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QUICK REFERENCE GUIDE

McKesson HSM & PHS release 14 Applications

®

on VMware Virtualized Platforms

A reference guide for application deployment on VMware® Infrastructure 3 using 64-bit Quad-Core Intel® processor based platforms

2 McKesson Applications® on VMware Virtualized Platforms Quick Reference Guide

LEGAL NOTICES

Copyright ©2008, McKesson Corporation, Dell, Inc., Intel Corporation, VMware. All rights reserved.

FOR MCKESSON CORPORATION:

Horizon® is a trademark of McKesson Corporation and/or one of its subsidiaries.

All information contained herein is subject to change without notice and does not represent a commitment by McKesson.

ALL INFORMATION IS PROVIDED AS IS AND MCKESSON DISCLAIMS ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY RELATING TO THE INFORMATION, INCLUDING LIABILITY OR WARRANTIES RELATING TO FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, MERCHANTABILITY, OR INFRINGEMENT OF ANY PATENT, COPYRIGHT, OR OTHER INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHT. NO LICENSE, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO ANY MCKESSON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IS GRANTED BY THIS DOCUMENT.

FOR INTEL:

Intel, the Intel logo, Xeon, and Xeon Inside are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH INTEL PRODUCTS. EXCEPT AS PROVIDED IN INTEL’S TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF SALE FOR SUCH PRODUCTS, INTEL ASSUMES NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER, AND INTEL DISCLAIMS ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY RELATING TO SALE AND/OR USE OF INTEL PRODUCTS, INCLUDING LIABILITY OR WARRANTIES RELATING TO FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, MERCHANTABILITY, OR INFRINGEMENT OF ANY PATENT, COPYRIGHT, OR OTHER INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHT. Intel products are not intended for use in medical, life-saving, life-sustaining, critical control or safety systems, or in nuclear facility applications. Intel products may contain design defects or errors known as errata which may cause the product to deviate from published specifications. Current characterized errata are available on request.

Intel Corporation may have patents or pending patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights that relate to the presented subject matter. The furnishing of documents and other materials and information does not provide any license, express or implied, by estoppels or otherwise, to any such patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights.

FOR VMWARE:

VMware, the VMware boxes logo, MultipleWorlds, GSX Server, VMware Infrastructure 3 Server, Virtual SMP, VMware VMotion and VMware ACE are trademarks of VMware, Inc. You are not permitted to use these trademarks without the prior written consent of VMware. The use of the VMware trademarks is governed by VMware trademark guidelines posted on the VMware internal Web site at www.VMware.com/pdf/branding_partners.pdf.

NO LICENSE, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, BY ESTOPPEL OR OTHERWISE, TO ANY VMWARE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IS GRANTED BY THIS DOCUMENT. VMWARE ASSUMES NO LIABILITY WHATSOEVER, AND VMWARE DISCLAIMS ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY, INCLUDING FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, MERCHANTABILITY, OR INFRINGEMENT OF ANY PATENT, COPYRIGHT OR OTHER VMWARE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHT.


HELPFUL DOCUMENTS AND REFERENCE

Overview of McKesson Products

http://www.mckesson.com/en_us/McKesson.com/

Overview of VMware Products

www.VMware.com/products/vi

VMware Best practices and Technical information

http://www.VMware.com/pdf/vi_performance_tuning.pdf

http://www.VMware.com/technology/virtual-storage/best-practices.html

Overview of Intel® Xeon® Processor-Based Platforms

intel.com/products/processor/xeon/index.htm

Not sure which Intel product fits your needs? See the Intel® Xeon® Processor-based Server Selection Guide:

ftp://download.intel.com/products/processor/xeon/ssguide.pdf

Processor Product Brief

Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5300 series

http://download.intel.com/design/Xeon/datashts/31556903.pdf

Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5400 series

http://download.intel.com/design/xeon/datashts/318589.pdf Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 7300 series

http://download.intel.com/products/processor/xeon/7300_prodbrief.pdf


CONTENTS

Page(s)

