Virtualizing OTM: Real World Experiences and Pitfalls
MavenWire: Agenda
! Overview ! Why Virtualize? ! Why Not Virtualize? ! Types of Virtualization
! What Works ! What Doesn’t ! The Cloud ! Performance ! Q & A
Overview: Why Virtualize?
! But Ma! Everyone’s doing it!
Overview: Why Virtualize?
! Get ready for a long list! ! Ease of:
! Environment deployment ! Environment agility ! Data backup and archival ! HA / DR configuration
! Reduced costs for: ! Datacenter costs (energy, cooling, etc) ! Hardware maintenance
! Plus, it’s cool!
Overview: Why Not Virtualize?
! Rebel against the mainstream
Overview: Why Not Virtualize?
! Complexities ! Hardware and infrastructure ! Maintenance interdependencies
! Costs ! Hardware and infrastructure costs
! Sliding scale ! Premium skill set ! Licensing models are catching up
! Performance ! Overhead of virtualization
! Security Concerns
Overview: Types of Virtualization
! Vmware ! Partially supported by Oracle
! Xen (Oracle VM) ! Fully supported by Oracle
! AWS EC2 – is it considered virtualization? ! Yes – and more. It’s virtualization, without
buying hardware and with additional services.
! Partially supported by Oracle
Overview: Definition Time!
! Paravirtualization ! In computing, paravirtualization is a virtualization technique that presents
a software interface to virtual machines that is similar but not identical to that of the underlying hardware.
! Hardware-assisted virtualization ! Hardware-assisted virtualization (HVM) offers new instructions to support
direct calls by a paravirtualized guest/driver into the hypervisor, typically used for I/O or other so-called hypercalls. It also provides additional execution modes: "root mode" and "non-root mode".
What Works?
! Most of the benefits ! In one word - Management ! Deployment!
! Environments available in under 30 mins
! Backups ! More data – more risk, easier to backup
! DR / HA ! Disagree with HA – akin to standard clustering
! Agility
What Doesn’t?
! Automatic OTM Performance Scaling ! (It’s not really even a feature!)
What Doesn’t?
! Seriously – be on the watch for: ! Driver Issues ! Rapidly evolving technology
! i.e. Frequent upgrades ! Vendor lock-in ! Oversubscribing your hardware ! Single points of failure ! Traditional change control
! Concerns that are being addressed ! Performance and Security! ! Vendor support
Random Picture
The Cloud: AWS EC2
! How do services like Amazon’s EC2 fit in? ! First – simply AMAZING for DEV environments ! Benefits
! Completely on-demand ! Highly scalable (just not with OTM) ! Rapidly evolving
! Cons ! Security concerns – times 10 ! Poor per-server (instance) performance ! Evolving network management ! Less cost effective (point of argument)
The Cloud: AWS EC2 - Details
! My main concerns have been addressed (mostly) ! Persistent storage for instances
! Can now use EBS as the instance storage ! Storage I/O performance
! EBS (mostly) addresses these ! DBs still a concern
! Future releases will address network mgmnt ! Allocate specific IPs with persistence ! Enterprise-level VPN connectivity options
! Future Oracle Competitor? Amazon RDS
Performance: VolanoMark
Higher is Better
Performance: Hammerora
Lower is Better
Final Thoughts
! Virtualization is Great for: ! TEST / DEV / QA environments ! Software development ! Many non-intensive applications
! (i.e. not OTM!)
! Virtualization is Not Ready for: ! Production OTM with significant volumes
! It’s only a matter of time. Pick a low-risk (or skunkworks) project and learn.
Discussion: Q & A
! Questions?
Thank you
Chris Plough - @cpMavenWire
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