When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?
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@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@JaredBusch said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
2 x Windows Server Standard with SA.
1 x SQL Svr, 4 core.
Done....WOW... so expensive!
Well, plus the second server. This stuff adds up. It is almost half the cost to not have the HA, and nearly all of the cost for Windows.
In percentage of total cost, it's enormous. Is it a lot for the needs of the business, no way to tell. But in the SMB, those are absolutely big numbers to most companies.
No. Those are the total licenses. You don't need to duplicate that number for the second server.
You do, except for SQL Server. Windows gives you two VMs per host. You need two hosts of licenses instead of one. That's double.
Node1: Windows Server License x 1 = 2 VMs of Windows Server allowed.
VM1 = Windows Server Standard with IIS.
VM2 = Windows Server Standard with SQL Svr Standard. (1 copy of SQL Svr standard allows you to install SQL Server on a second windows server standard, for free, and use high availability groups for the database).Node2: Windows Server License x 1
VM1 = Windows Server Standard with IIS
VM2 = Windows Server Standard (with the allowed free version of SQL Server for high availability groups).In total... 2 copies of Windows Server Standard with SA (£1800 total), plus 1 x SQL Server set of licenses for however many cores you want to license.
Yes, SQL Server is expensive... but its something most SMBs have and the standard version allows you to get to a highly available application level setup.
No, this is wrong.
You have to double everything if you ever think you are going to migrate servers for routine maintenance.
With this... you don't have to migrate servers at all. Why cant you see that. You can set HAProxy to point to the webserver on node 2, and run powershell to move the availability group to the SQL Server on node 2... then you can do whatever the hell you want to node 1. No need to migrate anything....... BUT.... if you wanted to, you still can as Hyper-V has the ability to move a VM from node1, to node2, without shares storage at all, for FREE! VMWare needs vMotion, which was NOT.
Do you have a link to the "free" install of SQL Server Standard? I'm not finding it on MS' site. Their high level licensing docs state otherwise.
Passive only, and it's not free, you have to buy SA to get it, so while the second node is cheaper, it isn't free.
I was just looking for that myself
also, I did say SA previously (I think).
Yes passive, but that's fine for us and brings us online in mere seconds if something happens. With VMWare, am I correct that the 1 x SQL Server on node1, would have to boot on node2 should something happen? - like I said before, I could still be wrong on that...HA with anything will be seconds, probably not as fast as SQL Server failover, but similar. You rarely notice it at all, but a trading app would show the hiccup, for example. A nuclear power plant, you'd not want it.
FT with Vmware or Xen (free) will do it without losing a single network packet. Failover can be instant.
I will have to read up on that... but my comments again, were in relation to people saying vMotion = HA etc.
So, is memory of the VM stored on the shares storage too or something, so when the node fails, a partner can instantly grab the running state of the VM? [probably way off, just finding it difficult to see how the running state of a VM on node1 in VMWare, would go down if that node died and not have to boot up on node2]... Here I could be way off as not done much in VMWare... just knew vMotion != HA.
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@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
Where is the reckless spending? Its an extra 1 x Windows Server Standard license (£900). That's it.
The host we would need anyway is doing HA with VMWare... which to have vMotion with (something OOB with Hyper-V), is around 4-5k like I said earlier.It's an extra physical server, extra Windows licenses, and SQL Server Standard SA upgrade. Plus the power draw, maintenance time and so forth. It adds up. Given that in the US, any server purchase is nearly impossible, having two often means you can't get funds to maintain them. Nearly doubling the budget is rarely trivial.
Why would you need VMware anyway? that makes no sense. We already covered that Vmware would never apply in a company of your size. Failover with someone else would be free. Of course, what we are pointing out, is that likely you don't need that either.
The post was asking when to consider VMWare over Hyper-V, and at an early stage HA came up as a reason... hence saying what I am saying. For any HA, you would need that second server, even with HyperV. So if you need that you need that, its not double cost... its needed. To have the second server for HA, with VMWare... is even more cost.
If you need HA, you have to have that second server. So its not an additional cost - as both VMWare and HyperV, if you need HA would have that cost.
IF you need HA, you need two servers. But HA is free beyond that (except with Vmware.) But first you have to decide what the value of HA is to your business. Most SMBs, (like 95%) should not have HA.
Agree. And for us, we do need it. And as I tried to show, we do that without having to license VMWare just through using Hyper-V. Same kit. Same licenses we need for Windows Server and SQL Server as that's the db of choice for our devs... all the same... but no VMWare.
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@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
I will have to read up on that... but my comments again, were in relation to people saying vMotion = HA etc.
People is Dustin and it's established that he didn't know what either was at all. He thought vMotion was something WAY different from HA, in fact. All of his info was wrong.
vMotion and HA are different, and free from everyone but Vmware. Let's move past that. No need to keep responding to that misinformation as if anyone else believes it. That was one person off on a tangent. Now in the real world, they are different things, and free.
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@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
So, is memory of the VM stored on the shares storage too or something, so when the node fails, a partner can instantly grab the running state of the VM?
