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OK, this virtual computing thing is very cool. I get to run windows on my Mac.
#11
"Yes I do. I have had them crash, updates go bad... running them on a virtual server makes them much easier to restore. "

Okay...I'll buy that at the slightest bit on both server types and the updates. Depends on your backup solution(s) though. I'll stick with what I do. Guess I am just luckiest of the lucky and none of the (not) many updates have 'gone bad'.

"You're right, your method would use the hardware more efficiently. However, the overall efficiency goes way down. When the OS becomes corrupted or fails after an update, it takes MUCH more work. The cost of added hardware to run a VS at the same speed, is easily surpassed by the cost of brining a machine back up to speed."

I disagree...not much work at all; should a complete failure happen - utilizing another reason below (redundant systems).

"Let's say there's 100 users on a machine. Each have their files and dev work saved on that server. If it's using your method and a user uses his admin access to erase all files on the machine, you're SOL. If that user was on a Virtual Server, the other 99 users wouldn't be affected."

Why would standard, authenticated users have admin rights on these machines? Properly set up (even applications that ahere such), they wouldn't.

Let's be realistic. Yes, you would have a few/several of these servers setup to properly balance the load...even an initial switching server re-directs them to ServerX or ServerB...but even in a 30,000+ campus...very, very doubtful that ~100 users...let alone ~30 are going to be hitting one of these servers for application usage at any one time - personally speaking.

"The largest Windows solution provider in the west uses Virtual Servers for just about everything."

And that is? Thankfully...never had to utilize a Windows solution provider.
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#12
Just so you know...I do respect different opinions and solutions, as mine are not always the best.

...but as somebody who actually maintains such configurations (app servers, etc...etc...etc...), especially in this exact manner, then it is a tough sell when the doing is doing and the working is working...for years and years.
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#13
[quote onthedownlow]"Yes I do. I have had them crash, updates go bad... running them on a virtual server makes them much easier to restore. "

Okay...I'll buy that at the slightest bit on both server types and the updates. Depends on your backup solution(s) though. I'll stick with what I do. Guess I am just luckiest of the lucky and none of the (not) many updates have 'gone bad'.
I had a security update on a rather clean Win2k3 Web server go bad. All that was on there was two dev web sites and SQL server. The update was applied and the OS would no longer run properly, lots of errors. Applied the update to an identical backup and it worked fine.

I disagree...not much work at all; should a complete failure happen - utilizing another reason below (redundant systems).

If you have a load balanced system for every machine, that would be pretty spendy.

Why would standard, authenticated users have admin rights on these machines? Properly set up (even applications that ahere such), they wouldn't.

Many reasons. Lots of stuff can't be done without admin rights. If I used your definition of "properly set up" none of my devs would be able to get work done. And, while they don't do anything malicious, they've been known to wipe out systems before. But that's okay since they can just restore the image and be back up in less than 10 minutes. Plus they often need to do stuff that requires rebooting, and if there's a bunch of other users on the same OS, that causes problems.

Let's be realistic. Yes, you would have a few/several of these servers setup to properly balance the load...even an initial switching server re-directs them to ServerX or ServerB...but even in a 30,000+ campus...very, very doubtful that ~100 users...let alone ~30 are going to be hitting one of these servers for application usage at any one time - personally speaking.

Right, in your personal experience that may be okay. But in my experience and in that of some of the most experienced people in this area, it's just asking for trouble.

Another example of where the use of a virtual server has saved me was in the case of a hardware failure where an exact replacement was no longer available. A motherboard died and you probably know that Windows needs a reinstall when moved to a new mobo. Sure I could have an identical machine to all of my machines at all times, but that would get rather expensive. Rather than reinstall the OS (and ghosting it wouldn't work because it was on a new mobo) and reconfigure everything (sure some of that can be automated, but it's still a PITA) I just moved the image over to another machine, installed Virtual Server and was up and running in just a few minutes - exactly where I left off.

Right now I'm using Virtual Server to test a bunch of different ideas, each which require their own OS. Rather than plugging in 20 different PCs, getting a bigger KVM to handle them, figuring out what circuits to tap into... I just setup several different guest OS's on one box.
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#14
To each his own. ; )
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#15
[quote onthedownlow]Just so you know...I do respect different opinions and solutions, as mine are not always the best.

...but as somebody who actually maintains such configurations (app servers, etc...etc...etc...), especially in this exact manner, then it is a tough sell when the doing is doing and the working is working...for years and years.
I understand, and respect your opinion. 99.9% of the time your method works well. I would say four times in the past few years I've run into that other 0.1% or seen it run into. The first time I used virtual machines for just a couple things, and watching how easy it was to restore and learning some of the tiny details that can really cause issues, I moved more to virtual servers. I also got to know someone at the company I mentioned (we'll, have known him for a while but learned more about his work...) and he stressed the use of virtual machines in nearly all areas. Then I talked to some more server admins about it, reflected on my experience in the past several years...

I had another issue where a host OS was hacked (fully patched and through a NAT... apparently one of the unpatched and known exploits was exploited) but all the guests were fine. I moved the images to a new machine and reformatted the old.

Recently a dev had multiple machines fail all in a row. He also ran into several issues which caused us to lose about a weeks worth of work (data was tied to hardware which ended up being replaced with a newer model and thus wouldn't run - backups didn't matter, we needed the hardware.) Had he been using a virtual machine, it would have been tied to the image instead of the hardware. Then a proper backup could have been used.
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