Introduction.................................................................................................................................................... 5 VMware Features and Functionality ............................................................................................................. 7 Deployment ................................................................................................................................................... 9 System Architecture .................................................................................................................................. 9 Physical Hardware Requirements ........................................................................................................... 12 Processor................................................................................................................................................. 13 Memory.................................................................................................................................................... 13 Network Interfaces................................................................................................................................... 13 Disk.......................................................................................................................................................... 13 Guest Operating Systems Resource Requirements ............................................................................... 13 Installation and Tuning ............................................................................................................................ 14 VMware ESX Server 3 Installation .......................................................................................................... 15 Virtual Switch Configuration .................................................................................................................... 16 VMware VirtualCenter/License Server Configuration and Recommendations ....................................... 16

Resource Usage Profile .............................................................................................................................. 19


INTRODUCTION

This document describes basics and best practice guidelines to effectively deploy McKesson Horizon Surgical Manager and Pathways Healthcare Scheduling in a virtualized environment, including an overview of system architecture and hardware requirements, as well as general guidelines for installation. For general information about these two product visit:

http://www.mckesson.com/en_us/McKesson.com/For+Healthcare+Providers/Hospitals/Enterprise+Resource+Planning/Horizon+Surgical+Manager.html

http://www.mckesson.com/en_us/McKesson.com/For+Healthcare+Providers/Hospitals/Access+Management/Pathways+Healthcare+Scheduling.html

The deployment of these McKesson Corp. applications on the VMware virtualized platform is the first step in an ongoing strategy by McKesson Corp. to validate and deliver product suites capable of deployment in a VMware-based virtualized environment. For details about how to deploy these applications, for customer reference material, or any additional information, please contact your appropriate McKesson representative.

What is virtualization?

Virtualization is a proven software technology that is rapidly transforming the IT landscape and fundamentally changing the way that people compute.

Today’s powerful Intel® x86/EMT64 based computer hardware was originally designed to run only a single operating system and a single application, but virtualization breaks that bond, making it possible to run multiple operating systems and multiple applications on the same computer at the same time, increasing the utilization and flexibility of hardware.

In essence, virtualization lets you transform hardware into software. Using software such as VMware ESX to transform or “virtualize” the hardware resources of an x86/EMT64 based computer—including the CPU, RAM, hard disk and network controller—to create a fully functional virtual machine that can run its own operating system and applications just like a “real” computer.

Multiple virtual machines share hardware resources without interfering with each other so that you can safely run several operating systems and applications at the same time on a single computer.

The VMware approach to virtualization inserts a thin layer of software directly on the computer hardware or on a host operating system. This software layer creates virtual machines and contains a virtual machine monitor or “hypervisor” that allocates hardware resources dynamically and transparently so that multiple operating systems can run concurrently on a single physical computer without even knowing it.


Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel

® VT) provides specific functionality that helps simplify the

deployment of virtualization software—delivering complimentary, optimized hardware support that magnifies the value of leading virtualization software solutions such as the VMware

® Infrastructure 3

virtualization suite.

The VMware Infrastructure 3 platform makes near-linear scaling of loads on more powerful servers possible and allows control of hardware resource allocation among virtual machines. VMware Infrastructure 3 also enables faster system deployment, increased security through virtual machine isolation and mirroring, easier system administration, and reduced costs through hardware consolidation.

Intel continues to be a significant contributor to the development of virtualization tools and resources through:

• Award-winning1 processor technology and unparalleled reliability. Intel

® Core™

microarchitecture powers the current generation of Intel® 64 architecture, including both dual-core

and quad-core processors that deliver performance improvements with up to 40 percent power reduction

2. Advanced reliability features such as Intel

® Cache Safe Technology—available in the

latest Intel® Xeon

® processors MP—reduces latency and improves reliability in virtualization

deployments.

• Availability of Intel VT on all Intel® server processors. Intel

® VT supports a new hardware

layer that provides hardware-assisted virtualization for next-generation solutions. This layer reduces the complexity of the virtual machine monitor (VMM) and enables new virtualization capabilities. It also eliminates compute-intensive software translations in the virtualization software by enabling a new, higher privilege mode for VMM operation. This innovation allows the guest operating system (OS) and applications to run in their intended mode. Intel

® VT is fully

supported by VMware® ESX Server version 3.0.1 and above, enabling 64-bit guest OS support.

• Powerful Intel product roadmaps focused on optimization and acceleration of virtualization software. An extensive Intel

® VT roadmap is planned to deliver near-native

performance in virtualized environments as well as other new virtualization capabilities architected in Intel® processors, chipsets, and communications components—making possible more robust and complete virtualization solutions.

