[clue-talk] Vmware ESX / VI, WTF?

[Nate Duehr]

David L. Willson wrote:

> The biggest reason that I used and recommended Vmware's line was their high degree of
> platform neutrality.  That's what made them the best.

Not the best metric for business purposes, really.  What other metrics 
drove you to choose VMWare?  If the only reason to choose it was 
platform-neutrality (I don't believe that for a minute -- what it DOES 
is more useful to you and your business than how you CONTROL it) -- time 
to revisit the goals and re-decide on what to use from a real matrix of 
pros/cons.

Not trying to be a pain here, but I bet you chose it because it 
out-performed the other VMs in some fundamental way as your FIRST reason 
for choosing it for your business, and being able to control it from 
Linux was a "plus".

Being platform neutral for command/control would take a second-fiddle 
seat to that for me if I had 60 servers to manage and something did it 
very well.  (Not saying VMWare does, but you're using it right now for 
SOME reason, right?)

After reading your other reply, you're willing to put customers and 
yourself through migrating 60 servers all because you have to load the 
control software in a Windows VM?

That's not good sysadmin priorities, in my opinion.  Change is not good 
for change's sake.  If the cost/pain to change is higher than the costs 
of running a single copy of Windows, well... I know what I'd do.  One 
affects production servers (changing technology), the other affects the 
"poor" sysadmin who has to fire up a Windows VM against their 
"religious" beliefs.

[Which is something a number of people involved in Presidential 
campaigns right now haven't thought through very well, either...]

How many problems/outages will the migration off of VMWare cost your 
customers just because you don't want to run one copy of XP Home in a VM?

Back to the "who's the best" question... if VMWare is the best at 
EVERYTHING else (and I'm not saying they are - only you can determine 
that for your servers and environment) and the only negative is having 
to launch Windows to control it... that's not a good business reason to 
switch away from it.

Fair?  No.  VMWare *should* be offering Linux clients, I agree.  But 
just being completely pragmatic about it... worrying about the OS 
"religion" debates when the thing WORKS and is already deployed... not 
good.  Not if your goal is uptime for customers.

Just playing devil's advocate here... of course, you will use what you 
want to, and I have no say in it.

Think like a business manager.  "Vendor lock-in" is not really the issue 
here, because you're only talking about the command and control system. 
    That's an "inconvenience" for the admin, not a reason to switch 
technologies... in my view.  Or at least the view I'm playing devil's 
advocate on here today.

I'm not advocating that you "give up" on getting them to do it.  I'm 
just saying that having an emotional reaction that has you rip out a 
working technology and replaces it with the inevitable risk associated 
with switching out your virutualization system, could be more risk that 
you really want to take.  It's definitely a lot of lost opportunity 
costs in time and effort, that might be better spent doing other things 
-- but I can't judge that for you from here.

Nate