Comments on: Why ESXi 5 has become my new standard hypervisor http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/why-esxi-5-has-become-my-new-standard-hypervisor/ Trying to explain complex things in simple terms Sun, 19 May 2013 17:16:26 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Martin Bach http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/why-esxi-5-has-become-my-new-standard-hypervisor/#comment-2479 Wed, 01 Aug 2012 11:20:32 +0000 http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/?p=1437#comment-2479 Yes, this is the email address I used-you fill out a small justification form and then get the license keys after internal review by VMware. Or that’s at least how it was for me.

]]> By: nlitchfield http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/why-esxi-5-has-become-my-new-standard-hypervisor/#comment-2468 Sat, 28 Jul 2012 07:32:34 +0000 http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/?p=1437#comment-2468 Hi Martin

Is that a side benefit of the ACE program http://blogs.vmware.com/apps/2012/01/vsphere-5-evaluation-software-for-oracle-aces-and-ocms.html ?

]]> By: Jay Weinshenker http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/why-esxi-5-has-become-my-new-standard-hypervisor/#comment-2460 Thu, 26 Jul 2012 19:56:05 +0000 http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/?p=1437#comment-2460 Also one clarification – you can run RAC nodes with virtual RDMs which do allow snapshots.

]]> By: Toby http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/why-esxi-5-has-become-my-new-standard-hypervisor/#comment-2459 Thu, 26 Jul 2012 18:09:41 +0000 http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/?p=1437#comment-2459 Simon,
How many lab servers have you got and what sort of hardware/storage do you use?

Toby

]]> By: Jay Weinshenker http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/why-esxi-5-has-become-my-new-standard-hypervisor/#comment-2458 Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:33:07 +0000 http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/?p=1437#comment-2458 Given that you are in the Guru licensing program, you should have gotten licenses for vCenter and things like VMware Data Recovery (VMware’s backup software – not great but free). Also you may want to check out Veeam’s free backup tool ( http://www.veeam.com/virtual-machine-backup-solution-free.html ) and if you are a VMware VCP or meet one of the other requirements, you can get a 2 socket NFR license of Veeam.

Admittedly, all those products use snapshots for taking backups – so you can’t use them for backing up any RDMs you may have.

]]> By: Simon Haslam http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/why-esxi-5-has-become-my-new-standard-hypervisor/#comment-2457 Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:37:20 +0000 http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/?p=1437#comment-2457 Oh and a quick tip: ghettoVCB is a free script by William Lam that does a good job for ad-hoc hot backup of your more important VMs http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8760. Its only downside is that, because it uses snapshots, you can’t use it with RAC clusters (due to the shared virtual disks).

]]> By: Simon Haslam http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/why-esxi-5-has-become-my-new-standard-hypervisor/#comment-2456 Thu, 26 Jul 2012 11:33:18 +0000 http://martincarstenbach.wordpress.com/?p=1437#comment-2456 Agreed. I’ve been running my lab servers (currently about 40 VMs with lots of different middleware versions and products) ever since the free version of ESX3i was launched in 2008 (see http://www.veriton.co.uk/roller/fmw/entry/vmware_launches_free_esx3i). I boot from an internal USB stick so just have my data stores on the local disks (and some on an NFS NAS for low importance/little used ones). I had 4.0U1 running for about 2 years without a reboot (and that was only becuase my co-lo provider wanted to do some power work) – it is pretty bomb proof and just works :)

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