• Ecosystem Leadership. Intel is a global leader in enabling the software industry through microprocessor technologies. Intel works together with leading ISVs, universities, and OEMs to develop standards, specifications, and best practices to optimize enterprise solutions.

Intel® VT and VMware Infrastructure 3 offer software vendors and IT organizations essential advantages

such as reduced costs and risk, improved reliability and availability, enhanced security, and simpler VM development for their virtualized deployments.

1 Intel Core micro architecture won a Technical Excellence award from PC Magazine, announced in Issue 23, December 5, 2006.

2 Source: Intel.


VMWARE FEATURES AND FUNCTIONALITY

VMware features and functions are described below. Note: Not all of the VMware features and functions described below are supported or can be implemented with McKesson Corp products-especially in a production environment.

• Virtual machine cloning and deployment. Cloning a virtual machine enables system administrators to easily deploy many copies of a fully configured virtual machine, without the need to install the same operating system and applications in each copy. A cloned environment on a virtualized system can be used as a temporary environment for training, test, and demos, as well as for backup, and then removed when no longer needed.

Cloning can also play an important role in implementing a disaster recover strategy. A datacenter can be replicated at another site, often using a storage area network, providing backups of data and virtual machines in the event of a disaster to allow quick recovery of a virtualized IT environment.

• Cold migration. Cold migration allows moving a powered off virtual machine from one physical server to another simply by dragging and dropping the virtual machine icon. Cold migration of virtual machines can occur between VMware ESX Server instances and does not require the server hosts to share a SAN.

• Virtual symmetric multiprocessing (Virtual SMP). VMware® Virtual SMP allows a single virtual machine to use up to four physical processors simultaneously. Scaling a virtual infrastructure is much easier with multiple processors working in parallel in a single virtual machine.

• VMware® VMotion. VMware VMotion enables migration of live virtual machines to a different physical host without impacting end-users and conducting non-disruptive maintenance of IT environments.

• VMware Storage VMotion - Storage VMotion allows IT administrators to minimize service disruption due to planned storage downtime previously incurred for rebalancing or retiring storage arrays. Storage VMotion simplifies array migration and upgrade tasks and reduces I/O bottlenecks by moving virtual machines to the best available storage resource in your environment.

• VMware High Availability (HA). HA allows for the migration and restart of a virtual machine guest when a loss of one or more hosts in an HA enabled cluster occurs. Enhanced high availability provides experimental support for monitoring individual virtual machine failures. VMware HA can now be set up to either restart the failed virtual machine or send a notification to the administrator.

• VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). DRS dynamically allocates and balances computing capacity and virtual machine placement with resources pooled from multiple ESX Server hosts.

• Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF)—The Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) is a virtual machine distribution format that supports sharing of virtual machines between products and organizations. VMware Infrastructure Client version 2.5 allows you to import and generate virtual machines in OVF format through the File > Virtual Appliance > Import/Export menu items.

• Large memory support for both ESX Server hosts and virtual machines—ESX Server 3.5 supports 256GB of physical memory and virtual machines with 64GB of RAM.


• ESX Server host support for up to 32 logical processors— ESX Server 3.5 fully supports systems with up to 32 logical processors. Systems with up to 64 logical processors are supported experimentally.

• SATA support - ESX Server 3.5 supports selected SATA devices connected to dual SAS/SATA controllers.

• 10 Gigabit Ethernet support - Neterion and NetXen 10 Gigabit Ethernet NIC cards are supported in ESX Server 3.5.

• N-Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) support - ESX Server 3.5 introduces support for NPIV for Fiber Channel SAN. Each virtual machine can now have its own World Wide Port Name (WWPN).

• Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP) support - This release of VMware Infrastructure 3 incorporates support for CDP to help IT administrators better troubleshoot and monitor Cisco-based environments from within Virtual Center 2.5 and the VI Client. CDP allows VMware Infrastructure administrators to know which Cisco switch port is connected to each virtual switch uplink (that is, each physical NIC).

• NEW: Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) support for virtual machines - ESX Server 3 version 3.5 supports virtual machines configured for IPv6.

