Blogging has been quite difficult with work demands recently – partly due to the increased time spent on training and other courses relating to Vmware. As virtualisation grows in popularity and functionality it is increasingly hard to manage, maintain and monitor the various Virtual Machines VMs that have been created both to test software – provide monitoring tools such as Nagios and to provide a level of protection for clients data.
Finally I have specified and ordered a server for this specific task and once configured for Esx3.5 will be followed by a SAN and a second server to provide a practical demonstration of the technologies available from VMware. During the process I shall be documenting more about the practicalities of living with an ESX server – where its used for the purposes of testing software and developing DR and contingency arrangements for customers.
Why VMware ? – technically I think it provides the structure and framework to do whats needed – they also have a well formed partner network and an evolving product portfolio.