Weird title, right? Well, it’s also a weird project, which I am doing just for fun and as a kind of proof-of-concept. The idea is to build a “micro data centre” on a single VMware ESXi based machine and to fully replicate all parts of it onto another single ESXi based machine, which is located in another real data centre. That sounds easy, right? But hold on a second.
Aug 10
Be honest: You are running at least one dedicated server, and you certainly have asked yourself whether you should use virtualisation. You might have found “no” to be the answer, as you have one server for each purpose and do not plan to migrate to other hardware machines or to “sub let” your system. That’s ok. But on the other hand, everybody likes to reduce hardware costs, or make more of the hardware they have.
It’s a prejudice that virtualisation is only interesting for so-called Virtual Private Server providers or for big companies who need to run loads of tests for their software releases on different platforms and configurations. Also, you do not need a bunch of servers or a blade-center to take an advantage on virtualisation. In this article I’d like to give an example of what can be achieved with virtualisation apart from those typical and well-known scenarios.
Aug 09
Free Virtualisation at its best!
Virtualisation
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Did you realise that VMware released ESXi for nothing recently? If not, get it and try it! All you need is a server with full KVM access (either over IP or locally) including the opportunity to install CD images (remotely). In my case, I went for a neat SuperMicro machine from SoftLayer, which offers full KVM-over-IP with remote CD mounts (ISO images on network storages or on the client computer). But that’s not important here, although they actually offer Double-RAM/Double-Drive deals, so that I am paying only US$ 311 for a Quad-Core Xeon, 6GB of RAM and 2×146 GB SAS at an Adaptec RAID controller. It’s an awesome offer, especially because they have an incredible user interface and are extremely flexible when it comes to updates/changes. Okay, okay. Enough advertising 
This article is about virtualisation. Caution: Long article!
