How Many Virtual Machines Can Run On A Single Server?
How many user desktops can run on a virtualized server? From a structural point of view, this question has a lot in common with, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”
Nevertheless, I did my best to answer it in the new McGraw-Hill book, Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution. As it turns out, I was wrong.
In trying to convey the looming power of the cloud over end user computing, I attempted to address the question of how many end users might be served a virtual desktop from a remote point if only one server were available.
The answer I came up with was based on a four-way server with each CPU equipped with four cores, a rather common configuration these days.
I said such a machine based on Nehalem cores could satisfy the needs of 256 ends users at a time, no problem. In effect, a server built with basic PC parts can match what used to be 256 individual PC desktops.
I had misgivings that many people would believe such an answer. I was trying to push the envelope and worried last October that a commodity server like the one I was using in my example would be unlikely to support so many users in a real world setting.
Nevertheless, in Chapter 3, “Virtualization Changes Everything,” I stated one commodity server could host that number of end users without causing a serious degradation in the desktop experience they were accustomed to.
Now fast forward to May 17, 2010. It’s CA World in Las Vegas, and 7,000 people have turned out to learn about the possibilities of using virtualized servers and cloud computing.
On the stage was Edouard Bugnion, the Swiss computer scientist who was an original founder of VMware and until 2004, its first chief architect, now fully engaged as a VP in Cisco Systems effort to become a player in the blade server market. He probably had something to do with Cisco deciding to focus its Unified Computing System blades on the attributes of virtualized servers.
He may even have suggested how Cisco could use its networking expertise to ease the impending, I/O bottleneck on servers densely stacked with virtual machines.
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Category: HP, Infrastructure, Resources, SAP, Virtual Machine
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