Memcached & Virtualization

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Hello,

I have a question about Memcached and virtualization. I am planning to
virtualize a cluster of physical servers using Citrix XenServer in
combination with an Application Delivery Controller (ADC) like
NetScaler to load balance the servers. My question is whether
installing Memcached as a virtual machine to cache dynamic content
would be beneficial, once the physical servers are virtualized.

NetScaler is able to cache both static and dynamic content, but the
limitation is that it uses only its own RAM to cache, rather than use
all the Application Servers' spare RAM as a resource pool, like
Memcached does.

When I talked with Citrix I was told that while I could install
Memcached as a virtual machine, doing so would be unnecessary because
all virtual machines inside a physical server or a cluster of physical
servers share the same CPU and RAM as a resource pool, making
Memcached redundant.

I was wondering if anyone is aware of successful Memcached deployments
in virtualized environments.

Thanks so much.

M.

[NICK VERBECK]

I can safely say it will work. Yes, you will loose a bit of
performance possibilities with the over head of virtualization, but if
your going virtual with everything else it just makes it easier to
manage and bring on more Memcached machines as needed. The one thing
to make sure of is to spreed your Memcached Machines around on your
physical machines as much as possible to keep some reliability as well
as balance performance.

--
Nick Verbeck - NerdyNick
----------------------------------------------------
NerdyNick.com
SkeletalDesign.com
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Coloco.ubuntu-rocks.org

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Thanks Nick, I appreciate the insights on the issue.