Virtual Server Farm and JDE

Hi List!

We are currently in the process of analysing and specifying the needs for an upgrade of our JDE Enterprise server. Beside "simply" buying a stronger server we came across a software (www.vmware.com) which allows you to create multiple virtual server sessions on a single very strong server. The idea seems similar to Terminal Server but instead of clients you will have have parallel server sessions running that you can individually and independently manage, shut down and restart ... all on the same hardware!

I have not seen anything here in regards this topic and as we already have some stability issues in our current B7332 NT4/SQL7/WTS environment you can imagine that I'm not very keen on adding complexity in such a crucial area like our Enterprise server.

However we would still be very interested in the following:
- Has sombody thought of using (or uses already?) VMware or a similar "Virtual Server" software with JD Edwards?
- Maybe somebody is not running a "virtual" Enterprise server but their JDE Terminal Servers?

Thank you in advance for any input!

I actually have used the VM Wares workstation piece and it worked pretty
well but needed a lot of memory and CPU. I'm not sure how well an NT server
would partition though. We have HP9000's which are designed from the ground
up to support partitions and partitions in the same box can lead to their
own set of quirks. To take an Intel box and break it up seems to be slightly
shakey. First off the bus isn't designed for it so that means all your
virtual machines will be sharing the exact same bus path, memory and
chipset. If anyone of these fails you lose all of your machines. Unlike a
box that is designed to do partioning at the bus/memory/chipset level (i.e
HP, SUN, IBM). In the end you would have to buy a "stronger" server anyhow
because x amount of CPU power is still x amount of CPU power and
partitioning is only going to add to your load not spread it. The same goes
for memory. I think the point of the VM server edition is to allow people
with large boxes to run different apps (i.e. JDE on one partition, Sieble on
another, I2 on another) so that as they need to make software changes to a
major installation piece they don't have to affect the others. Why not just
get another medium size server and spread you load using an app server
architecture or by placing your DB on one and JDE on the other which also
spreads the load well. Good luck either way.

Mark Siebenschuh



Mark Siebenschuh
HP9000/Oracle 8.0.5/JDE XE/Lots of Citrix

I have heard of VMWARE for a couple of years now and have tested the desktop
version. I have tried to push management to look at the server product but
with no success. Our IT budget is controlled by our business units. Since I
have not used the server version the only issue that you should test
thoroughly is the network connection by using the VMWARE utilities that mask
NIC MAC addresses. I think JDE is a perfect environment for VMWARE for
testing ESU's, ASU's and SP's. For example you could startup two VMWARE
sessions (Deployment and Enterprise) on one box with B733. Then shut the
sessions down and start up two different sessions running XE. If you have
enough power in the box you could run all 4 sessions. The only issues that I
can think of are JDE Licensing and the need for high end box. So has anyone
tried VMWARE?

Cheers,

Crawford

Ingoh :

I haven't test VMWARE, but you may take for granted that JDE won't
support your installation.
JDE recommends to avoid installing 'extra' software on OneWorld servers
because they can't predict any possible effect.
Given the cost of Wintel hardware, I would keep separate boxes for
separate activities.
Finally, WTS is very CPU and RAM intensive and will kill your Enterprise
performance if both functionalities were installed on the same machine.

Sebastian Sajaroff