I wonder what type of servers for internal usage you virtualize in the last -say- 6 months. Here's what we got virtual so far:
We didn't virtualize spezialized desktop PCs which are running a certain software product, that is only used once in a while. Do you plan to get rid of those old machines any time soon?
And which server products do you use? Vmware ESX, Vmware Server, Xen installations...?
Our build machine running FinalBuilder runs on a Windows XP Virtual Machine running in VMWare Server on Linux.
It is very practical to move it and also to backup, we just stop the Virtual Machine and copy the disk image.
Some days ago we needed to change the host pc, it took less than 2 hours to have our builder up and running on another pc.
We migrate to a new SBS 2005 Domain last month. We take the opotunity to create virtual machines for the following servers
I recently had to build an internal network for our training division, enabling the classrooms to be networked and have access to various technologies. Because of the lack of hardware and equipment and running in an exclusive cash only environment I decided to go with a virtual solution on the server.
The server itself is running CentOS 5.1 with VMWare 1.0.6 loaded as the virtualisation provider. On top of this we have 4 Windows Server 2003 machines running, making up the Active Directory, Exchange, ISA, Database and Windows/AV updates component. File sharing and internet routing through the corporate network and ADSL is handled via the CentOS platform.
The setup allows us to expand to physical machines at a later stage quickly, and allows the main server to replaced with minimum downtime on the network, as it only requires the moving of the Virtual Machines and starting them up on the new box.
Do you plan to get rid of those old machines any time soon? No
And which server products do you use? MS Virtual Server
We use ESX in our labs and lately we've virtualized our document sharing service (KnowledgeTree), the lab management tools and almost all of our department's internal web servers.
We also virtualized almost all of our QA department's test machines, with the exception of the performance and stability testing hardware.
We aren't going to get rid of the hardware any time soon, it will be used to decrease the budget needs and increase the number of projects that can be handled by one lab.
We use VMware ESX 3.5.x exclusively.
We virtualise a copy of a test client and server, so we can deploy to them before sending the files to the customer. They also gets used to test bug reports.
We find this is the biggest benefit to virtualisation as we can keep lots of per-customer versions around.
We also VM our web server, and corporate division has virtualised everything.
My standard answer to questions like this is, "virtualization is great; be aware of its limitations".
I would never rely on a purely-virtual implementation of anything that's an infrastructure-level service (eg the authoritative DNS server for your site; management and monitoring tools).
I work for a company that provides server and network management tools. We are constantly trying to overcome the marketing chutzpah of virtualization vendors in that infrastructure tools shouldn't live in infrastructure tools.
Virtualization wants to control all of your services. However, there are some things that should always exist on physical hardware.
When something goes wrong with your virtual setup, troubleshooting and recovery can take a long time. If you're still running some of those services you require for your company on physical hardware, you're not dead-in-the-water.
Virtualization also introduces clock lag, disk and network IO lag, and other issues you wouldn't see on physical hardware.
Lastly, the virtualization tool you pick then becomes in charge of all of the resources under its command for its hosted VMs. That translates to the hypervisor - not you - deciding what VM should have priority at any given moment. If you're concerned about any tool, service, or function being guaranteed to have certain resources, it will need to be on physical hardware.
For anything that "doesn't matter", like web, mail, dhcp, ldap, etc - virtualization is great.