VMware Server: Free Virtualization for Small Implementations

White Paper Published By: Info-Tech Research Group

VMware continues to be the market leader for x86 server virtualization. However, the license costs for VMware virtualization can be a deterrent for small enterprises. Small budget implementers who want to stay with VMware should start with its free VMware Server product. They may not have to go any further.

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network costs, telecom costs, microsoft licensing savings, cut microsoft costs, virtualization, virtualization tools, virtualization best practices, enterprise virtualization

Published:	Mar 19, 2009
Type:	White Paper
Length:	11 pages

About this research note: Implement & Integrate notes VMware Server: Free provide comprehensive, step-by-step guidance on the best practice Virtualization for Small implementation of technologies, tools, and processes. Implementations Publish Date: June 18, 2008 VMware continues to be the market leader for x86 server virtualization. However, the license costs for VMware virtualization can be a deterrent for small enterprises. Small budget implementers who want to stay with VMware should start with its free VMware Server product. They may not have to go any further. Š 1998-2008 Info-Tech Research Group www.infotech.com
Executive Summary Currently, the majority of implementations of x86 machine virtualization for Windows and Linux servers is being done using VMware products. A small enterprise with a limited number of server virtualization candidates may baulk at the cost of licensing VMware's ESX Server ($3000 for the most basic SME Acceleration Kit). VMware Virtual Server is free, however, and offers a less expensive entry point to virtualization. This note discusses: ť The difference between Type 1 and Type 2 virtual machines.
ť The viability of a Type 2 solution for server consolidation. ť Why VMware Server is not promoted as host for production servers. A small enterprise with a modest number of low utilization servers can indeed achieve server consolidation and "good enough" performance with VMware Server. Moving up to a bare metal hypervisor solution (like VMware ESX) should be based on issues of availability and manageability rather than capacity.
Implement & Integrate 2 VMware Server: Free Virtualization for Small Implementations www.infotech.com
Implementation Point Consider a scenario where the enterprise has a small number of virtualization candidates (less than a dozen servers). Utilization of those servers is not high; however, current hardware is approaching end of lifecycle. In this scenario, the enterprise could get "good enough" performance running VMware's free VMware Server product to host those servers as virtual machines on less hardware.
VMware Server can be a good enough solution for this kind of modest server consolidation project. Though often promoted as a test/development only solution, Virtual Server can also be used for production servers in certain low to medium utilization circumstances. Info-Tech has encountered smaller enterprises which are using Virtual Server for production servers (See Case in Point).
Case in Point: VMware Server in Production
In a real world example encountered by Info-Tech Research Group, a small enterprise runs half a dozen company servers - including an e-mail server - as virtual machines on a multi-processor hardware running Linux and VMware Server. All the virtual machines are running Microsoft Windows as their operating system. The enterprise, a professional firm, is an all-Windows shop but found Linux provided a tighter and leaner (i.e. less resource hogging) operating system to host the virtual machine environment.
The firm is considering a move to VMware's for-pay Virtual Infrastructure 3 with ESX Server in the future. That decision will be based on assessment of requirements of server availability and disaster recovery. Right now they are focusing on storage consolidation in a Storage Area Network (SAN). Significantly, the move to ESX server will not be based on Virtual Machine performance which is currently good enough in the VMware Server environment.

VMware Server is a Type 2 or hosted virtualization solution (see below). It sits on top of a conventional Windows or Linux operating system rather than directly on the "bare metal" of server hardware. Make no mistake that a bare metal or Type 1 hypervisor is a more complete enterprise virtualization solution. With VMware, the choice is between free and good enough versus better scalability of the virtual environment and advanced management features for a price.
Implement & Integrate 3 VMware Server: Free Virtualization for Small Implementations www.infotech.com
Key Considerations In advance of a VMware Server implementation, it is important to understand how VMware Server differs from VMware's ESX Server (on which Virtual Infrastructure is based). This will help in the understanding of VMware Server's capabi... [download for more]

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