adam duffy edina public schools. the heart of virtualization is the “virtual machine” (vm), a...

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

adaduffy@edina.k12.mn.us 952-848-4993

Questions?