No, memory would be too slow to do that. Your memory would be limited to the speed of a disk. Imagine if ALL memory was the speed of swap! Eek.
HA doesn't maintain memory state. It just recovers in a few seconds.
FT keeps the CPU and memory in lock step. So both systems have the VMs loaded into memory. So all transactions are live in both places. Everything is live between the two. Same as mainframes. -
@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
I will have to read up on that... but my comments again, were in relation to people saying vMotion = HA etc.
People is Dustin and it's established that he didn't know what either was at all. He thought vMotion was something WAY different from HA, in fact. All of his info was wrong.
vMotion and HA are different, and free from everyone but Vmware. Let's move past that. No need to keep responding to that misinformation as if anyone else believes it. That was one person off on a tangent. Now in the real world, they are different things, and free.
Agreed
you know, chatting face to face is such an easier process! Darn internet. Lol. -
@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
So, is memory of the VM stored on the shares storage too or something, so when the node fails, a partner can instantly grab the running state of the VM?
No, memory would be too slow to do that. Your memory would be limited to the speed of a disk. Imagine if ALL memory was the speed of swap! Eek.
HA doesn't maintain memory state. It just recovers in a few seconds.
FT keeps the CPU and memory in lock step. So both systems have the VMs loaded into memory. So all transactions are live in both places. Everything is live between the two. Same as mainframes.Ahhh, I see. Now that's cool. So, the VMs are sort of warm mirror, and when node1 dies, node 2 would be fairly instant. That's cool... and is one reason why i'd consider VMWare
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@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
Same licenses we need for Windows Server and SQL Server as that's the db of choice for our devs... all the same... but no VMWare.
Different discussion, but why would you ever let devs have a say in that (that's an IT decision, not a dev one and I come from a dev background) and this is the exact scenario I warn SMBs about all of the time - building technical debt into the bespoke systems making little things unnecessarily costly. That means that every penny of Windows, SQL Server and lots of your admin costs are all created by the devs. Has anyone looked at the devs to see what kind of impact letting them make those kinds of decisions on IT is having on the business?
As someone that manages dev teams, while there are insanely rare exceptions where that kind of stuff makes sense, it just doesn't make sense. Windows and especially SQL Server as dev platforms are huge red flags to something being really wrong and proper business analysis failing. Again... always an exception somewhere. But "dev preference" or "dev skills" certainly would never apply in that case. It huge money that we are talking.
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@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
So, is memory of the VM stored on the shares storage too or something, so when the node fails, a partner can instantly grab the running state of the VM?
No, memory would be too slow to do that. Your memory would be limited to the speed of a disk. Imagine if ALL memory was the speed of swap! Eek.
HA doesn't maintain memory state. It just recovers in a few seconds.
FT keeps the CPU and memory in lock step. So both systems have the VMs loaded into memory. So all transactions are live in both places. Everything is live between the two. Same as mainframes.Ahhh, I see. Now that's cool. So, the VMs are sort of warm mirror, and when node1 dies, node 2 would be fairly instant. That's cool... and is one reason why i'd consider VMWare
Yes, but that's VERY expensive. It uses bigger Vmware licensing, limits you to about four cores and slows things way down. It's super cool, but you only use anything like that when you REALLY need it. And Xen does this for free, as well.
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Not that Xen does it as well or as easily as Vmware. But it's important not to overlook that it is there and has been around for a while. But in both VMware and Xen camps, people avoid fault tolerance almost always even when they can easily afford it. It is so hard to justify with all of the overhead and limitations.
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@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
Same licenses we need for Windows Server and SQL Server as that's the db of choice for our devs... all the same... but no VMWare.
Different discussion, but why would you ever let devs have a say in that (that's an IT decision, not a dev one and I come from a dev background) and this is the exact scenario I warn SMBs about all of the time - building technical debt into the bespoke systems making little things unnecessarily costly. That means that every penny of Windows, SQL Server and lots of your admin costs are all created by the devs. Has anyone looked at the devs to see what kind of impact letting them make those kinds of decisions on IT is having on the business?
As someone that manages dev teams, while there are insanely rare exceptions where that kind of stuff makes sense, it just doesn't make sense. Windows and especially SQL Server as dev platforms are huge red flags to something being really wrong and proper business analysis failing. Again... always an exception somewhere. But "dev preference" or "dev skills" certainly would never apply in that case. It huge money that we are talking.
Yeah, agree. But, the development team are the team who select what they want to use, for reasons I'm not privy to... they wanted SQL Server when they assessed it a long time ago, and that's what the solution has been built on. I hope their reasons were good. But, its still what we have to use.
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@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
I hope their reasons were good. But, its still what we have to use.
There is no reasonable possibility of that. The logic to using SQL Server in the SMB is similar to VMware, but far worse. It's not easier, not as well known , not as powerful, not as flexible as free alternatives.
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@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
Yeah, agree. But, the development team are the team who select what they want to use, for reasons I'm not privy to... they wanted SQL Server when they assessed it a long time ago, and that's what the solution has been built on.
It sounds like layer after layer of business and political failures resulting in IT trying to find expensive technical band-aids to poor management oversight. Not a good situation. Good that there is enough money to pay for some fixes, but bad that money is needed to fix things that never needed to be broken.
