Hello,
My company requested that I create a VM Server Host (to house 12, Windows 11 Pro and Linux guest VM's) and late into the quote process, I think I may have made a big mistake in the design of the system.
As for myself, I do not work in IT, but instead am a QA Hardware and Software Manager.
I work for a small company (only 9 individuals), and because of that, we don't have anyone who is knowledgeable in this.
I've been working for weeks to get quotes for all the hardware and software to run on the VM Server Host (and finally got everything figured out), but think the VM software itself either can't:
1. Do what I need it to do.
2. Will cost nearly as much as the VM Server itself to properly license.
The server configuration is the following (please see image below or attachment):
I actually ended up speaking to a VMWare rep (though he seemed a bit young and wasn't 100% certain about everything), but mentioned that I'd only need something like VMWare Workstation Pro for:
A. A dual socket 128 core system (2x 64 core CPU).
B. vGPU sharing of the 2x Nvidia A40 (up to 8 GB for each VM).
C. Direct PCIe connectivity for the following cards:
C1. DekTec DTA-2179 (for VM - 1 plus 8 GB of vGPU).
C2. DekTec DTA-2179 (for VM - 2 plus 8 GB of vGPU ).
C3. Aja Kona 5 (for VM - 3 plus 8 GB of vGPU ).
C4. Aja Kona 5 (for VM - 4 plus 8 GB of vGPU ).
C5. Mellanox ConnectX-6 (for VM - 5 plus 8 GB of vGPU ).
C6. Mellanox ConnectX-6 (for VM - 6).
But the more I read about direct PCIe, the more I see that it looks like it's meant for only certain PCIe cards (e.g., graphics and network) and not general PCIe cards (like the DekTec DTA-2179 and Aja Kona which are 8K and 4K video/analysis cards).
Furthermore, it looks like I have to jump to more expensive VMWare licenses (in order for VMWare to work with all 128 cores), which jumps from $250.00 (for VMWare Workstation Pro) to something like VSphere or VCenter (which though not too bad), gets really expensive when you get to more than 32 core setup (the cost jumped to something like $40,000.00 which is nearly half the cost of all the system hardware).
Given that I've spent weeks getting all the hardware and software figured out (and thought I understood the VM-side), I'm extremely worried that the system budget will increase by 1.5x (just to add the VM software licensing cost).
Am I going about this wrong (can something like VMWare Workstation Pro work for my setup) or do I really need something extremely expensive like VSphere or VCenter to virtualize 12 or so VM's for a single host, with vGPU and direct PCIe connectivity (for certain VM's)?
My apologies for the long post, and a huge thank you to anyone who could steer me in the right direction.
Nelson
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