Real World Computing
Code in the head
I expect that Virtual Server was trying to get some RAM from the system, which forced Exchange Server to reluctantly give up some of its private stash. Over time, the Virtual Server RAM won't actually have been used, so as Exchange Server stamped its foot and demanded more, Virtual Server found itself pushed out into page-file purdah. At this point, it probably reminded itself that it was a fully paid-up server service and had rights, too, so a battle royal started between Exchange Server and Virtual Server. I can't be sure, but it was likely something of this sort.
So, are there any words of wisdom to be gleaned from this? Perhaps "do as I say, not as I do..." A remote rack server is wonderfully useful, but don't mix production hardware with prototype and development work. And when you've backed yourself into a cul de sac, uninstall and unwind all the changes. Leaving something hefty like Virtual Server running in the background with no meaningful workload could turn out to be a miserable mistake.
HP Shorty
The exhibitor space at the VMware conference gave me the opportunity to catch up again with HP's Shorty. I saw it briefly at the end of last year, but was now able to spend some time with an expert on the product, and I confess that I continue to be blown away. Blade servers have always inhabited that rarified market where physical space is the top priority. Until the recent arrival of quad-core twin-processor 1U rack servers, you could probably get more horsepower into less rack height by using blades than by using conventional servers - quite apart from all the other areas where savings can be made, like one set of power supplies, interfaces and so on.
So what makes Shorty so interesting? It's because in one unit you can put an entire set of server requisites, with enough horsepower to run even a medium-sized organisation. The configuration I'm considering is a pair of relatively straightforward blades running as a fail-over cluster, which will provide all the base OS services, together with DHCP, DNS and domain authentication. Then I'm considering a pair of quad-core, or even eight-core, blades, each stuffed with at least 16GB of RAM, which will let me run a variety of virtual machines, and within these the real workload will happen - Exchange Server, SharePoint, SQL and so forth.
Then I'll specify the exceptionally neat SAN solution that plugs into two holes - a bootable server with attached storage, all presenting inside the machine on iSCSI but running Windows Storage Server. All the other blades make use of this through internal wiring, so all the virtual machines can automatically be wired up to the same base disk store. Then into the final slot I'll drop a DLT drive to back up everything on the entire Shorty. If I don't want to put this into a rack, there's a new wheel-able desk-side version of Shorty that puts it into a small trolley with castors. The fan design has been optimised to keep the airflow noise right down, so it doesn't drive you from your office.
Into one Shorty, or its wheelable version, you can stuff more than enough compute power to take on just about any business workload. It's extremely VM friendly, and the integration of networking, fail-over power supplies and all the management capabilities you can think of means it really is "a mainframe in a box".
A fully stuffed Shorty isn't going to come cheap, especially if you start delving into extreme processor blade configurations and order lots of RAM, too. But if you were to price up a well-specified one and then try to replicate it using separate boxes, the price would probably be still higher. I'm told Shorty is fairly flying out of the warehouses and it isn't difficult to see why. It's an ideal platform for those customers who want to move to Server 2008 with Hyper-V and really push the boundaries of what can be done with the full Microsoft server suite - Exchange Server, SharePoint, plus the full line of business applications. My only worry is, how long can my wallet resist?
