Server Virtualization Conversation

The motivations are strong and compelling when making the choice to move towards virtualization as the solution for your data center.

Some of the factors include:

• Lower energy costs
• Greatly reduced data center physical footprint.
• More efficient use of hardware resources
• High availability
• Business continuity / easier disaster recovery
• Lower admin to server ratio

Before the migration is to move forward a detailed audit of current equipment, platforms, applications, etc must take place. All computing resources must be properly documented and enumerated. All backups need to be made current. If hardware is going to be re-tasked and used in the new virtualization schema, thorough testing needs to be done to assure full functionality and reliability. Read More »

The first generation of virtualization has really focused on decreasing the hardware footprint required by IT staff.  However, the lasting value from virtualization will not be savings from hardware, but the savings from manageability and other higher level features.  Virtualization is already pretty good for a single user – both VMware and Hyper-V are very easy to use for an individual and can probably address most real needs there.  However, there are tremendous opportunities to save real time and money by making it easier to manage groups of VMs across an entire enterprise.

This has certainly been the talk of the industry for a while, focusing on management tools above and beyond the VMM itself.  To a large part, this a response to open source VMMs (like Xen or KVM) and free VMMs (like Hyper-V). If the VMM is free, then vendors must somehow make money elsewhere in the
stack – for Microsoft and Linux vendors, it’s obvious how this works, but VMWare is clearly driving to differentiate in other ways.  Products from VMware are looking at high-availability, disaster recovery and backup as ways to add value by bringing formerly high-end server features to standard x86.

To some extent this creates a bit of tension though.  One of the reasons why virtualization is necessary is that modern operating systems have grown incredibly large and perform a lot of complex and non-essential work inside the kernel.  This additional complexity can result in instability and security vulnerabilities.  For VMMs to really add value, they need to stay lean (like VMware ESXi – which can be as small as 32MB) and avoid the temptation to throw in every feature and the kitchen sink.  That just will result in another bloated software layer – and then someone will come along and try to put yet another layer of indirection beneath the VMM, or perhaps remove the VMM entirely! Read More »

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a live Webcast focusing on The ROI of Virtualization, along with representatives from Intel and IBM. We had a lively discussion on the subject. The webcast is still available as an archive, if you’d like to check it out.

As usual, my favorite part of the event was at the end, where my co-presenters and I finish with our prepared remarks and take questions from the audience. I also had a few questions of my own. One of the most interesting points was regarding new innovations in hardware and software design, and where that will be taking the next generation of virtualization technology. I asked my copresenters – Bob Zuber, Worldwide Product Marketing Manager from IBM, and RK Hiremane, Senior Product Marketing Engineer from Intel “to outline some of those future directions that they see their respective companies pursuing. Here is a short excerpt from that Q&A: Read More »

Virtualization technology has made great strides in allowing the creation of the next generation of efficient, easily manageable, highly available, and dynamic data centers. Future developments in virtualization as a technology, the processes involved and hardware technology employed will be impressive and ground-breaking.

Desktop virtualization is a very hot topic these days as companies try to get even more efficient and consolidate resources, make better use of IT administrative hours and deploy desktops based on the needs of individual department tasks and computing requirements. Virtual desktops can be maintained centrally and are versatile when it comes to the end user access. The same virtual desktop used within the building can be accessed remotely.

Virtualization will be explored as an option in areas previously not considered feasible. Cell phone companies are already investigating its applicability in providing multiple phone environments on the same hardware. In the future you could choose your handset and then specify whether you wanted blackberry OS, Windows Mobile, or both. Read More »

The old phrase, ‘what cannot be measured cannot be improved’ is a favorite amongst those in the computer industry – and it contains more than a kernel of truth.  That logic has been behind the establishment of a variety of industry organizations, such as SPEC and TPC, which seek to establish standard benchmarks for various workloads.

Virtualization is certainly one of the trendiest technologies and ripe for measurement.  The latest announcements of CPUs from Intel and AMD have all explicitly mentioned and showcased improvements in virtualization performance, along with a flurry of feature names like VPID, Pacifica, Nested Page Tables and Extended Page Tables.  Most of these I’ve described in prior article, but to summarize, a lot of these features are about shifting the burden of virtualization from software (that is, the VMM) onto the hardware by making some hardware operations more complete.  Take for example, THE VPID in Nehalem (incidentally AMD has had an equivalent feature for a while), which reduces transition times between VMs by about a third (compared to the prior generation Penryn).  While it’s great that VM transitions are faster, it’s really hard for an average user to understand what that really means in terms of virtualization performance. Read More »

 

I recently came across a thought-provoking blog post by StorageIO analyst and author Greg Schultz. Ruminating on themes in his new book “The Green and Virtual Data Center,” Schultz laments that the natural link between the concepts of virtualization and data center consolidation has led many to mistakenly conclude that these terms are synonymous. They aren’t. And even though consolidation is one of the leading reasons to virtualize today, it’s not the only good reason to consider the technology.

Furthermore, while the inherent cost and energy savings in consolidation are fueling much of the growth and interest in virtualization today, that won’t always be the case. Does that mean that when the economy rebounds, virtualization will become yesterday’s news? Far from it, argues Schultz. Despite “the perception and industry messaging that incorrectly pigeon holes virtualization to mean consolidation, and consolidation to mean virtualization,” Schultz warns us not to be sucked into the notion that virtualization without consolidation doesn’t have a bright future. “To the contrary, the reality is that there is life beyond consolidation (and) there are even more scenarios and far greater market opportunity for non-consolidation virtualization deployments over time, than what has already been seen for first wave of consolidation-centric virtualization scenarios.” Read More »

To maintain optimal uptime, high availability, and business continuity a comprehensive and up to date disaster recovery plan must be in place and meticulously documented. Disasters can be caused by power outages, human error, and certainly natural disasters. Server or data center downtime can cost the company dearly  whether it be monetary or a negative impact on reputation. Disaster recovery plans must also be tested thoroughly from time to time to make sure they are effective and meet recovery time constraints. In a data center that does not use virtualization this becomes a costly investment. A testing environment must be set up utilizing similar hardware to emulate what is already in place for an accurate test and analysis.

One of the many benefits of virtualization is the ease in which disaster recovery plans can be created and tested. When testing disaster recovery for virtual machines you eliminate the necessity of similar hardware as the VM’s are hardware independent. You can test your recovery plan using machines that have been taken out of production as long as they have the same hypervisor or virtual machine monitor on them.

Furthermore, the need to install the OS and all of the related applications to bring a machine back up is eliminated as virtual machines are just a collection of files that can easily be backed up in their entirety by copying them off (or backing them up) to another location. To restart the backed up virtual machine just copy it over to an operational server and start it up. This greatly reduces the time required for recovery. Read More »

In keeping with the purpose of using virtualization technology the data storage solution must also be resilient and dynamic. Options in tasking and deploying storage for a virtual machine must follow suit with the core technology. Your choice for data storage needs to have high availability and fault tolerance for optimal uptime. Access to the data needs to be fast so as not to affect the performance of the virtual machine. Optimally, the data storage should be easily expandable without creating additional volumes.

The storage technology used and its method of access typically determines if all or parts of the objectives are met and if so, to what degree.

The practice of data storage on the same hardware as the virtual machine is strictly taboo as it defeats the purpose of deploying virtualization in the first place. Virtualization data storage is usually accomplished with Network Attached Storage (NAS) or a Storage Area Network (SAN). Both forms of storage have their benefits and drawbacks as will be explained later in this article. Read More »