VMTN Blog

Mike DiPetrillo is on a roll. (Our podcast with Mike will be up tomorrow; it was delayed because the podcast provider was not posting audio for 24 hours; coincidentally, this blog provider just went out for 45 minutes. There's a cloud and availability post there somewhere.)

Link: From the VMware Field: Mike D's Virtualization Blog: Virtual Server Sprawl. He gives 4 reasons for server sprawl, from underestimating how many servers you have to begin with (did you count Jim's two test servers in the old closet?) to now being able to set up some redundancy.

I've seen this topic come up over and over again on panels, in the press, on blogs, and in customer conversations. What's virtual server sprawl? It's the theory (or fact) that because virtual machines are so easy to create that once you virtualize your servers will start to multiply like rabbits. I'm here to tell you there's a lot of fact behind that statement. After doing virtualization for 6 1/2 years here at VMware I don't think I've seen one customer reduce their server count ever. Sure, they've gotten rid of a lot of physical hardware. I guess you could call those servers. However, I've never seen the actual server count (OS/App stack) go down. Usually it starts to ramp up rather quickly.

Link: From the VMware Field: Mike D's Virtualization Blog: Building a $500 VMware ESXi Host.

See also Dave Mishchenko's excellent www.vm-help.com and the ESXi forum and the Community Hardware Software Forum.