[itdiscuss] Which Virtualization product to use???

[Justin Moore]

On 2/22/08, Jeffrey Thompson <jthompsonic at gmail.com> wrote:
> When you update VMware, you will have to shut the VMs  down, do the VMware
> update, and then bring the VMs back up.  No slick VMotion on the free stuff.
>
> Here's a poor mans VMotion:
*** snip ***
> If you actually do this let me know how it works out :)
> It should work in theory :)

I'll give Jeffrey points for creativity, but really, you can solve
this problem of downtime while performing upgrades much easier by just
having your VMs on some sort of shared external storage. Ideally,
you'd have more than one Host server and they'd both be attached to
this storage device. Shut down the virtuals on VM-Host-A and boot them
back up from VM-Host-B while you upgrade the software on Host-A.

Honestly, it's really a moot point though. Don't you have planned
downtime now when you install updates on the existing physical
servers? The entire upgrade process for VMWare server is a WHOLE lot
less time than it takes for Windows Update to just find out what
updates it needs to install. Just make sure you have a solid backup
solution in place should something disastrous happen during the
upgrade. Yeah, unlikely, but better to be prepared, and you should
have good backups anyway!

-- 
Justin Moore
Chief Tech Guru
Crestview Baptist Church
www.crestviewbaptistnc.org