Why is VMWare considered so often
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@scottalanmiller said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@Carnival-Boy said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
I haven't tried Unitrends free with ESXi free. I may give it a go. What exactly are the limitations?
Limitations are that you can only back up eight VMs tops, that it treats them as physical servers and requires you to install an agent onto each one and it can't take an image of them so you lose the Unitrends features like being able to restore to disparate hardware or do automatic recovery and recovery is slower. And there is an ongoing dispute as to whether or not it really offers this. I keep asking and the answer is different each time, I can never get a straight answer. We don't use the free version so never play with it, but I ask "can it do ESXi Free" and they say yes, they I ask if it uses agents and they say "no, you can't use agents." So does it or doesn't it? no one knows.
I use it at home, and yes, it requires agents if running free ESXi.
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@Jason said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@hobbit666 said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
I have to admit i'm a ESXi person, but only because I can install ESXi and be installing VM's within 30mins. (Backups are an issue)
Hyper-V I have to configure a workstation to be allowed to manage the host (god help me if there's a domain involved lol)
Xen - I admit, I just don't know enough about it, but from my last test it was a nightmare getting install isos onto the server to install onto VM's.Why not just domain join Hyper-V? our Vsphere is domain joined.
I would like to hear the argument as well. Although do you really join VSphere to the domain or do you use the domain as an authentication mechanism?
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@marcinozga said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@scottalanmiller said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@Carnival-Boy said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
I haven't tried Unitrends free with ESXi free. I may give it a go. What exactly are the limitations?
Limitations are that you can only back up eight VMs tops, that it treats them as physical servers and requires you to install an agent onto each one and it can't take an image of them so you lose the Unitrends features like being able to restore to disparate hardware or do automatic recovery and recovery is slower. And there is an ongoing dispute as to whether or not it really offers this. I keep asking and the answer is different each time, I can never get a straight answer. We don't use the free version so never play with it, but I ask "can it do ESXi Free" and they say yes, they I ask if it uses agents and they say "no, you can't use agents." So does it or doesn't it? no one knows.
I use it at home, and yes, it requires agents if running free ESXi.
This sounds like confirmation to me @scottalanmiller .
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@marcinozga said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
I use it at home, and yes, it requires agents if running free ESXi.
Which is the only way it "can" work, but Unitrends keeps telling me that agents are not allowed with it.
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@DustinB3403 said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@marcinozga said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@scottalanmiller said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@Carnival-Boy said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
I haven't tried Unitrends free with ESXi free. I may give it a go. What exactly are the limitations?
Limitations are that you can only back up eight VMs tops, that it treats them as physical servers and requires you to install an agent onto each one and it can't take an image of them so you lose the Unitrends features like being able to restore to disparate hardware or do automatic recovery and recovery is slower. And there is an ongoing dispute as to whether or not it really offers this. I keep asking and the answer is different each time, I can never get a straight answer. We don't use the free version so never play with it, but I ask "can it do ESXi Free" and they say yes, they I ask if it uses agents and they say "no, you can't use agents." So does it or doesn't it? no one knows.
I use it at home, and yes, it requires agents if running free ESXi.
This sounds like confirmation to me @scottalanmiller .
Not if the issue is licensing.
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@coliver said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@Jason said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@hobbit666 said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
I have to admit i'm a ESXi person, but only because I can install ESXi and be installing VM's within 30mins. (Backups are an issue)
Hyper-V I have to configure a workstation to be allowed to manage the host (god help me if there's a domain involved lol)
Xen - I admit, I just don't know enough about it, but from my last test it was a nightmare getting install isos onto the server to install onto VM's.Why not just domain join Hyper-V? our Vsphere is domain joined.
I would like to hear the argument as well. Although do you really join VSphere to the domain or do you use the domain as an authentication mechanism?
What is the difference?
