cluster design and planning question

[jnorred]

Hello,

We have (3) ESX clusters in our datacenter which we are trying to keep under pretty tight controls. Our VMWare guys have rights to manage pretty much everything from the datacenter down. Our other sys engineers have are "Virtual Machine Users" so they have rights to open consoles, power on/off, etc.

My goal is to configure a stand-alone ESX host that the other engineers can use to deploy VM's. After they have created a new VM, one of the VM admins will validate the VM (check for excessive memory, etc) and cold migrate the VM to the cluster once it is ready to go into production. How can I transfer my templates to the standalone server for them to use? Currently my standalone server is managed by my VC server.

Anyone have any other suggestions? How are you handling VM deployment? Also, this would give our other engineers access to an ESX server and allow them to ramp up their abilities a bit.

Thanks in advance...

Jason

[Troy_Clavell]

to transfer the template, right click on it and choose clone, point it to the stand alone server. That way you'll have a copy on your stand alone and your cluster ESX server.

[Steven1973]

Hi,

Why don't you put the templates on shared storage so you can use them on all ESX nodes.

As shared storage you could use a NFS share so the stand-alone ESX host does not need FC-HBA's.

Other option is to make a resource pool for VM deployment. You can give the engineers enough rights to deploy/create VM's in this resource pool. You can configure the rights so that they can only see that specific resource pool and nothing more.

- Steven -

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I think having a deployment node with a 'captured' network is a very good idea. I recommend this for many of my customers. This allows you to verify before you place the VM out in production. Even if the templates are stored on remote storage, a deployment node is very useful. You could place it in a local vSwitch with no outside access, patch the system, etc. and then run tests against it, etc.

It should also cut down on VM Sprawl.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[jwilley]

I really like the idea you have laid out, it's like a DMZ for VM deployment. One thing that would be interesting to add is a system like the VM web request system at run-virtual.com ( http://www.run-virtual.com/?page_id=55 ) or possibly the guy that won the powershell contest for his guest deployment tool ( http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2008/09/the-winners-of.html ). If you were to implement one of those systems, you could approve their configurations prior to the VM even being deployed, just to save you the hassle of adjusting them.

Jason Willey

Check Out My Blog at http://virtuallycrazy.blogspot.com

[Texiwill]

Hello,

I would definitely have some sort of policy in order prior to rolling things out in production. The tools mentioned are very good but the process still needs to exist.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[jwilley]

Agreed a policy is the base that the tools build upon.

Check Out My Blog at http://virtuallycrazy.blogspot.com