Virtual Machines, Clusters and Servers

[Mike123789098765]

Ok heres my question, for a large deployment, ie an enterprise type situation where your dealing with hundreds or perhaps thousands of users is it possible to create a cluster of machines where CPU and RAM are both utilized, like a beowulf cluster and multiple servers would be run as virtual machines. This would allow for scalability as the demand for resources grow one could simply add more nodes. As this is pertaining particularly to an OS X server deployment a couple thoughts I have had are the following:

 

1) Use an XServe as the controller in a load balancing beowulf cluster.(or whatever it is referred to in a beowulf cluster) Then submit vmware as job to the cluster. Now theoretically this could work but since you need to assign resources to any given vm vmware will only see the available hardware on the host machine so in fact this approach isn't very feasible.

 

2) While researching this subject I came across some vague reference docs in regard to clustering VMware ESXi. Does anybody have any experience with this or knowledge on the subject. If this functions as a beowulf cluster would it seems it would possible to put together a cluster of servers and have them function as a super computer and run multiple guest operating systems. Of course OS X would need to be hacked to run on this sort of config but my question in regards to this is does ESXi see all of the clusters CPU and RAM resources? If so this seems like it could be a fairly scalable solution and would allow full utilization of resources. I am still a little confused on how one would deploy this type of solution though.

 

Any input would help, I may not be digging deep enough on google for the answer but if anyone can provide a straight forward solution or reference to one it would be greatly appreciated. [rant] On another subject OS X Server is a great product but Apple needs to step it up in terms of its features set if they expect it to be adopted in enterprise. While third-party devs have slowly come out of the woodwork to bring some popular enterprise applications/services to OS X Server its happened too slowly. Though Apple tends to be more of a consumer oriented company versus enterprise, especially with the crazy success of iDevices, they offer a great server product that is in the apple tradition, extremely easy to use/manage however it is still lacking in a few areas. Hell they don't even use it themselves for their .mac email servers. They've turned to Sun's Java Messaging server for that task.... [/rant]

[an1r0n]

Hello,

 

I've read your whole post and have a few questions.

 

Do you have Xserve or this is just a thought? And second one, did you use some type of server virtualization ever?

 

As for your thoughts and questions, I assume Xgrid could be good for your intentions but it wouldn't, unfortunatly, be the best. And I say unfortunatly because I am a big fan of OS X and it would be great if they would finally make official support for virtualization at OS level (like Microsoft Hyper-V).

 

VMware ESX is much, much more better solution for virtualization. Firstly you have vMotion which is probably the best failover in entire industry and secondly, you have amazing tools for it. Search for vSphere and you would see what I mean. Ofcourse this costs, a lot but still, it's the best.

 

You do have ESXi verison, but It isnt good (especially for failover) as vSphere...

 

Talkt to you soon,

 

an1r0n

 

Ok heres my question, for a large deployment, ie an enterprise type situation where your dealing with hundreds or perhaps thousands of users is it possible to create a cluster of machines where CPU and RAM are both utilized, like a beowulf cluster and multiple servers would be run as virtual machines. This would allow for scalability as the demand for resources grow one could simply add more nodes. As this is pertaining particularly to an OS X server deployment a couple thoughts I have had are the following:

 

1) Use an XServe as the controller in a load balancing beowulf cluster.(or whatever it is referred to in a beowulf cluster) Then submit vmware as job to the cluster. Now theoretically this could work but since you need to assign resources to any given vm vmware will only see the available hardware on the host machine so in fact this approach isn't very feasible.

 

2) While researching this subject I came across some vague reference docs in regard to clustering VMware ESXi. Does anybody have any experience with this or knowledge on the subject. If this functions as a beowulf cluster would it seems it would possible to put together a cluster of servers and have them function as a super computer and run multiple guest operating systems. Of course OS X would need to be hacked to run on this sort of config but my question in regards to this is does ESXi see all of the clusters CPU and RAM resources? If so this seems like it could be a fairly scalable solution and would allow full utilization of resources. I am still a little confused on how one would deploy this type of solution though.

 

Any input would help, I may not be digging deep enough on google for the answer but if anyone can provide a straight forward solution or reference to one it would be greatly appreciated. [rant] On another subject OS X Server is a great product but Apple needs to step it up in terms of its features set if they expect it to be adopted in enterprise. While third-party devs have slowly come out of the woodwork to bring some popular enterprise applications/services to OS X Server its happened too slowly. Though Apple tends to be more of a consumer oriented company versus enterprise, especially with the crazy success of iDevices, they offer a great server product that is in the apple tradition, extremely easy to use/manage however it is still lacking in a few areas. Hell they don't even use it themselves for their .mac email servers. They've turned to Sun's Java Messaging server for that task.... [/rant]