[rescue] Cheap, fast, PC server

[Bill Bradford]

On Sun, Jan 27, 2008 at 09:06:13AM -0800, Devin Ganger wrote:
> If you're doing everything all in the same OS, yes. However, if you've got a
> variety and want to maximize hardware use while minimizing power and cooling
> load, VMs are the way to go. VMs also have the advantage of being a lot
> easier to move onto a different server in the event of hardware issues --
> simply have one backup process on the host to appropriately suspend and
> protect your VM files, and another backup process on the guest to capture
> the data that's changed (treating the two much like a full and a
> differential, respectively).

At the $BIGCORP I work at, most of the Exchange infrastructure and AD
server farms are on virtual machines.  If a VM node goes down, the VMs just
get automatically migrated to another system; this prevents a single
hardware failure from taking out a large portion of infrastructure.

We're also using a 3-node ESX cluster in my department to get rid of tons
of "legacy" boxes; stuff like Dell Precision 220s that should have been 
tossed 5-6 years ago but yet still run "critical" services (at least in
the opinions of some people).

Bill

-- 
Bill Bradford 
Houston, Texas