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INSIGHT

FROM INTERACTIONS

Solution Overview

Virtualization Solution Overview, Revision A1 October 2009

All contents of this document are: Copyright © 2008 NICE Systems Ltd. All rights reserved.

NICE Perform®

Virtualization Solution Overview



Table of Contents

Introduction ...................................................................... 3

Server Virtualization ........................................................... 4

The Virtualization Layer (aka Hypervisor) ...................................... 6

CPU Resources and Virtual CPUs (aka vCPUs) ................................ 7

RAM Resources .......................................................................... 7

VMs and the Storage Infrastructure .............................................. 8

Managing a Virtual Infrastructure ................................................. 8

NICE Support for Server Virtualization .......................................... 9

Designing a Virtualized NICE Perform Solution ............................. 10

Server Virtualization High Availability Solutions .................... 12

Moving VMs from one Physical Server to Another ......................... 12

Moving VMs from one Storage Area to Another ............................ 13

VM Clustering .......................................................................... 14

VM Fault Tolerance ................................................................... 15

VM Disaster Recovery ............................................................... 16

Desktop Virtualization ....................................................... 17

NICE Perform and VMWare VDI .................................................. 18

About NICE ..................................................................... 19



Benefits of Virtualization:

Server Consolidation and Infrastructure Optimization

Physical Infrastructure Cost Reduction

Improved Operational Flexibility and Responsiveness

Increased Application Availability and Improved Business Continuity

Improved Desktop Manageability and Security

Green IT

Introduction Companies are constantly dealing with

the challenges of balancing operational expenses and providing high quality

customer support. In order to overcome them, management needs to streamline

processes and improve operational efficiency while continuing to meet the

customer’s consistent expectations of

outstanding customer service.

There are a variety of technological

options available in enterprise-grade solutions to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) by lowering IT administration and

hardware costs. An option which is gaining popularity when planning data center consolidation projects is virtualization.

Virtualization conceals the physical characteristics of computing resources from applications or end users. Companies can optimize their network infrastructure by deploying VMs that

operate safely and move transparently across shared hardware. It also enables an

organization to consolidate the number of servers as well as reduce data center operating costs by as much as 35-50% by minimizing necessary floor space, hardware power and

cooling.

The key benefits of virtualization include: Server Consolidation and Infrastructure Optimization: Virtualization makes it

possible to achieve significantly higher resource utilization by pooling common

infrastructure resources and breaking the legacy ―one application to one server‖ model.

Physical Infrastructure Cost Reduction: With virtualization, customers can reduce the number of servers and related IT hardware in the data center. This leads

to reductions in real estate, power and cooling requirements, resulting in significantly lower IT costs.

Improved Operational Flexibility and Responsiveness: Virtualization offers a new way of managing IT infrastructure and can help IT administrators spend less

time on repetitive tasks such as provisioning, configuration, monitoring and

maintenance. Increased Application Availability and Improved Business Continuity:

Eliminate planned downtime and recover quickly from unplanned outages with the ability to securely backup and migrate entire virtual environments with no

interruption in service. Improved Desktop Manageability and Security: Deploy, manage and monitor

secure desktop environments that end users can access locally or remotely, with or without a network connection, on almost any standard desktop, laptop or tablet PC.

Green IT: Lowers power consumption by requiring electricity only for the server and

cooling which is friendlier on the environment

As NICE supports VMWare and Microsoft virtualization solutions, this solution overview will

focus on these virtualization vendors’ solutions.



Server Virtualization Virtualization is the technology of managing systems and resources functionally regardless of their physical layout or location. In the IT arena, it has become a significant asset for

servers, desktops, applications, networks, storage and more.

Server virtualization allows one physical computer to host multiple virtual computers (also known as VMs or VMs) by sharing the computer’s physical resources across multiple

environments.

Figure 1: Server Virtualization Architecture

Figure 1 shows the typical x86 Server (Intel or AMD processor) on the left. Each server has a hardware configuration, an operating system installed on the hardware, and applications

installed on the operating system. Each layer of this architecture is tightly tied to the layer below and ultimately to the hardware— the OS is customized to the hardware present in the

drivers it uses, the way its parameters are tuned, etc. Applications are in turn tied to the

OS on which they are installed.

This architecture has been used for over a decade but it is not ideal because there is only

one OS and essentially one workload per physical machine. It is very difficult to put more than one major application on these servers because of the risk of encountering conflicts

and performance problems. In fact, a best practice for computing today is to run only one application per server in order to avoid those problems. However, the result is that most of

the time utilization is very low and lots of paid computing power is wasted. There is a trade-off between wasting hardware and lowering risk.

