TB002 Dropping Support for Physical Servers
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Overview
In January 2012, Delphix announced the end of support for new installations of the Delphix Engine on physical systems. Since that time, all new Delphix Engine deployments must be hosted on VMware vSphere 4.x or later. These requirements are detailed in the Installation and Initial Configuration Requirements documentation. Running the Delphix Engine on a virtual platform offers improved reliability, serviceability, and availability enhancements compared with physical servers. Other benefits include:
- Improved alignment with many customer data centers where virtual platforms are used extensively, or exclusively
- Improved support for diverse hardware platforms
- Isolation from device driver problems and maintenance in the DelphixOS appliance
- Leverage of virtual network and storage capability to simplify appliance installation and administration
- High availability configurations afforded by VMware clusters
All but a handful of customers in the Delphix installed user base are already deployed on virtual platforms, with excellent results.
Today, Delphix is announcing a timeline to end-of-life support for all physical deployments, including those that were installed prior to the January 2012 announcement.
- Beginning with the Delphix Engine 3.1 release, expected in early 2013, Delphix will deprecate interfaces for managing elements of physical servers, including NIC aggregations. Customers with existing physical configurations that include NIC aggregations will be able to upgrade to Delphix Engine 3.1, and aggregations will be preserved. However, it will no longer be possible to add or remove NICs from an aggregation or to change other properties of an aggregation, such as an LACP policy.
- Beginning with the Delphix Engine 3.2 release, in July 2013, Delphix will remove all support for physical installations. Customers with existing physical installations will not be able to upgrade to 3.2.x or any subsequent Delphix Engine releases. New software installation images will only be available in OVA format, suitable for direct deployment from a VMware vSphere client.
- Delphix will continue to provide maintenance and patch releases for Delphix Engine 3.1 until June 2014, at which point customers will need to convert their Delphix installations into supported VM configurations to receive ongoing maintenance and patch updates.
For customers who are still running Delphix on physical servers, Delphix Professional Services has service offerings that can migrate physical Delphix Engine deployments into virtual machine environments. As part of this engagement, Delphix Professional Services can review best practices for running Delphix in a virtual machine environment with you. Please contact your Account Manager or Solutions Architect for more details on these offerings.