Looking for virtualization advice
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But as he is looking to not be managing the hypervisor, this comes with costs and Scale is going to be the cheapest path to a fully managed hypervisor if he wants it from a vendor. Of course, it might be cheaper to bring in an ITSP to do the management and get a smaller solution. That's perfectly viable. But if the point is a managed product, I'm not aware of any way to get to the Scale level of simplicity without Scale.
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@JaredBusch what he could do is something in the middle, like a single server without a replicant partner. And have a backup system that will let him run "live" during recovery or just do really rapid recovery. Then have a second server that lacks it's own storage or any amount of it and run from the recovery system until disks are moved or replaced or whatever. That would cut costs as he would run from the backup / DR system instead of from the second server during a recover phase. But it requires not having the full second node to fail over to.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@JaredBusch what he could do is something in the middle, like a single server without a replicant partner. And have a backup system that will let him run "live" during recovery or just do really rapid recovery. Then have a second server that lacks it's own storage or any amount of it and run from the recovery system until disks are moved or replaced or whatever. That would cut costs as he would run from the backup / DR system instead of from the second server during a recover phase. But it requires not having the full second node to fail over to.
Single server starts at $6k like I said. Scale starts at way more than that for 15TB.
Hyper-V has built in replication that takes almost no time to setup. It can even do a third tier extended replication.
So 2 servers would be $12k. Then it is only the setup time for Hyper-V Server. May be slightly more difficult than Scale's pretty web page, but it is far from difficult.
The backup costs are a wash as that is the same no matter what the hypervisor is.
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So some quick numbers to help with comparisons. These are super rough on both sides.
For a two node system from xByte you are looking around $10-$12K if you want to have two nodes. If you forego the second node, which is often the smart thing to do, then it's the $5K-$6K more or less. Don't undersestimate the value in keeping things simple and not having failover. Very, very few companies need failover of any sort. Downtime is typically cheap.
Scale starts with three nodes and their starter node is $7,800 and too small for you. But likely all you need is a drive upgrade. You would be pretty small on the Scale side to meet your storage needs. My guess would be around $9,500 per node. So that's $28,500, I think.
It's way more than double the cost of doing two server nodes on your own directly. But it is also an appliance will full support for the entire stack rather than priced based on you doing your own support. That's really what you are paying for different between the two solutions. Both are fast enough and big enough to meet your technical needs. The question is how much of the "don't want to manage the hypervisor and storage" that you want to do.
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@scottalanmiller also, @scale can go fuck off because they no longer have public pricing.
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@jaredbusch said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@scottalanmiller also, @scale can go fuck off because they no longer have public pricing.
They do, not sure why the link to it isn't on that page. This is the link...
https://www.scalecomputing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/hc3-sales-brochure.pdf
I had to go searching for it.
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And that price sheet has the HC5150D and HC1150D models that were just announced. So it is currently updated.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
I had to go searching for it.
Not my job. It is their job to not turn me off. Which they did. fuck that.
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@scottalanmiller They copyright was updated for 2017. Still not the point.
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@jaredbusch said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@scottalanmiller They copyright was updated for 2017. Still not the point.
It has new models on it. Not just a copyright update. It's new prices. From like last month, I think. Pretty recent. The 5150D was just announced like one webinar ago.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@jaredbusch said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@scottalanmiller They copyright was updated for 2017. Still not the point.
It has new models on it. Not just a copyright update. It's new prices. From like last month, I think. Pretty recent. The 5150D was just announced like one webinar ago.
Again, not the point. The point is they do not publicly publish it. They hide it.
They can go piss up a rope.
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@jaredbusch said in Looking for virtualization advice:
They can go piss up a rope.
Now there is one I've not heard before.
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@scottalanmiller said in Looking for virtualization advice:
@jaredbusch said in Looking for virtualization advice:
They can go piss up a rope.
Now there is one I've not heard before.
How?
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No idea, but I've never heard it.
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Anyway, I love Scale's product, they need to fix that pricing link to not be hidden.
And back on topic.
$12k versus $30k is a huge difference.
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Side note, how do you calculate cores for Server 2016 on a Scale system. Is it per node?
because I specifically spec'd that Xbyte system with 2x 8core procs because of Windows licensing
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@jaredbusch said in Looking for virtualization advice:
Side note, how do you calculate cores for Server 2016 on a Scale system. Is it per node?
because I specifically spec'd that Xbyte system with 2x 8core procs because of Windows licensing
It's the same as anything else. It's per node that you allow Windows to run on. So in a three node system you can choose Windows to run on or be allowed to run on any one, two or three nodes (or more if you bought more.) Windows licensing is "up to" sixteen cores per node in the minimum licensing. So unless you are exceeding that, it's just the base licensing.
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In a situation like this, without knowing the load numbers, it would be easy with a three node system to use one node for Windows and one for Linux and then have a third as the failover target. That would allow Windows to only need to be licensed for one node and SA to allow the failover (mobility) to the DR node. If you went with full Windows licensing on both or all three nodes you could do real time load balancing, of course, but that is likely excessive. The Windows licensing being such a large cost component.
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@garyp said in Looking for virtualization advice:
We are looking to virtualize the servers in the data center in our office. Since most of our applications run in two co-lo data centers, managed by a service provider, the data center in our office could almost be considered a remote office.
Currently we have mostly physical Windows servers (yes, I know it is 2017) in this data center consisting of:
Two file servers for a total of 7 TB
Security system server
HVAC system server
Warehouse conveyor control server
We need to add about 6 Linux servers for SIP and a telecom specific application.Ideally, we can move VMs to another host if one fails, but it doesn’t have to be instantaneous.
Current storage need is ~8 TB with room to grow to ~15 TB in the next 3-4 years. DAS, NAS, etc., whatever might work best for this situation.
Dell suggested a 3-2-1 architecture for over $100,000, which does not seem at all practical.
Another vendor suggested Dell’s VTRX with 3 M630 blades plus the storage.
> We have started looking at HCI solutions, including Scale. StarWind and HPE SimpliVity as we do not the expertise in managing a hypervisor nor the time to manage it. Too many other projects and distractions.We will need some sort of DR solution. We will want an on-site backup and a copy going off-site to Azure, AWS or similar.
Suggestions?I can't say much about Scale, but both StarWind and SimpliVity (now proud part of HPE) have extensive pro active support facilities as part of their HCI offerings. It means it's going to be StarWind (and HPE of course) staff who'll "babysit" your IT infrastructure, watch critical telemetry and performance metrics and react BEFORE issue is going to happen. + dedicated support engineer doing all "grunt" work for you.
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-pro-active-support
https://www.simplivity.com/blog/2016/02/our-support-is-always-on/
Making long story short: you don't need to be a virtualization (storage?) expert anymore
Good luck!