Furthermore, this architecture is inflexible. The server is mostly idle. It also would take a

long time to repurpose it for something else since the current OS and application needs to be archived, reconfigured or, to be on the safe side, the OS needs to be reinstalled for a



new application, an already installed application, etc. This is not a very attractive

proposition if it needs to be repurposed again later.

Server Virtualization changes all that. It takes a physical system along with the operating

system and anything installed in the operating system and packages them into a ―virtual machine‖ or VM. A VM contains a virtual hardware configuration as well as virtual disks

where the operating system and applications can be installed. For the OS in a VM, it is the same as running on real physical hardware. The OS inside a VM is the same operating

system as used on a physical machine— whether it is Windows, Linux, Netware, BSD, etc. It does not need to be modified for virtualization. The applications installed on the OS are

the same complete applications that ran on an OS before virtualization.

Each VM runs on top of a thin virtualization layer called the hypervisor that the virtualization vendor software places on a server. The hypervisor allocates resources to each VM and

maps the virtual hardware that each VM sees to the actual physical hardware on the server.

Virtualization Vendors’ Server Virtualization Products

VMWare Products Microsoft Products

Virtualization Layer

(hypervisor)

ESX

ESXi (free)

Hyper-V

Virtualization Management System

vCenter (FKA Virtual Center)

Virtual Machine Manager (aka VMM)

Table 1: Virtualization Products

For product versions supported by NICE, see further below.



The Virtualization Layer (aka Hypervisor)

The hypervisor represents a layer separating the physical server from the VMs. It allows

hosting many VMs on a single physical server while each VM is not aware the other VMs share the same physical resources.

Through the management system of the virtualized infrastructure, each VM is configured with resources which are not necessarily reserved for this VM, thus separating what the VM

―thinks‖ from what it actually ―gets‖.

For example, a server with 2 Quad Core 3GHz CPUs (8 processors) and 32GB RAM can host many VMs. Two such VMs on this server can be configured with 2 Virtual CPUs and 4GB

RAM meaning these VMs would ―think‖ they are working with 2 processors with 3GHz and 4GB RAM and will try utilizing these resources. However, if these resources were not

actually reserved for these particular VMs, the hypervisor’s scheduling mechanism would try

to balance the resource loads between the actual physical resources (not necessarily the same physical resources) and achieve better resource utilization.

Notice that resources can indeed be allocated to VMs and that allocated resources do not

need to correlate with the configured VM resources. For example, one can configure 2 vCPUs with 3GHz and 4GB RAM to a specific VM yet reserve only 2GHz and 2GB RAM for this

VM.

Figure 2: Configured Resources vs. Physical Resources



CPU Resources and Virtual CPUs (aka vCPUs)

CPU resources in a virtualized environment are usually measured by adding up the amount

of GHz. For example, the amount of CPU resources of a Quad Core 3GHz CPUs (8 processors) physical server is 8*3GHz=24GHz.

Virtual CPUs represent the configured count of processors for a specific VM, not necessarily correlating to the actual reserved CPU resources. However, the vCPU count of a VM does

correlate to the amount of processors that will be used to balance its CPU utilization load.

For example, a VM resides on a physical server with Quad Core 3GHz CPUs (8 processors) and is configured with 4vCPUs. This means that the VM would ―think‖ it has 4 processors

with 3GHz (notice that the amount of GHz is identical to that of the physical server’s CPUs) and the hypervisor would indeed share this VM’s CPU load across 4 physical processors. If

CPU resources were not allocated specifically to this VM, then it will probably share its CPU

load across these 4 processors with several other VMs. However, if 5GHz of CPU resources were allocated to this VM, then 5GHz of total CPU

utilization (across the 4 processors) are guaranteed to be available for this VM at any given time.

Another way of ensuring resource availability to certain VM(s) is by defining priorities.

In cases where many VMs simultaneously require resources, a prioritization mechanism within the hypervisor will make sure to allocate resources to higher-priority VMs first.

RAM Resources

Each VM is configured with a set amount of RAM, not necessarily correlating to the actual reserved RAM resources for this VM nor to the actual physical RAM residing on the physical

server.

