking about from an ESXi perspective exactly, however, you could potentially attempt to download the HP CIM included version of ESXi... dunno if that would give you more of what you're looking for. The hardware status tab would hopefully give you the details on the failed drives, etc. It is just a read only type display though. There is no method to rebuild from the ESXi console directly that I'm aware of in a standalone config. Things are a lot different if you had vCenter, insight manager, and HP's integration tools... not to mention an actual HP server :).

If you can leverage VT-d and pass the P400 directly to a guest, then you could potentially install the HP drivers and array software that would let you control it better. However, I don't really recommend doing that given the relative instability with VMDirectPath and storage devices OVERALL. Obviously it works in many cases, but you can't call it perfect by any means. You seem to want data availability as the primary concern in wanting this functionality, so VT-d does not really meet that end.
 
NetJunkie said:
So what's your plan? Go grab the Dummies book and read it in a couple hours...you'll spend far more than that coming on here asking questions every 5 mins like some others do. ;)
Click to expand...
+1 and recommend the Master Vsphere by Scott Lowe.
 
My parts arrived today. I will probably not work on this more until later next week.


All parts installed in the Dell 530. Everything boots and detects correctly via Bios.


Hey the $70 I spent for a P400 512MB cache, BBU and mini-SAS cable was a good deal.

For now I'm interested in seeing what kind of RAID 1 performance I can get.

Later on when I switch machines and there is room for two more drives It'll be converted to RAID 10.


I'll post the results as I get them
 
NetJunkie said:
Go buy a good book. For what you need the vSphere for Dummies book (Disclaimer: I was the technical reviewer) is a good book. If you plan to move to a cluster Mastering vSphere by Scott Lowe is very good.
Click to expand...

good info.
 
Its alive!

ESXi 4.0 at the moment.

I'm getting 28MBps transfers in and out of the box, which is fair. My VMnic is 10GB VMXNET 3. I still have some reconfiguring to do and the CIM to install. Upgrade to 4.1 etc....

I'll probably test the HD transfer next week followed by a ipref test.

So far the virtual machine is 40% faster than the old physical machine. Good Stuff!
 
defuseme2k said:
I understand what you're trying to do better. There is no method to do what you're talking about from an ESXi perspective exactly, however, you could potentially attempt to download the HP CIM included version of ESXi... dunno if that would give you more of what you're looking for. The hardware status tab would hopefully give you the details on the failed drives, etc. It is just a read only type display though. There is no method to rebuild from the ESXi console directly that I'm aware of in a standalone config. Things are a lot different if you had vCenter, insight manager, and HP's integration tools... not to mention an actual HP server :).

If you can leverage VT-d and pass the P400 directly to a guest, then you could potentially install the HP drivers and array software that would let you control it better. However, I don't really recommend doing that given the relative instability with VMDirectPath and storage devices OVERALL. Obviously it works in many cases, but you can't call it perfect by any means. You seem to want data availability as the primary concern in wanting this functionality, so VT-d does not really meet that end.
Click to expand...

P400 + directpath = KABOOM.

You need the HP CIM version of ESXi. I don't know if you can install their controller packages on traditional free i and then integrate it into the bootbanks.
 
Mackintire said:
Its alive!

ESXi 4.0 at the moment.

I'm getting 28MBps transfers in and out of the box, which is fair. My VMnic is 10GB VMXNET 3. I still have some reconfiguring to do and the CIM to install. Upgrade to 4.1 etc....

I'll probably test the HD transfer next week followed by a ipref test.

So far the virtual machine is 40% faster than the old physical machine. Good Stuff!
Click to expand...

Get teh BBWC if you don't have it already. TRUST me on this. Before it all falls apart.
 
lopoetve said:
P400 + directpath = KABOOM.

You need the HP CIM version of ESXi. I don't know if you can install their controller packages on traditional free i and then integrate it into the bootbanks.
Click to expand...

Hey don't look at me. I don't suggest using direct path for storage in almost any situation, but hey its people's stuff.

You shouldn't download the CIM separately. Download ESXi from HP directly with it included already ;). The free key still will work, I know it will, I did a lot of deployments that way with ESXi free HP branch servers :D.
 
Not using direct-path so that's a non-issue. Already have a BBWC. If you install HP's ESXI, it won't start-up. The problem is this is a whitebox and not a certified HP VM server. So you need to install the CIM separately and edit some lines out of the.config before installation.
 
Mackintire said:
Not using direct-path so that's a non-issue. Already have a BBWC. If you install HP's ESXI, it won't start-up. The problem is this is a whitebox and not a certified HP VM server. So you need to install the CIM separately and edit some lines out of the.config before installation.
Click to expand...

Wow o_O GL to you sir.
 
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