• Para virtualized guest operating system support with VMI 3.0 - ESX Server 3.5 supports Para virtualized guest operating systems that conform to the VMware Virtual Machine Interface (VMI) 3.0. VMI is an open Para virtualization interface developed by VMware in collaboration with the Linux community (VMI was integrated into the mainline Linux kernel in version 2.6.22).

• Large page size - In ESX Server 3.5, the VMkernel can now allocate 2MB pages to the guest operating system.

• Enhanced VMXNET - Enhanced VMXNET is the next version of VMware's Para virtualized virtual networking device for guest operating systems. Enhanced VMXNET includes several new networking I/O performance improvements including support for TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) and jumbo frames.

• TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) - TCP Segmentation Offload (TSO) improves networking I/O performance by reducing the CPU overhead involved with sending large amounts of TCP traffic.

• Jumbo frames - Jumbo frames allow ESX Server 3.5 to send larger frames out onto the physical network. The network must support jumbo frames (end-to-end) for jumbo frames to be effective.

• NetQueue support - VMware supports NetQueue, a performance technology that significantly improves performance in 10 Gigabit Ethernet virtual environments.

• Intel I/O Acceleration Technology (IOATv1) support (experimental) - ESX Server 3.5 provides experimental support for IOATv1.

As an application, software, and hardware provider, McKesson Corp. offers to provide a complete solution. Experienced McKesson Corp. engineers can help install and configure a VMware-based virtualized application implementation based on industry-accepted best practices. Not all of these features are supported by every McKesson Corp. application. For more information about using these functions and advanced features of VMware ESX Server, please contact your appropriate McKesson Corp. representative.


DEPLOYMENT

This section presents key information about the deployment of a McKesson Corp. application

environment, including system architecture, hardware requirements, installation, and tuning.

System Architecture

A McKesson Corp. application environment typically includes a combination of:

• DB server(s)

• Agent server(s)

• Messaging or Interface Server(s)

• Reports & Forms Server(s)

• HL7 Server(s)

• Web and application server(s)

A typical non-virtualized deployment comprises a number of physical servers providing a variety of functions, database servers, application, web servers, etc. In a non-virtualized environment components run on separate physical servers.

In a typical virtualized McKesson Corp. application deployment, most mid-tier components have been consolidated onto virtual machines running on a VMware ESX Server platform. The goal with the virtualization strategy is to provide a complete solution; balancing consolidation, redundancy, maximizing system resources, and ease of use.

Additional third-party components are not usually required for a virtualized environment. However, the current implementation does not account for the Virtual Center/License server that is required to take advantage of advanced features like VMotion, DRS, HA, resource pooling, and central management and administration. The Virtual Center /License server and software is not included and not part of our base solution.

The Database, storage components, and applications that have specific hardware requirements or have specific licensing requirements are NOT supported virtualized and must be physical systems. With currently deployed applications, the following situations preclude a server from being virtualized:

• The need for a specific fax, modem or other communication card.

• Per processor based licensing for 3rd party software.

• Requirement for internal tape drive for backup.

• Requirement for USB attached drive or device. We will continue to update these criteria and identify incompatibilities as new applications are validated on virtualized platforms. The figure (below) shows a logical representation of a proposed typical HSM or PHS environment virtualized on VMware ESX servers. The Database and Infrastructure components (required) are not virtualized.


Figure 1: Projected virtualized system architecture for an HSM environment (Medium)


Figure 2: Projected virtualized system architecture for a PHS environment (Medium)


Physical Hardware Requirements

Enough PCI-x/e slots need to be present in the physical system to support the recommendations below.

McKesson Corp. Standardized VMware Host Server (Typical hardware)

Hardware Requirements

Model

DELL PowerEdge PE2950G3 / R710

HP ProLiant DL380

IBM System x3650

Processor

2 x Quad Core E5450 processors (HP and Dell)

2 x Quad Core E5440 processors (IBM)

2.83GHz or better/ Fastest FSB possible

Memory (RAM) configured for optimal performance

32GB

Total DIMM Slots Available = 8

Int. RAID Channels Yes

Ext. RAID Channels 2 x Q-Logic FC Adapters required for SAN attachment

Internal Storage 3 x 146 GB SAS Disk Drives

Internal RAID RAID 1 w/hot spare

External Storage SAN

Network Interface 2 x Quad Port NICs (excluding server default) for HP, IBM, Dell R710

