Progress Databases and VMWare - A good strategy for High Availability?

[rherring]

Progress 10.2B SP5, Windows 2003 Professional Server, 100 gig database, 70 regular users, 20 web agents

The company I work for is moving data centers and the decision has been made to refresh the hardware that is being moved. Currently we have a back up server using Double Take as the fail over software.

I've done some research, called Progress and the only resources(power point/KB) I can find that cover VMWare are from 2009. I've also reviewed the threads here where Tom B. covered some of the performances issues with VMWare.

The IT team is for it, while the database team has performance concerns. From a while back, I seem to remember that after a certain size / number of users, VMWare was bad idea.

Does anyone have more information/documentation regarding Progress Databases and VMWare? Positive or negative feedback?

Thanks for your time.

Regards,

Rich Herring

 

[Rob Fitzpatrick]

Sorry, I'm not clear on why you are choosing to implement virtualization. Is it just to facilitate a one-time "lift and drop" move of your DB/application onto different hardware? Or do you have some other ongoing need that will be met by using VMware?

If you are interested in high availability and minimizing data loss in a disaster scenario, have you looked at OpenEdge Replication? It isn't perfect, and takes some time to learn, but you're looking at an investment of time and money no matter what. If you go the OE Replication route, you won't have to deal with the performance side-effects of virtualization.

Lots of people run Progress databases on VMware, including Progress themselves, so it's certainly a viable option. The question is whether the benefits and flexibility it provides you are worth the extra cost and complexity.