For example, a VM resides on a physical server with 32GB RAM and is configured with 4GB

RAM. This means the VM would ―think‖ it has 4GB RAM. If no RAM was specifically reserved for this VM, then the hypervisor would allow the VM to use the physical 32GB RAM as

needed while sharing these 32GB between the other VMs. If the hypervisor ―runs out‖ of RAM resources, it will not necessarily allow the VM to use 4GB RAM, even if these are

required, ―pressuring‖ this VM’s operating system to utilize RAM saving mechanisms (e.g.-paging). However, if a set amount of RAM is reserved for this VM, then this amount would

be available only for this VM and not shared with other VMs.

Another way of ensuring resource availability to certain VM(s) is by defining priorities.

In cases where many VMs simultaneously require resources, a prioritization mechanism within the hypervisor will make sure to allocate resources to higher-priority VMs first.



VMs and the Storage Infrastructure

Each VM is usually represented as a large file which is usually kept in the shared storage.

Thus, instead of keeping each VM locally, the hypervisor keeps a ―pointer‖ to the actual file residing on the shared storage. This pointer contains all the metadata of the actual VM it

represents including the OS, applications, file structure and running state.

Keeping the VMs as files in the shared storage enables deploying high availability

mechanisms, as the physical servers hosting the VMs do not store the actual VMs, but only point to them. Thus, the VMs be transferred to be governed by other physical servers. This

will be discussed in the ―Server Virtualization High Availability Solutions‖ section.

Figure 3: VMs residing on the Shared Storage

Managing a Virtual Infrastructure

The Virtual Infrastructure Management System is crucial for the provisioning and management of VMs in a Virtual Infrastructure. It allows the configuration of VMs, deploying

high availability solutions and adds maintenance options, such as P2V (migrating physical

servers into a virtual infrastructure). The Virtual Infrastructure Management System also allows receiving crucial information regarding the resource utilization of the physical servers

and VMs.



NICE Support for Server Virtualization

NICE Perform Release 3.1 provides the option of consolidating multiple standalone servers

into one or more physical platforms utilizing VMware’s virtualization technology with the ESX hypervisor and vCenter virtualization management system.

Refer to the NICE Perform Release 3.1 Design Considerations Guide for the approved

hypervisor versions, the list of NICE Perform components supported as VMs including resource requirements and deployment guidelines for each NICE Perform VM.

NICE Perform Release 3.2 adds the option of consolidating multiple standalone servers into

one or more physical platforms utilizing Microsoft’s virtualization technology with Windows 2008 hypervisor and Virtual Machine Manager virtualization management system. Refer to

the NICE Perform Release 3.2 Certified Servers Guide for the approved hypervisor versions, a list of NICE Perform components supported as VMs including resource requirements and

deployment guidelines for each NICE Perform VM.

NICE allows NICE Perform VMs to reside on existing virtualized servers with other customer

VMs if NICE Perform VM resource requirements and deployment guidelines are met.

Figure 4: NICE Perform Virtualization Solution Deliverables



Designing a Virtualized NICE Perform Solution

Before virtualizing NICE Perform, a NICE Sales Engineer will need to receive information to

answer the following discovery questions:

1. What is the business need for using virtualization? Please provide specific

details regarding: Server consolidation

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure High availability features

Disaster recovery 2. Is there already a virtual infrastructure organization in place?

How many VMs are already deployed? What is the hypervisor type/version?

What is the VDI connection broker type/version?

What is the virtualization management application type/version? 3. Are there virtualization deployment policies?

A policy for deploying a hypervisor on every server even when deploying only one VM on one physical server

A policy for using hypervisor high availability and/or disaster recovery applications for operational mission-critical systems

Other policies

The NICE Sales Engineer then delivers a list of relevant NICE Perform components that can

be virtualized in the customer’s environment including resource requirements and deployment guidelines for these components.

For example, in a VMWare virtualized environment in NICE Perform Release 3.2, the NICE

Sales Engineer may compile a requirements table similar to the one below.

Table 2: NICE Perform Virtualization Solution Deliverables

Notice table 2 is only an example – for actual resource requirements and deployment guidelines please contact your NICE Sales Engineer.