1 x Quad Port NIC (excluding server defaults) for Dell 2950G3

Tape Drive --

Backup Software --

Peripherals 1 x DVD-ROM (or better)

Other Software VMware ESX Enterprise Edition 2 Socket License and Media kit

With software warranty

Power Supply Redundant

Warranty Level 3 years, 24x7


Processor

Each physical server must contain fully populated 2-socket/2-way Quad-core processors from the Intel Xeon processor family. CPU speeds greater than 2.83GHz and the fastest FSB (Front Side Bus) provide excellent performance results for the deployment of McKesson Corp. application on VMware Infrastructure 3.

Memory

32GB RAM minimum per physical ESX host is the standard as identified above.

Network Interfaces

For every physical server, in addition to the 2 on-board NICs 2 additional QUAD port Network Interface Cards are recommended (10 CAT5e connections total where possible). For consistency with best practices, use separate physical network adapters (and consequently separate vSwitches) to avoid contention between service console, VMkernel/VMotion, virtual machines, and between virtual machines running heavy networking workloads. For redundancy, the network interface cards (NICs) should be teamed or bonded with members other than those on the same card or chipset. For additional networking information please refer to the Virtual Switch Configuration section within this document.

Disk

Qty. 3 - 146GB serial attached SCSI (SAS) local disks configured as RAID-1 mirror (with additional online hot spare). These local drives contain the VMware ESX software server only.

Qty. 2 Q-Logic Fiber Channel HBAs are required per physical system.

The use of an external storage device (at this time, MUST be an enterprise-class SAN) is recommended for any virtual machine files, for application storage, and to take advantage of advanced VMware features and functionality. McKesson Corp. has validated and supports the following (3) SAN storage vendors; EMC/DELL, HP, and IBM. For specific model information and compatibility please contact your appropriate McKesson Corp. representative. Please reference the “Guest Operating Systems Resource Requirements” sections below for more specific storage details.

Guest Operating Systems Resource Requirements

The Database tier and applications that require specific hardware components (i.e. Fax/modem boards) are NOT supported virtualized and must be physical systems.

Rules to configure each Virtual Machine guest: The Virtual Machine guests within a HSM or PHS environment each have specific requirements around VCPUs, Memory, placement on particular host system, etc. Storage requirements would be equivalent to stand alone systems. The Virtual Machine guests should reside on external storage (at this time, MUST be SAN only). At a minimum, each physical ESX host system should be presented with its own fault tolerant and redundant LUN.

• The Web Server should be provided a single 100GB partition

• The Application Server should be provided a single 100GB partition

• The HBI Server should be provided a single 36GB partition


• The DAS Server follows the Horizon Clinical standard of 1VCPU, 4GB Memory, and a 36GB partition.

The virtual machine quests, files, and hosts should be backed up consistent with best practices used for all servers in the enterprise.

Specific requirements for the guest O/S are dependent on many factors and you should seek the assistance of your appropriate McKesson Corp. representative for assistance.

Installation and Tuning

Follow these guidelines when creating virtualized guests:

• Disable Hyper-Threading Technology. In the VMware ESX Server host, turn off the option enabling Hyper-Threading Technology (BIOS functions) if it exists. Enable any hardware assisted and/or CPU based virtualization technology (Intel

® VT, VT-x).

• Power saving settings can interfere significantly with VMware performance both on the host system and within the guests. Advanced functions such as Speedstep, P-states (throttling), and C-states should either be disabled or set to maximum performance as appropriate. Also, Screensavers and power saving features within a guest O/S should be disabled.

• Avoid memory swapping and over-committing. Total of virtual memory allocated to all virtual machines should not exceed the physical memory available. The current standard is to divide the total amount of memory by the total number of virtual machines to equally distribute the allocated memory across virtual machines

• Disable COM ports and USB ports. Disable any COM or USB ports in each virtual machine. When these ports are enabled, they can cause random spikes in processor utilization. VMware ESX Server 3.5 does not support COM or USB functionality within virtual machines.


VMware ESX Server 3 Installation

VMware ESX Server 3 is installed to boot from the Local drives. You should not accept the ‘typical’ settings but instead select the ‘custom’ install and follow the recommendations with the partitions layout listed in Table 1 (below).

