making it easier to manage your virtualized environment - david babbitt, spiceworks

Manage Your Virtualized

EnvironmentDavid Babbitt

Software Developer, Spiceworks

What We’ll Be Covering

•Virtualization 101•Benefits (Community)•Advanced Uses of Virtualization•Lessons Learned (Community)•Managing Virtualization with Spiceworks

VIRTUALIZATION 101

Physical Servers

SharepointServer 2008

Dell

A/VServer 2003

HP

WikiRHELDell

Virtualized Servers

SharepointServer 2008

A/VServer 2003

WikiRHEL

VMwareDell

Physical Networking

192.168.0.10 192.168.0.11 192.168.0.12

Virtual Networking

192.168.0.10

192.168.0.11

192.168.0.12

192.168.0.2

Physical and Virtual Hardware

Model: Dell R710RAM: 32 GBNIC: BroadcomMAC: 00:26:B9:5B:E3:08Controller: PERCDisk: 1TB

Model: VMwareRAM: 2 GBNIC: IntelMAC: 00:0C:29:7F:31:89Controller: LSIDisk: 20GB

Virtual Machine Layout

.vmx.xml

.vmdk.vhd

Moving Virtual Machines

Model: Dell R710RAM: 32 GBNIC: BroadcomMAC: 00:26:B9:5B:E3:08Controller: PERCDisk: 1TB

Model: HP DL385RAM: 32 GBNIC: HPMAC: 1C:C1:DE:E6:94:B4Controller: SmartArrayDisk: 1TB

Model: VMwareRAM: 2 GBNIC: IntelMAC: 00:0C:29:7F:31:89Controller: LSIDisk: 20GB

Terms

• Virtualization Host, VM Host, Host• Virtual Machine, VM• Guest• Virtual Server?

Types of Virtualization

• Desktop– VMware Player– VMware

Workstation– VMware Fusion– Parallels Desktop– MSFT Virtual PC

Host OS:Windows 7,Linux, etc.

Virtualization S/W

Types of Virtualization

• Server– VMware Server– Parallels Server– Oracle VirtualBox– MSFT Virtual Server

2005

Host OS:Windows Server,Linux, etc.

Virtualization S/W

Types of Virtualization

• Hypervisor– VMware vSphere– MSFT Hyper-V– Xen

Host “OS” is theHypervisor

Parent Partition,Dom0,Console OS

Microsoft Hyper-V

• Standalone (Hyper-V Server), or• Windows Server 2008 (x64) Hyper-V

Role• Hyper-V Server is FREE• Manage with System Center Virtual

Machine Manager (SCVMM)• H/W: Intel-VT + XD, AMD-V + NX• Guest support: Windows, RHEL, SuSE

VMware vSphere

• aka ESXi, ESX, Virtual Infastructure, VI3

• VMware vSphere Hypervisor is FREE• Paid versions have more features• Manage with VMware vCenter• H/W: Consult HCL• Guest support: Almost anything

Citrix XenServer

• FREE• Paid versions have more features• Manage with XenCenter• H/W: Intel-VT, AMD-V (Windows

guests)• Guest support: Windows, Linux

Which is best?? ….

Define “Is”

• vSphere– Most third party tools and vendor partnerships– Leading in advanced features– Can quickly get expensive

• Hyper-V– Familiar management for Windows people– More features for free (Live Migration)– Less VM density

• XenServer– Familiar management for Linux people– Most features for free– Better density with Linux guests

BENEFITS(COMMUNITY)

Agility

• A new VM is a few clicks away• Add as many VMs as host capacity

allows

“Think about trying to get the OK to purchase a physical server for

something that only benefits IT.”

Windows Licensing

• Server 2008 Enterprise license allows for 4 VM instances on same host

• Server 2008 Datacenter license allows for unlimited VM instances on same host (license per host CPU)

• Applies to any virtualization platform

• Additional benefit for Hyper-V Role:Host license includes guest license(s)

Oversubscription

• Memory Oversubscription– Paging, deduplication, compression, etc.–Microsoft “any day now”

• Disk Oversubscription– “Thin provisioning”, “Expanding”

Backups

• VMs are just files• copy, rsync, scp works for these too• Veeam FastSCP• Veeam Backup• Trilead VMX

Reduced Downtime

• VMs are portable between hosts• Storage shared across VM hosts• Restore backup to another VM host• Run from backup using VMware

Player

ADVANCED USAGE

Snapshot

.vmdk

Snapshot

base.vmdk

undo.vmdk

Snapshot

base.vmdk

undo.vmdk

Rollback

base.vmdk

undo.vmdk

Non-Persistent

• I install Spiceworks in a VM 5-10 times per week.

• Every “Power Off” or “Restart” performs automatic Rollback

scsi0:0.mode = "independent-nonpersistent"

VDI

user1.vmdk

user2.vmdk

base.vmdk

Virtual Networking

• Bridged • Host Only

DIY Bridge

Lossy Network

# ipfw pipe 1 config plr 0.1 delay 150ms# ipfw pipe 2 config plr 0.1 delay 50ms# ipfw add 1 prob 0.3 pipe 1 ip from any to any# ipfw add 2 pipe 2 ip from any to any

Isolated Copy

production test

LESSONS LEARNED (COMMUNITY)

Central Storage

“Magic SAN Powder”

Put it into Practice

• Start Free, Educate Yourself– VMware Go, Hyper-V server, VMware

Player– VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace–MSFT Product Trials at Technet

Put it into Practice

• Virtualize IT Resources, Gain Confidence–WSUS, A/V– Conversion Tools– Learn how to monitor resources, errors

Put it into Practice

• Opportunity and Argument to virtualize the rest–Warranties expiring, Hardware refresh– Future capacity via more CPU and RAM– Savings on Windows Licensing– Limited downtime DR no-brainer

Special Thanks

• Bob Beatty• Justin Davidson• Limey• Martin9700• Scott Alan Miller• Orl

Questions?

DEMO

Scanning

VM HostHost ConfigurationVM Definitions

VM GuestAddtnl ConfigurationSoftware, etc.

Questions?

http://tinyurl.com/sw2010vm