Amount CPU [GHz]RAM

[GB]

vCPU

countVmotion Configuration Guidelines

Applications Server (DB call

rate - 11cps)1 3 3 2 +

Database Server 64bit (DB

call rate - 11cps)1 6 16 4 +

Minimum Memory Reservation - 16GB; Disk Priority

(shares) - High for each HDD; Requires RDM (Mapped

Datamart Server 64bit (DB

call rate - 11cps)1 2 16 4 +

Interactions Center (call rate -

11cps)2 3.5 4 2 +

Passive VoIP Logger (up tp

200 channels)4 5.5 2 2

Dedicated NIC configured to Promiscuous mode;

Minimum Memory Preservation - 2048MB; Balloon

Driver - Disabled; Backup devices on VoIP Loggers are

not supported

NiceScreen Logger 2 3.3 3 2 +

Storage Center (non-IA

deployments)2 5 3 4 +

NMS 1 0.8 1 1Must be installed on a different ESX to maintain system

alarming

Total CPU Resources [GHz] 57.4

Total RAM Resources [GB] 64



The information about the NICE Perform virtualization solution deliverables can then be used to design the virtualized NICE Perform component deployment in the virtualized

environment on top of new or existing physical servers with other customer VMs.

For example, if the customer intends to purchase new servers with 2 Quad Core 3GHz CPUs and 48GB RAM, then each server will provide 2*4*3GHz=24GHz of CPU resources and 48GB

of RAM resources. As 57.4GHz of total CPU resources and 64GB of total RAM resources are needed, all of these NICE Perform VMs can fit on 3 physical servers with resources left over

for additional VMs.

Moreover, if there is an existing physical server with 10GHz of free CPU resources and 15GB

of free RAM resources, NICE Perform VMs can be added on top of the existing server. For example, it is possible to add a virtualized applications server (3GHz, 3GB) and virtualized

storage center (2GHz, 5GB) on top of the existing physical server.



Server Virtualization High Availability Solutions In virtualized environments, VMs are usually files residing in the storage area and not on

local hard drives. This enables deploying many high availability mechanisms and maintenance features as the VMs can be pointed to by different physical servers and can

also be replicated from one storage area to another.

There are several types of high availability solutions that can be utilized within a virtualized environment. Each virtualization vendor has its own set of solutions which are not

necessarily for all the solution types explained in the next few sections.

Moving VMs from One Physical Server to Another

These solutions allow moving a VM from one physical machine to another with near-zero

downtime usually for maintenance reasons such as server maintenance or load balancing.

Moving VMs can be done manually or automatically via a mechanism that identifies resource utilization bottlenecks (via resource thresholds) and moves VMs to balance the resource

loads around several physical servers.

Figure 4: Moving VMs from One Physical Server to Another

1. VMWare Solution: Vmotion (manual or automatic with VMWare’s Distributed Resource Scheduling mechanism, which monitors resource utilization across virtual servers and load

balances the resource load by moving VMs around)

Microsoft Solution: Live Migration NICE Support: Vmotion starting NPR3.2

Storage InfrastructurePhysical Server 1

OS 3 App. 3

OS 2 App. 2

VM2 File

App. 2OS 2

VM3 File

App. 3OS 3

OS 1 App. 1VM1 File

App. 1OS 1

Pointer to VM 1

Pointer to VM 2

Pointer to VM 3

OS 1 App. 1

Pointer to VM 1

Established instead of the

pointer from Physical Server 1

automatically or manually

Physical Server 2

Virtualization

Management System

http://www.vmware.com/products/drs/

http://www.vmware.com/products/drs/



Moving VMs from One Storage Area to Another

These solutions allow moving a VM file from one storage machine to another with near-zero

downtime usually for maintenance reasons such as storage machine maintenance or load balancing. Moving VMs can be done manually or automatically via a mechanism that

identifies storage utilization bottlenecks and moves VMs to balance the storage space

around several storage machines.

Figure 5: Moving VMs from One Storage Area to Another

VMWare Solution: Storage Vmotion

Microsoft Solution: Storage Migration NICE Support: Not supported yet

Storage AreaPhysical Server

OS 1 App. 1

VM1 File

App. 1OS 1

Initial Pointer

to VM 1

VM1 File

App. 1OS 1

New Pointer

to VM 1

Storage Area

Virtualization

Management System



VM Clustering

These solutions allow several physical servers to keep a ―heartbeat‖ between each other so

that if a specific physical server fails, another physical server will instantly restart the failed VMs on its own hypervisor. As VMs need to be restarted on a new physical server, this

solution includes a failover time but offers high availability with minimal downtime.

