Trade-off factors while designing scale-up and scale-out clusters
One of the initial decisions you need to make when designing a vSphere Cluster is if you will build a small cluster with larger hosts (scale-up cluster) or a large cluster with smaller hosts (scale-out cluster). There are many factors that work as a catalyst when you choose a scale-up or scale-out cluster. Some of them are as follows:
- Which hardware is ideal for lowering cost, a few larger hosts or a large number of smaller hosts? The answer to this varies in different situations.
- What is the operational cost and complexity over the period of time in maintaining either of these two models?
- What about the other infrastructure components, such as power, cooling, and floor space?
- What is the purpose of this cluster? Is it a desktop virtualization cluster or a server virtualization cluster?
The design decision that you choose depends on the answers to the preceding questions. If you choose to virtualize servers, then this typically...