What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?
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@John-Nicholson said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
And the rare but prized "Mission Critical Support". Think this is a 250K minimum add-on, but it cuts your SLA from 1 hour to 30 minutes. I think you can also make people work non-production impacting cosmetic issues 24/7 and other crazy stuff.
Yeah, this is normally the option that I work with in the environments that I use VMware. This is where VMware support makes their bread and butter. The big shops that want serious support.
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@hobbit666 said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@hobbit666 said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
I think the other issue is convincing others of the benefits of hypervisors like XenServer or Hyper-V. I want to use Hyper-V or Xen for 2 new hosts that will have Citrix XenApp running but convincing management to move from ESXi is a struggle but I think this also comes from our MSP that likes ESXi and pushes that even in the FREE version.
That bit comes down to getting management to recognize their buyer's agents from their seller's agents. Once they realize that their MSP is really a VAR and is trying to make a quick buck selling them something, it should change their perspective quickly.
Not that VMware is always bad and anyone pushing it is trying to make a quick buck; only that an MSP making money by selling VMware isn't a trustworthy decision maker in this scenario.
100% Agree - At the moment we are "reviewing" our ESXi farm that currently has a SAN, and we have outgrown it. Every time we talk the instant reaction is NEW SAN with some SSD's for SQL etc etc. I'm thinking no lets look at Hypercoverage or IaaS now
But yeah since I've started here and started to question things the IT manager has been a bit more on my side with thinking
To be fair, Flash drives are at ~50 cents per GB from Dell even, so unless your buying archive storage your getting flash today. Its why when looking at HCI I always say look for something where you can add drives later as this stuff gets cheaper/faster.
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@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
VMware has a much better support reputation, of course, but pay as you go product support tends to be bad.
Its a lot easier to have a support reputation when you have a HCL, and you have signed agreements from the partners that they will support and ship firmware's for said hardware etc. The devil of any hypervisor is dealing with hardware and having someone's name in blood to hold over their head when their stuff breaks is handy...
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@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@johnhooks said:
IBM doesn't.Cough Softlayer Cough.
In all seriousness they are a massive VMware shop. (Under VCAN, as well as customers just renting bare metal and putting ESXi on it). -
@John-Nicholson said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@johnhooks said:
IBM doesn't.Cough Softlayer Cough.
In all seriousness they are a massive VMware shop. (Under VCAN, as well as customers just renting bare metal and putting ESXi on it).Only in their custom products, though. Same as Rackspace. Not in their top end public products, just the smaller private ones that are really just them managing customer environments. They don't use it when it is their own design.
Cloud@Cost made that mistake. It was a disaster.
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@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@John-Nicholson said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@johnhooks said:
IBM doesn't.Cough Softlayer Cough.
In all seriousness they are a massive VMware shop. (Under VCAN, as well as customers just renting bare metal and putting ESXi on it).Only in their custom products, though. Same as Rackspace. Not in their top end public products, just the smaller private ones that are really just them managing customer environments. They don't use it when it is their own design.
Cloud@Cost made that mistake. It
wasis a disaster.FTFY. They're still zombie-ing along.
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@dafyre said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@John-Nicholson said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@johnhooks said:
IBM doesn't.Cough Softlayer Cough.
In all seriousness they are a massive VMware shop. (Under VCAN, as well as customers just renting bare metal and putting ESXi on it).Only in their custom products, though. Same as Rackspace. Not in their top end public products, just the smaller private ones that are really just them managing customer environments. They don't use it when it is their own design.
Cloud@Cost made that mistake. It
wasis a disaster.FTFY. They're still zombie-ing along.
Depends on your definition. They never made it to production.
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@scottalanmiller Softlayers main product is bare metal, I'd argue its a fairly common use case.
I would argue their VPS's tend to get used more for "developers gone wild" (Someone sticks a 3 tier app in a container on a single physical box) @#$@ than enterprise use cases. The amount of times I found a GIS server on a non-backed up softlayer VPS or server was bizarre.
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@John-Nicholson One nice thing you get from using Softlayer for vSphere is you get a good mix of PaaS, mixed in with a HA/DRS available hosting for traditional app's that don't HA themselves.
There are a ton of applications out there with 10 users, that rebuilding the code for PaaS to do HA isn't worth it.
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@John-Nicholson said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller Softlayers main product is bare metal, I'd argue its a fairly common use case.
That's just overpriced, poorly supported colo
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@scottalanmiller Softlayer will offer someone with a few hundred a month 24/7 service. If your wanting burst API driven bare metal with over 20 pops around the world who would you use?
Soft layer throws in monitoring, and free private transit between their pops so when comparing price to something else its kinda apples/oranges to look at raw costs vs. someone like AWS who charges per GB even between zones.
