VMware

[Aaron Bartlett]

Virtualization can be a viable production tool depending on your environment and workload.  Services that are relatively low-impact (particularly for disk I/O) can do very well on VMware Server (free version) as long as you don't try to run more than a few virtual machines (VM's) simultaneously.  For higher VM counts and/or stress loads, the free version doesn't scale well... you would be better suited to running a dedicated box or purchasing VMware ESX Server.

I have around 50-60 SMB customers running production VM's under VMware Server 1.x (free version).  Most of the VM's are dedicated to running MailScanner, DNS and other public-facing services.  It provides a quick solution for deploying secured services on MS Windows servers (i.e. Linux/xBSD for DNS, postfix mail bastions, etc) without exposing the Windows server to the outside.

I also have a few other customers running fairly large production environments on ESX Servers (50+ VM's) with HA, FC SAN, etc.  Even with ESX, we still keep the heavy loads (SQL, file I/O, etc) on dedicated, physical machines for better performance.

Best regards, 
Aaron Bartlett


-----Original Message-----
From: mailscanner-bounces at lists.mailscanner.info on behalf of Rodney Green
Sent: Thu 5/31/2007 7:55 AM
To: MailScanner discussion
Subject: OT: VMware
 
Hello,

I've seen VMware mentioned in a recent thread. What are the benefits of
using such a solution for an e-mail server?
I'm downloading VMware Server; the "free" version. Is this what you guys are
using? Is it indeed free?

I just never thought of using virtualization for an e-mail server. It's an
interesting idea and would like to hear from
people already doing it.

Thanks,
Rod

-- 
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