As long as you have enough memory to manage indexes and databases, that should not be a problem. But remember that the server must have at least one local device, be it a tape drive or disk, so you'll have to take this into account when planning the disaster recovery.
But for real, if you're taking big backups, probably the VM will use all resources from the host machine.
And answering your question, yes I have some server running as virtual machines, but only for small environments.
The NW server running in VM would not have any clients that point to it as their storage node. All clients would be config'd to only use storage nodes on physical servers.
In DR use, I would bring up the NW server in VM and a physical storage node.
Why would the NW server need to have at least one device if it's not writing to anything?
The whole reason for all of this is to have a NW server up as quick a possible. My thought was this way I would not have to reload the bootstrap tape and rebuild the indexes since they would be in the VM. The VM would get it's VMDK files replicated/backed-up daily.
We are now implementing NW 7.4.4 on VMware for same reasons. Server is running on Linux and it has file device for saving bootstraps which are then staged to tape. Our environment is clustered and it has passed cluster tests succesfully. It only takes about two minutes to switch NW to another host and get it running
We have also couple of physical storage nodes running also Linux which will handle all the data traffic.
We are now migrating the client from old Solaris server to this new environment and everything has went well so far.
I checked current stats. In the new environment we backup 15TB daily and it will grow to nearly 45TB/day when client migration is completed. There will be about 250 physical clients.
VMware backup server has max 4 2GHz cpus and 8GB memory. Storage nodes have 4 quadcore 2.4GHz Xeons and 4GB memory. Each storage node has 4 LTO-4 drives attached and 8GBit/s LAN trunk.
dpinink_silva
2 Intern
•
724 Posts
0
September 2nd, 2009 10:00
But for real, if you're taking big backups, probably the VM will use all resources from the host machine.
And answering your question, yes I have some server running as virtual machines, but only for small environments.
AnthonyTX
12 Posts
0
September 2nd, 2009 11:00
The NW server running in VM would not have any clients that point to it as their storage node. All clients would be config'd to only use storage nodes on physical servers.
In DR use, I would bring up the NW server in VM and a physical storage node.
Why would the NW server need to have at least one device if it's not writing to anything?
The whole reason for all of this is to have a NW server up as quick a possible. My thought was this way I would not have to reload the bootstrap tape and rebuild the indexes since they would be in the VM. The VM would get it's VMDK files replicated/backed-up daily.
jsallila
56 Posts
1
September 3rd, 2009 01:00
We have also couple of physical storage nodes running also Linux which will handle all the data traffic.
We are now migrating the client from old Solaris server to this new environment and everything has went well so far.
Message was edited by:
JPS
AnthonyTX
12 Posts
0
September 3rd, 2009 06:00
jsallila
56 Posts
1
September 4th, 2009 02:00
VMware backup server has max 4 2GHz cpus and 8GB memory. Storage nodes have 4 quadcore 2.4GHz Xeons and 4GB memory. Each storage node has 4 LTO-4 drives attached and 8GBit/s LAN trunk.
mpn1
48 Posts
0
September 13th, 2009 02:00
Really nice use of VMs.... I really like the idea of running server in Virtual environment. Will save a lot of time, when the server crashes...