Note: VMware ESX 3.5 Version: 3.5 | 2/20/2008 | build: 64607 or later is required.

Latest Version: 3.5 Update 4 | 2009/03/30 | Build: 153875 has been validated on this product suite.

Table 1: VMware ESX 3 Partitions

Mount Point Type Size Description

/boot ext3 @ 256 MB Contains information needed to boot the VMware ESX Server.

NA swap @ 4096 MB Allows VMware ESX Server and third party add-ons to swap to disk.

/ ext3 @ 12280 MB (12GB)

Contains the VMware ESX Server operating system and services. Minimum space shown (can be larger).

/home ext3 2048 MB Is used for storage by individual users.

/tmp ext3 2048 MB Is used for storage of temporary files.

/var/log ext3 2048 MB Is used for storage of log files.

NA vmkcore 110 MB Is used to store core dumps for debugging and technical support.

/opt ext3 2048 MB Is used for storage of log files from third party agents

@ = designate as primary partition during ESX install


Virtual Switch Configuration

A vSwitch can route traffic internally between virtual machines and/or link to external networks.

Virtual switches are used to combine the bandwidth of multiple network adapters and balance communications traffic among them. They can also be configured to handle physical NIC failover.

A vSwitch models a physical Ethernet switch. The default number of logical ports for a vSwitch is 56 and is more than enough for our base solution. You can connect as many as one network adapter of a virtual machine to each port. Each uplink adapter associated with a vSwitch uses one port. Each logical port on the vSwitch is a member of a single port group (though each vSwitch can also have one or more port groups assigned to it).

Before you can configure virtual machines to access a network, you must create at least one vSwitch. When two or more virtual machines are connected to the same vSwitch, network traffic between them is routed locally. If an uplink adapter is attached to the vSwitch, each virtual machine can access the external network that the adapter is connected to.

Typically, the virtual switches in a McKesson Corp. application VMware-based implementation comprise

three (3) virtual switch teams. Two individual vSwitches are connected to four physical Ethernet ports, with one team dedicated to the service console and the other team dedicated to the virtual machine network traffic. The third team gets dedicated for a VMware® VMotion network. Use separate vSwitches (and consequently separate physical network adapters) to avoid contention between service console, VMkernel/VMotion, virtual machines, and between virtual machines running heavy networking workloads. Virtual local area network (VLAN) tagging, 802.1Q, and switch port trunking, because of their complexity and specific requirements, are NOT supported configurations and should NOT be used or implemented. Network cards should be hard set to their fastest speeds and full duplex (not auto-negotiate) for the virtual machine traffic and service console, and a minimum gigabit full duplex for the VMware® VMotion network. Load balancing/teaming on the virtual machine vSwitch is configured with the “route-based on the originating virtual port ID” (the default) setting.

A good source of information for virtual networking concepts within VMware is located here: http://www.VMware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf (provided for reference only).

Many factors will determine specific networking configuration and layout. Therefore, you should seek the assistance of your appropriate McKesson Corp. representative for assistance.


VMware Virtual Center/License Server Configuration and Recommendations

VMware® Virtual Center delivers centralized management, operational automation, resource optimization, and high availability to IT environments. However, the current implementation does not account for the Virtual Center/License server that is required to take advantage of advanced features like VMotion, DRS, HA, resource pooling, and central management and administration. The Virtual Center /License server and software is not included and not part of our base solution. Guidelines around VMware Virtual Center/License server include:

• McKesson Corp. recommends using a dedicated physical server for the combined VMware Virtual Center and VMware License Server and advises against running this application on a virtual machine.

• McKesson Corp. recommends you use a server-based licensing model, which allows clients to take advantage of advanced features like VMware VMotion and DRS. In a server-based licensing model, the VMware License Server runs as a service on a Microsoft Windows host and centrally manages licenses for VMware Infrastructure 3 components. Typically, the License Server is installed on the same Windows host as the VirtualCenter Server during the VirtualCenter Server installation process.

• Create a new named database to store VirtualCenter data (do not use the default instance).

• Install the VirtualCenter and License Server software.

• Install the VMware Infrastructure Client on this system as well as any operating system updates and requirements.