Figure 6: VM Clustering

VMWare Solution: VMFS Clustering Microsoft Solution: Host Clustering

NICE Support: Not supported yet


OS 3 App. 3

OS 2 App. 2

VM2 File

App. 2OS 2

VM3 File

App. 3OS 3

OS 1 App. 1VM1 File

App. 1OS 1

Pointer to VM 1

Pointer to VM 2

Pointer to VM 3

OS 1 App. 1

Pointer to VM 1

Established instead of the

pointer from Physical Server 1

when Physical Server 1 fails

Notice the VM needs to be

restarted to start working

Physical Server 2

Heartbeat

Virtualization

Management System



VM Fault Tolerance

These solutions allow for a VM to be active on two separate physical machines so that if one

fails, there is near-zero downtime. These solutions are usually active-passive solutions where both physical servers ―listen‖ to the same VM IP while only one of them processes the

information sent to the VM. If the ―active‖ physical server fails, then the ―passive‖ physical

server detects the failure via a heartbeat and starts processing the VM’s transactions.

Figure 6: VM Fault Tolerance

VMWare Solution: VMWare Fault-Tolerance

NICE Support: Not supported yet


OS 3 App. 3

OS 2 App. 2

VM2 File

App. 2OS 2

VM3 File

App. 3OS 3

OS 1 App. 1VM1 File

App. 1OS 1

Pointer to VM 1

Pointer to VM 2

Pointer to VM 3

OS 1 App. 1

Pointer to VM 1

Always active and starts

processing transactions only

after Physical Server 1 fails

Physical Server 2

Heartbeat

Virtualization

Management System



VM Disaster Recovery

These solutions are aimed at achieving business continuity when a data center fails. In

these solutions, the VM files are storage replicated from one data center to another. They allow the VMs on physical servers to restart in the disaster recovery site when the primary

data center fails. Such solutions can either be performed either manually or using

virtualization vendor tools to control the failover/failback process.

Figure 7: VM Disaster Recovery

VMWare Solution: Site Recovery Manager (SRM) NICE Support: Not supported yet

Storage Area 1

Physical Server 1

OS 3 App. 3

OS 2 App. 2

VM2 File

App. 2OS

2VM3 File

App. 3OS

3

OS 1 App. 1VM1 File

App. 1OS

1

Pointer to VM 1

Pointer to VM 2

Pointer to VM 3

Physical Server 2

OS 3 App. 3

OS 2 App. 2

VM2 File

App. 2OS

2VM3 File

App. 3OS

3

OS 1 App. 1VM1 File

App. 1OS

1

Storage Area 2

Storage Replication

of the VM files

Virtualization

Management System

Virtualization

Management System

Pointers established and VMs

restarted only after a DR

Switchover occurs

Primary Data Center

DR Data Center



Desktop Virtualization Virtual desktops enable hosting multiple operating systems and applications in remote

locations allowing for physical and geographical independence. Ideal for home agents or remote offices, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) allows a desktop to be centralized but

provides a typical desktop experience. In a VDI environment, the applications and data reside on a server at the data center. The agents are provided with a thin client, which can

be a PC with very basic functionality to perform all of their necessary tasks. Figure 3 below shows how the virtual desktop runs in the data center.

Figure 8: User Connected to Virtual Desktops Running in a Managed Data Center

VDI significantly reduces hardware and maintenance costs. The expense of the more basic hardware installed at the agent site is significantly lower than using a standard PC or

installing a server on-site. Maintenance activity is performed at the data center instead of requiring staff to arrive on-site to correct the problem. Additionally, VDI provides a more

secure and controlled means to protect essential company data. Permissions and authentication as well as all of the critical data reside at the data center instead of the

agent’s PC.



NICE Perform and VMWare VDI

NICE started supporting VMWare VDI in NICE Perform Release 3.1.

Figure 9: Virtual Desktop Allocation in VMWare VDI

NICE Perform Release 3.1 supports VMWare VDI with ESX3.5 hypervisor, VDM 2.0 Connection Broker and vCenter 2.5 Virtualization management system. For NICE Perform

components supported over a VDI connection, refer to the NICE Perform Release 3.1 Design Considerations Guide or the NICE Perform Release 3.2 Certified Servers Guide .



About NICE NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE) is the leading provider of Insight from Interactions solutions

and value-added services, powered by advanced analytics of unstructured multimedia content - from telephony, web, radio and video communications. NICE's solutions address

the needs of the enterprise and security markets, enabling organizations to operate in an insightful and proactive manner, and take immediate action to improve business and

operational performance and ensure safety and security. NICE has over 24,000 customers in 100 countries, including over 85 of the Fortune 100 companies.

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