Configuring a VMWare Server

For development servers we use a series of Dell PowerEdge 2950 to hold virtual machines. We pack each of this babies with 2 Quad Core CPUs, 16 GB of memory, a PERC 5i controller and a 6 disks bay.

Each time we setup such a systems there's always a great fuss about what disks to buy and how to configure them. Here are some sources to help us figuring out the solutions:

• SAS Hard Drives: 15,000 vs. 10,000 RPM
• RAID Scaling Charts, Part 1
• RAID Scaling Charts, Part 2
• RAID Scaling Charts, Part 3

Sorry, no conclusion yet. The only info I can give you right away is that we have a bunch of different disk configurations with as many different throughputs.

Apart from the question raised on these articles, we have the following:

1. The benchmarks targets:
1. File Server;
2. Web Server;
3. Database Server;
4. Workstation;
5. What about virtual machines servers? What benchmark should we use? Should it depend on the guests, should we use one of these (for example, database) or should virtual machines be benchmarked on future tests?
   
2. What should be the cluster size of the host where the virtual machines are? Does it really matter?