• Within Virtual Center, McKesson Corp. recommends you create a separate Datacenter with individual folders for each application which then contain the specific application resources (ESX hosts).

• Set any HA, DRS, VMotion capabilities to manual (do not use automatic). This will ensure VMslice layout which is critical to guarantee application performance.

Many customers choose to deploy the VirtualCenter/License Server using a Microsoft SQL Server database. SQL Server offers administrators a choice of recovery models, which is the primary factor that determines transaction log disk space requirements. The “full” recovery model is the default and has the potential to consume all available disk space, if appropriate database maintenance is not performed. For sites that do not intend to schedule regular backups of the database transaction logs, VMware suggests that the VirtualCenter Server database be set to the “simple” recovery model.

In VirtualCenter 2.5, the VirtualCenter/License Server can access a directory for licensing information, rather than a single license file, to support multiple VMware licensed products. To add server-based licenses for new VMware products, you can simply copy the server-based license file into the License Server directory rather than using the more error-prone method of manually editing the license file.


A general topology for a McKesson Corp. implementation w/ Virtual Center might look something like:


RESOURCE USAGE PROFILE

Follow the guidelines below to ensure best performance of a VMware-based virtualized environment

• Follow McKesson Corp. Technology Services Time Keeping and Synchronization within VMware white paper and best practices document.

Link is located here:

http://tsgsp.mckesson.com/development/HostDocuments/Virtualization/TimeSyncWhitePaper.doc

• Disable screen savers and window animations in the virtual machine. On Linux servers, if an X server is not required, disable it. Screen savers, animations, and X servers all consume processor time which can affect performance of other virtual machines and consolidation ratios. The non-trivial consumption of processor cycles by idling virtual machines can also have an adverse impact on dynamic resource scheduling (DRS) decisions.

• When configuring virtual machines, remember that VMware ESX Server itself has some overhead. Allow for the processor overhead required by virtualization and take care not to excessively over-commit processor resources (in terms of processor utilization and the total number of virtual processors).

• Use as few virtual processors as possible. For example, do not use virtual SMP if your application is single-threaded and does not benefit from the additional virtual processors.

• Avoid memory over-commitment. Make sure the host has more memory than the total amount of memory that will be used by VMware ESX Server plus the sum of the working set sizes that will be used by all the virtual machines.

• Due to page sharing and other techniques, VMware ESX Server can be over-committed on memory and still not swap. However, if the over-commitment is large and ESX is swapping, performance in the virtual machines is significantly reduced.

• Multiple network adapters from a single vSwitch to the physical network form a NIC team. A NIC team can increase performance by distributing the traffic across the physical network adapters and provide passive failover in the event of hardware failure or network outage.

• Use separate vSwitches configured on separate physical network adapters, to avoid contention between the service console, VMotion network (VMkernel), virtual machine traffic, and between virtual machines running heavy networking workloads.

• To optimize storage array performance, spread I/O loads over the available paths to the storage system across multiple host bus adapters (HBAs) and service processors (SPs) ports.

• For Active/Active arrays with a fixed failover policy, designate preferred paths to each logical unit of storage. Doing so allows for the best possible utilization of your bandwidth to the disk array.

• Use Reservations to specify the minimum acceptable amount of processor time or memory, not the amount you would like to have available. The host assigns additional resources as available based on the number of shares specified and the limit for your virtual machine. Reservations can be used to specify the minimum processor and memory reservation for each virtual machine. In contrast to shares, the fixed amount of resources represented by a reservation does not change when you change the environment, for example, by adding or removing virtual machines. Don't set Reservations too high. A reservation that's too high can limit the number of virtual machines you can power on in a resource pool.


• When specifying the reservations for virtual machines, always leave some headroom. Do not commit all resources. As the amount of resources reserved approaches the capacity of the system, it becomes increasingly difficult to make changes to reservations and to the resource pool hierarchy without violating admission control. In a DRS-enabled cluster, reservations that fully commit the capacity of the cluster or that of individual hosts in the cluster can prevent DRS from migrating virtual machines between hosts.

• Use resource pools for delegated resource management in advanced VMware implementations (those with VirtualCenter, HA, and DRS components). To fully isolate a resource pool, make the resource pool type Fixed and use Reservation and Limit. Each McKesson Corp. application should be allocated its own set of resources.