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@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
Yeah, agree. But, the development team are the team who select what they want to use, for reasons I'm not privy to... they wanted SQL Server when they assessed it a long time ago, and that's what the solution has been built on.
It sounds like layer after layer of business and political failures resulting in IT trying to find expensive technical band-aids to poor management oversight. Not a good situation. Good that there is enough money to pay for some fixes, but bad that money is needed to fix things that never needed to be broken.
I really don't know the reasons why back in day one, the decision was to use this stack. That was decided a long time ago, and i'n never at this stage be able to get them to change their entire stack. Maybe it was a good decision, maybe bad... I don't know as I wasn't there. The fact it is wasn't a poor decision, just a more expensive one to use SQL Server. Nothing broken.
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@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
Yeah, agree. But, the development team are the team who select what they want to use, for reasons I'm not privy to... they wanted SQL Server when they assessed it a long time ago, and that's what the solution has been built on.
It sounds like layer after layer of business and political failures resulting in IT trying to find expensive technical band-aids to poor management oversight. Not a good situation. Good that there is enough money to pay for some fixes, but bad that money is needed to fix things that never needed to be broken.
I really don't know the reasons why back in day one, the decision was to use this stack. That was decided a long time ago, and i'n never at this stage be able to get them to change their entire stack. Maybe it was a good decision, maybe bad... I don't know as I wasn't there. The fact it is wasn't a poor decision, just a more expensive one to use SQL Server. Nothing broken.
The fact is, we are highly available in a range of different ways, and IT can do what we need when we need without affecting customers. In addition, the company is happy with the cost, and know Linux is cheaper, and are happy to be paying more to have a happy team of developers using the products they are most used to and happy with. That's not broken. More expensive, yes - but not broken and entirely fine for the business as management are happy with our profit and figures.
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@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
I really don't know the reasons why back in day one, the decision was to use this stack. That was decided a long time ago, and i'n never at this stage be able to get them to change their entire stack.
That's the danger. This kind of technical debt can, and normally does, haunt a company for decades with far reaching ramifications that are normally ignored. Like the cost of SQL Server, Windows licenses, license managment, extra admin time, and so forth. Things that might seem trivial at start up time but when considered over decades of use and how that technical debt will often spawn more related technical debt, what feels like a few thousands dollars might result in tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in long term tech debt.
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@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
The fact it is wasn't a poor decision, just a more expensive one to use SQL Server. Nothing broken.
That's not how IT ever works. Broken is not a definition of good or bad. Not being the most cost effective solution for the business by definition is what makes it poor. That is the sole criteria by which IT is judged.
You can never say it was not a poor decision without knowing how and why the original decision was made, there is no ability to evaluate that. What we do know is that in decades of doing this evaluation, I've never found a company that made this choice AND it wasn't poor once analyzed.
In the 1990s, with SQL Server 7, this was sometimes a good choice. By the early 2000s, that era had essentially ended.
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@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
The fact is, we are highly available in a range of different ways, and IT can do what we need when we need without affecting customers. In addition, the company is happy with the cost, and know Linux is cheaper, and are happy to be paying more to have a happy team of developers using the products they are most used to and happy with. That's not broken. More expensive, yes - but not broken and entirely fine for the business as management are happy with our profit and figures.
That's broken by business criteria.
Can you HONESTLY go to your management and say "you could be more profitable and we could all be making more... but are you happy enough earning less, so we won't bother" do you think that they would agree that the profits are "enough" and that doing better is not a goal?
In the US, that's not just unlikely, in a public company it is called a violation of fiduciary responsibility. The purpose of a company is to make money. That they would happily earn less for no reason isn't logical.
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@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
@Jimmy9008 said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
The fact it is wasn't a poor decision, just a more expensive one to use SQL Server. Nothing broken.
That's not how IT ever works. Broken is not a definition of good or bad. Not being the most cost effective solution for the business by definition is what makes it poor. That is the sole criteria by which IT is judged.
You can never say it was not a poor decision without knowing how and why the original decision was made, there is no ability to evaluate that. What we do know is that in decades of doing this evaluation, I've never found a company that made this choice AND it wasn't poor once analyzed.
In the 1990s, with SQL Server 7, this was sometimes a good choice. By the early 2000s, that era had essentially ended.
But equally, we cannot say it was. I have to just go based on what senior management, directors, boards are saying... 'We use SQL Server'.
Anyway, off to bed. Great discussing this with you... Best, Jim
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Remember, in IT and business (which are the same thing)... "not being as cost effective as possible" and "broken" are identical. Anyone can make a system work, but the purpose of having IT is to make it work well. If it isn't working as well as it should, that's broken from that perspective.
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@scottalanmiller said in When to use VMWare over free hypervisors?:
Remember, in IT and business (which are the same thing)... "not being as cost effective as possible" and "broken" are identical. Anyone can make a system work, but the purpose of having IT is to make it work well. If it isn't working as well as it should, that's broken from that perspective.
It is working well. Very well. Using the tools I have to use. I cant change that, I can only make it as good as it can be.
