adam duffy edina public schools. the heart of virtualization is the “virtual machine” (vm), a...
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Virtually Limitless: Moving to Virtual Servers
Adam DuffyEdina Public Schools
The heart of virtualization is the “virtual machine” (VM), a tightly isolated software container with an operating system and application inside. Because each VM is completely separate and independent, many of them can run simultaneously on a single computer. A thin layer of software called a hypervisor decouples the VMs from the host, and dynamically allocates computing resources to each VM as needed.
What is a virtual server?
What is a virtual server?
Why did we go with VMware vSphere? What other options are available?
◦ Microsoft Hyper-V◦ Xen (Citrix XenServer)◦ KVM
What products are available for virtualizing?
Server consolidation◦ Fewer pieces of hardware to manage◦ Reduce energy costs◦ Take up less space in the server room◦ Make more efficient use of hardware
What advantages do virtual servers provide?
Hardware independence◦ VMs can be moved between hosts with different
hardware, thanks to the hypervisor Entire system (OS, applications, and data) is
contained in a set of virtual machine files.◦ Provides flexibility in managing servers
Centralized server management
What advantages do virtual servers provide?
If server hardware fails, how easily can you restore operations?
How much CPU and RAM is wasted in your traditional servers?
How much downtime do you experience if you have to replace or upgrade server hardware?
If software changes cause the server to fail, how easily can you recover?
How easily can you deploy a new server?
Questions to ask when considering moving to virtual servers
Capture the state of a server at a point in time
You can safely make changes, knowing that you can revert back if something goes wrong
Integration with backups◦ Snapshots themselves are not backups!
Snapshots
Make a copy of a server without disturbing the live server
“Let’s try this” Production -> development
Live clone
Live clone
Live clone
Have a pre-configured version of an OS ready to deploy
Ease of deployment opens up new possibilities
Templates
Templates
Move VMs between hosts with no downtime VMs are automatically restarted when a
host fails Automatically balance computing capacity
across hosts
vMotion, HA, and DRS
Easily add CPU, RAM, HD space, NIC Minimize downtime
Adding and removing resources
Some vendors provide premade VMs for deploying their services◦ Cisco NCS
Collaborate with other districts◦ Moodle VM
Sharing VMs
Manage failover from production datacenters to disaster recovery sites
Periodic VM replication to DR site Automated DR failover Prioritize VMs
Site Recovery Manager
Hardware◦ Hosts
3x HP ProLiant DL380 G6 8x CPU cores per host, at 2.266 GHz each 24 GB RAM per host
◦ Storage 2x HP StorageWorks P4300 G2 (LeftHand SAN) 5.5 TB usable
Software◦ VMware vSphere 4
How we got started
Makes switching to virtual servers much easier
Can do it (mostly) live Some success and some failure Sometimes, it’s a good opportunity to
rebuild
Converting physical to virtual
Before
(dramatic reenactment)
After
10 CPUs, 22 cores Using 13.2 GHz / 97.5 GHz
288 GB RAM Using 151 GB
34 TB usable storage Using 24 TB 10 TB is high performance
44 virtual servers
You’ll need outside help May need to buy new hardware and
software Added complexity, new ways for things to
go wrong When not to virtualize
Possible downsides
Supports larger VMs◦ Up to 1 TB RAM and 32 virtual CPUs
Improvements to HA◦ Easier to set up, more scalable
vSphere Web Client
New features in vSphere 5.0/5.1
