Why Hyperconverged For Small Business
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@carnival-boy said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:
I'm not talking about HA. Just plain old non-HA environments.
However, with the ability to run some, or all, environments on a single host if another host fails. But you don't need to double the resources, as it is generally acceptable to run a slower environment for a few days.
That's true. Often you can get by with less. Maybe a lot less. Maybe only recover a few key workloads and not others (email yes, ERP no, for example.) But if you can do that, you can often skip having the server, too. Just use someone's desktop temporarily (we actually do this a LOT), or cloud, or whatever. And if you go far enough to actually buy a full server, often HA is so little more expense that it is worth going all the way to being able to load balance and fail over.
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@dashrender said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:
@carnival-boy said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:
I'm not talking about HA. Just plain old non-HA environments.
However, with the ability to run some, or all, environments on a single host if another host fails. But you don't need to double the resources, as it is generally acceptable to run a slower environment for a few days.
Maybe yes, maybe no - at minimum you'd need double the storage, otherwise you can't the the workload from the down server onto the remaining one.
Also - is your plan to replicate the two hosts to each other so the data is available on the second host in case of failure? or is the plan to restore from tape?
I guess I just don't see that as really viable unless you go the full'ish HA route.
Double the storage only if recovering all workloads. He is saying that maybe some of them just don't matter during a recovery situation until the original host is repaired. So potentially it might be a smaller set of storage.
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@dashrender said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:
While not impossible, I've only lost one server mobo in 20+ years, never lost a RAID controller or RAM. Scott has more experience here with 1000's of servers on wallstreet - but if memory servers (and JB will say it never does me) Scott experience there is still very low, likely to the point of not really worrying about it. But again, it depends on your situation.
We lost hardware willy nilly. A drive daily, memory sticks monthly, RAID controllers monthly, motherboards quarterly, power supplies monthly.... as percentages it wasn't bad. In raw numbers, it was a constant thing to deal with. But we always were able to get replacement parts fast and reliably. But, ideal locations, too. Not rural Iowa.
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@dashrender said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:
One thing I haven't seen asked/talked about in this entire thread is - does the client still actually need their own servers? Can they put this in VPS? Like Vultr, etc?
Or at least during a recovery situation?
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@dashrender said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:
If you're already going to the point of having two hosts - chances are that the extra RAM/storage isn't really that much to just make a sudo-HA setup (i.e. replicate VMs between hosts, manually power on in case of host failure)
So both points here are valid. Those points being...
- CB says that you need to consider a second host of partial capacity.
- Dash says that it is likely very little more to get to full HA / failover.
Both things are true. But there is a temptation to use #2 to ignore #1, which is false. It is definitely important to consider that if you are going to have a second host, does it then make it worthwhile to go all of the way to full HA? Yes, evaluate that. But don't assume it.
There are basically three options (not really, there are tons, but three big ones) which are single host, full HA double host, or limited second host. They have three different price points, three different value propositions, and all are valid options. You have to price them out and consider what protection each provides to determine which one (if any) is right in a given scenario.
CB's point is absolutely correct. You can't rule out having a second host only because full HA would be too costly. In some cases, a more limited second host, while far from free, might be a good decision while the additional cost of HA is not. But Dash is correct that this isn't a common scenario.
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I step away for a day to work in the shop and come back to a group of mind readers. My next question was literally going to be how you handle situations where your best support is 4hr resolution but next business day for any resulting parts.
Assuming not a disk array failure, it would seem to depend on cost of one day of downtime and the cost to recover/regenerate any data since your last backup if your recovery method was via backups.
In the past suggestions have been to buy the same hardware and just swap the array over since, at least in cases of Dell, the array config is stored on the drives and the controller. This assumes matching controllers and firmware but still presents some risk.
You'd save the cost of the extra drives and complexity of HA but still have the capital waste of an idle asset. I think you limit excess licensing with open licensing. Is this even a semi-reasonable approach?
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@woodbutcher said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:
Assuming not a disk array failure, it would seem to depend on cost of one day of downtime and the cost to recover/regenerate any data since your last backup if your recovery method was via backups.
If the issue is NOT an array failure, you can generally recover all of the data. There might be downtime, but not data loss.
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@woodbutcher said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:
In the past suggestions have been to buy the same hardware and just swap the array over since, at least in cases of Dell, the array config is stored on the drives and the controller. This assumes matching controllers and firmware but still presents some risk.
This is universal and even software RAID (e.g. no controller) can do this (but with a tiny bit more effort.) Swapping controllers is a fundamental component of RAID. Since the controllers fail reasonably often, it is pretty critical.
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@woodbutcher said in Why Hyperconverged For Small Business:
You'd save the cost of the extra drives and complexity of HA but still have the capital waste of an idle asset. I think you limit excess licensing with open licensing. Is this even a semi-reasonable approach?
Once in a great while, but almost never. There are a number of reasons... but basically in almost any case where it seems like idle assets are worth it (e.g. buying a second system but leaving it cold), you can make it warm for the same money and have way better results.
Remember a warm spare never requires additional licensing, only a hot spare. Warm spares are licensed the same as backup copies (because they are.) Because of that, the idea of the cold spare doesn't really hold much value.
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However, all the concerns about licensing should raise red flags about your system. Yes, there are times that having something require licensing is okay or even desired. But you should always see it as a truly huge risk and one that you have to consider carefully. Licensing makes the most sense higher up the stack. For example, the application itself is the most likely object to justify licensing. The cabling is the least. Imagine how ridiculous it would be if your rack, desks, and cables required that you have a special license for each use!! It would be insane and you'd never stand for it (you might have to stand if your chair was licensed only to someone else's butt.)
Your hypervisor and operating system are closer to the cables, rack and desk than they are to the application in this way. These aren't components that you want to have at risk due to a need for licensing. Sometimes you have to, but it is rare and a "have to" would only be caused by an application and if an application puts you in that position for many companies that alone is a reason to question the viability of the developers behind said application.
At a minimum, something like ESXi introduces totally unwarranted complexity and risk and is something that can be quietly, transparently, removed and fixed during this process.