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Well we know that ESXi Free has no backup API built in. So you're required to use a third party tool to backup the VM's. If this tool has to be installed to the VM's doesn't that qualify as an Agent?
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@DustinB3403 said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@travisdh1 said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@hobbit666 said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
Time to install XenServer again me thinks
(any tips on using ISO's to install into VM's??)CentOS 7 Minimal and/or Netinstall.
I would just download the XS iso directly from xenserver.org
No reason to install it as a part of CentOS. Unless you're looking to have larger than 2TB partitions.
I thought @hobbit666 was asking what to run on XenServer.
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@travisdh1 OIC I though you were having him install Xen as a part of a CentOS 7 server.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@marcinozga said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
I use it at home, and yes, it requires agents if running free ESXi.
Which is the only way it "can" work, but Unitrends keeps telling me that agents are not allowed with it.
http://www.unitrends.com/products/enterprise-backup-software/unitrends-free - scroll to the middle of the page.
Protection for free vSphere
Unitrends Free protects virtual machines running on free VMware vSphere (also known as Free ESXi) using agents.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@coliver said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@Jason said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
@hobbit666 said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
I have to admit i'm a ESXi person, but only because I can install ESXi and be installing VM's within 30mins. (Backups are an issue)
Hyper-V I have to configure a workstation to be allowed to manage the host (god help me if there's a domain involved lol)
Xen - I admit, I just don't know enough about it, but from my last test it was a nightmare getting install isos onto the server to install onto VM's.Why not just domain join Hyper-V? our Vsphere is domain joined.
I would like to hear the argument as well. Although do you really join VSphere to the domain or do you use the domain as an authentication mechanism?
What is the difference?
Management. I assumed that domain joined devices were managed by the domain and could do GPO style management. Whereas something like ESXi queries the LDAP database to authenticate. I could be wrong but that was my understanding.
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@scottalanmiller said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
so you lose the Unitrends features like being able to restore to disparate hardware
That's what I meant when I asked "Can you restore a Unitrends backed up VM to a different host?". Since you don't use it with ESXi and don't seem to know for sure how it works, so I'd rather hear from someone who does (or from Unitrends themselves) before writing it off.
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Which @hobbit666 Xen and XenServer are different platforms.
Xen is a hypervisor function you can install to any Linux distro.
XenServer is a Hypervisor you install directly to the hardware.
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@DustinB3403 said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
Which @hobbit666 Xen and XenServer are different platforms.
Xen is a hypervisor function you can install to any Linux distro.
XenServer is a Hypervisor you install directly to the hardware.
Xen is like Asterisk, XenServer is like FreePBX.
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So it must be a agent based backup client that Unitrends uses to protect VM's on ESXi Free.
And it's limited to 1TB of data protection. Which may work for tiny environments but that could very quickly cease to be feasible as the business grows.
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Yeah my bad I always just say Xen, When I should be using XenServer
It's installing 6.5 now on a spare server. Once up will be looing for the guide I think in on ML for XO install and setup -
@hobbit666 said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
Yeah my bad I always just say Xen, When I should be using XenServer
It's installing 6.5 now on a spare server. Once up will be looing for the guide I think in on ML for XO install and setup -
If the business grows, switch to something else. That's partly the beauty of free, simple products. Use them today. When (or if) business needs change replace them with something else. It's only when there is a big initial investment in a solution (in terms of money and time) that you need really need to focus on scaling in the future. IT solutions can be a lot more dynamic and short-term now than when I started out.
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@Carnival-Boy said in Why is VMWare considered so often:
If the business grows, switch to something else. That's partly the beauty of free, simple products. Use them today. When (or if) business needs change replace them with something else. It's only when there is a big initial investment in a solution (in terms of money and time) that you need really need to focus on scaling in the future. IT solutions can be a lot more dynamic and short-term now than when I started out.
But you can build a solution that scales today for free. No cost, so again choosing ESXi Free (or any version of ESXi) is a total waste of money.
