Michael T. BrownHennepin County Enterprise Virtualization Administrator

Hennepin County Central IT

Enterprise Virtualization Services (EVS)

October 01, 2008 - VMUG

Virtualization TeamVI ESX Host Team• Val Ross – Team Supervisor and Virtualization Program Manager • Michael Brown - VI Administrator• Robert Backer - VI Administrator Backup• Chris Gaasch – Network and SAN Architect• Rick McLagan - QA and Resource Management• Becki McDonald - Project Manager

VM AdminTeam• Robert Backer, Reg Giacomini - VM Deployment and Configuration• Bob Lerner - VM Imaging and template design• Jerry Stenberg - VM Security

Management Support• Larry Ingram – Manager (approves purchases and signs the checks!)• Val Ross -VM Gatekeeper All requests for VM’s go through the server request

system.

Customers HSPHD, Public Defender’s Office, EHD – Remedy, Taxpayer Services, Public Works,

MHP, IT Development, Enterprise IT Services and YOU!

Why Virtualization?Business Benefits for Hennepin County

• Slows physical growth in the Data Center facilities; with the rate of the server farm growing 60% per year, the Data Center would be out of floor space by 2011

• Replaces many, underutilized servers with fewer, more powerful servers

• Lowers hardware, software and datacenter costs. A VM is approximately Half the monthly cost of a physical server!

• In 2007 EITS saved nearly $1,000,000 in defered hardware purchasing alone, due to virtualization!

• Provides a scalable server solution to meet variable business demands

• Improves server “time to deployment” from approximately two months to less than a week

• Provides the foundational technology for disaster recovery/business continuity for Windows-based applications

Virtualization Project Stages

• Design, Plan, Document – July ‘06

• Pilot “Go Live”- Nov. 2006– ESX 2.5 three node cluster– VC 1.5

• Production Deployment – Feb. 2007– ESX 3.0 two new three node clusters– VC 2.0

Rack Space Comparison

120 physical servers = 4 - 8 servers per rack fully using at least 20 racks

120 virtual servers on 6 Hosts = 3 servers per rack over 3 racks (and there’s still room in the racks for more servers)

=

Current VI3 Environment

•10 VI3 Hosts at Primary Data Center

•6 - Hosts for Production Servers

•4 - SUSE Linux Vignette Web Portal

•10 VI3 Hosts at Secondary Data Center

•3 - Hosts for Production Servers

•3 - Hosts for Windows Test and Dev Servers

•4 - SUSE Linux Vignette Web Portal

Hardware

• HP Proliant DL 585 G2’s (Sorry DELL!)

– 4 dual core CPU’s– 32 GB– Local drives– SAN Attached – IBM DS 8100

Networking

SAN Design

2.4 TB

Default VM Settings

• Memory: 512 MB

• C: drive: 9 GB (soon to be 12GB)• D: drive: 10 - 50 GB [upon request; RDM]

• CD/ISO: Common file ISO repository – “VMISO” LUN Presented to all VI3 hosts.

• VM Template Update Frequency: Quarterly

Resource Pools

•PreProd

•Development

•Production – Standard

•Production - High

• HJIP – IBM MQ Series Brokers and Websphere App Servers

• Internet web portal presence - Vignette (SUSE Linux)

• 180+ VM Servers and growing

• 20 to 1 or higher Consolidation Ratio Goal

• Server Virtualization is now offered as a Production Enterprise Service

What is Currently Virtualized?

• Overcoming the stigma – Not for just testing anymore

• Network design limitations – No L2 – No Site to Site VMotion - Yet

• Backup and Recovery of image files requires large amounts of SAN storage

• Everyone wants their own virtual environment!• Policies and procedures defined and in place• Licensing applications per CPU

Virtual Challenges?

Virtual successes

• 135 days of uptime

• Acceptance of Virtualization in Production

• OpsMgr 2007 100% virtual

• SQL Server 2005 virtualized

• No experience (or consultants) necessary!

• Next Generation: Upgrade to VC 2.5/ VI 3.5 – 4 HP DL585 G5 w/64 GB, 4 quad core.

• 3 more clusters planned this year• Site-to-Site Recovery for DR/BC• Bidirectional SAN mirror replication• Integrated Patching of Hosts and VM’s• Virtualize DMZ• Virtual Appliances – Started• APEX – Virtualize PeopleSoft and Oracle

Test/Dev implementation• PowerShell – Automation of Adminstration

What’s in the Future?

Questions?