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@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@John-Nicholson said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@johnhooks said:
IBM doesn't.Cough Softlayer Cough.
In all seriousness they are a massive VMware shop. (Under VCAN, as well as customers just renting bare metal and putting ESXi on it).Only in their custom products, though. Same as Rackspace. Not in their top end public products, just the smaller private ones that are really just them managing customer environments. They don't use it when it is their own design.
Cloud@Cost made that mistake. It was a disaster.
It's funny. My system literally just came up again at cloud@cost when I was reading this post. Been offline with out a means of recovery for ~9 months. Wasn't important enough to open a ticket.
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@coliver said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@John-Nicholson said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@johnhooks said:
IBM doesn't.Cough Softlayer Cough.
In all seriousness they are a massive VMware shop. (Under VCAN, as well as customers just renting bare metal and putting ESXi on it).Only in their custom products, though. Same as Rackspace. Not in their top end public products, just the smaller private ones that are really just them managing customer environments. They don't use it when it is their own design.
Cloud@Cost made that mistake. It was a disaster.
It's funny. My system literally just came up again at cloud@cost when I was reading this post. Been offline with out a means of recovery for ~9 months. Wasn't important enough to open a ticket.
Nine months of outage. Impressive. That might be a new record.
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@John-Nicholson said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller Softlayer will offer someone with a few hundred a month 24/7 service. If your wanting burst API driven bare metal with over 20 pops around the world who would you use?
Soft layer throws in monitoring, and free private transit between their pops so when comparing price to something else its kinda apples/oranges to look at raw costs vs. someone like AWS who charges per GB even between zones.
A few hundred for dedicated hardware? What kind of hardware is it? (Lenovo, I would fear.)
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@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@John-Nicholson said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller Softlayer will offer someone with a few hundred a month 24/7 service. If your wanting burst API driven bare metal with over 20 pops around the world who would you use?
Soft layer throws in monitoring, and free private transit between their pops so when comparing price to something else its kinda apples/oranges to look at raw costs vs. someone like AWS who charges per GB even between zones.
A few hundred for dedicated hardware? What kind of hardware is it? (Lenovo, I would fear.)
Softlayer is a Dell shop, if I remember correctly.
We are a Dell blade shop. Big red V was an HP shop, although using Dell for everything else. Rackspace uses Dell AFAIK and other stuff, like Tyan white boxes for POWER.
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@PSX_Defector said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@John-Nicholson said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
@scottalanmiller Softlayer will offer someone with a few hundred a month 24/7 service. If your wanting burst API driven bare metal with over 20 pops around the world who would you use?
Soft layer throws in monitoring, and free private transit between their pops so when comparing price to something else its kinda apples/oranges to look at raw costs vs. someone like AWS who charges per GB even between zones.
A few hundred for dedicated hardware? What kind of hardware is it? (Lenovo, I would fear.)
Softlayer is a Dell shop, if I remember correctly.
We are a Dell blade shop. Big red V was an HP shop, although using Dell for everything else. Rackspace uses Dell AFAIK and other stuff, like Tyan white boxes for POWER.
Softlayer / IBM is buying from Dell? While that would be awesome (Softlayer has no internal access to gear of Dell quality via its IBM channel since they only do Power gear) it seems very unlikely given that it's part of IBM and was for years before the Lenovo divestiture. IBM always seems to be so tied to Lenovo even after selling to them.
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The planet a really long time ago was a Dell shop (like8-10 years). Softlayer is a supermicro shop, and stayed that way after IBM bought them. Shortly after this IBM sold off the X servers.
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Thank you for voicing so eloquently what some of us have been trying to wrap our heads around. I personally come from a frugal era of IT and will always scout free solutions before coughing up the cash or subscribing to a (shudder) recurring licensing fee. We used to buy our modem banks by sniping eBay auctions, and that was at a tri-state telecom. I realize you need to spend money to make money, but unnecessary expenditures should still be avoid if possible, imo.
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@chrisnbrooks said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
Thank you for voicing so eloquently what some of us have been trying to wrap our heads around. I personally come from a frugal era of IT and will always scout free solutions before coughing up the cash or subscribing to a (shudder) recurring licensing fee. We used to buy our modem banks by sniping eBay auctions, and that was at a tri-state telecom. I realize you need to spend money to make money, but unnecessary expenditures should still be avoid if possible, imo.
XenServer + CentOS is a huge moneysaver. Virtualization period is a pretty big money saver.
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@John-Nicholson said in What is the Upside to VMware to the SMB?:
The planet a really long time ago was a Dell shop (like8-10 years). Softlayer is a supermicro shop, and stayed that way after IBM bought them. Shortly after this IBM sold off the X servers.
I am, once again, down the street from them. It's been a long time.
