best practices in deploying a virtualization project

Practical Steps for Building and Managing an Internal Cloud

Presented by:Jason Williams

@WhatsUpGuruCommunity Manager

Ipswitch, Inc. | Network Management Division

Why Virtualization?

50% of x86 architectures (according to Gartner) will be running in virtual machines by 2012

According to the VMWorld keynote presentation, there are over 10 million deployed virtual machines, with more applications running on virtual machines than physical machines.

Organizations of all sizes are exploring virtualization:

– Increase server utilization

– Reduce hardware costs and complexity

– Reduce total cost of ownership.

Step #1 – Document the Network

Discover, map and inventory your network resources

– Use a layer 2/3 discovery tool to identify the physical layer and how everything is connected down to the individual port.

– You may be surprised at what you discover!

Document your network

– Network evolution over time

– Auditing purposes

– Knowledge

Quick Product Plug…

WhatsConnected

– Layer 2/Layer 3 network discovery & visualization tool

– Documents hardware assets & connectivity

– Export Microsoft Visio maps

– Share hardware asset information via CSV export

Step #2 – Document Resource Utilization Decide which servers should be virtualized

– Great candidates: DNS, domain controllers, DHCP, file and print servers, web servers, mail servers, or small database servers can also be very good targets.

Remember to baseline key servers that will be moving to your cloud environment.

– Measure processor utilization, memory utilization, storage, network usage and disk I/O individually on potential virtualization targets for benchmarking

Step #3 – Selecting a Vendor Yes you have options!

According to IDC, EMC/VMware held 65.6 % of the $1.045 billion worldwide virtual machine software (VMS) market in 2006

Other top virtualization players (all provide their own hypervisor):

– EMC/VMware

– Microsoft

– Citrix/XenSource

– Oracle VM

– Parallels Virtuozzo

Step #4 – Gather Requirements Virtualization is a disruptive technology and doesn’t

just impact IT

Consider preparing a Virtualization Overview document . This should cover:

– Goals and Objectives (business needs and deliverables)

– Success Criteria

– Constraints

– High-level Risks

Gather Requirements (continued) Some simple questions that worked well for us:

– How many people are currently using the system

– What kind of growth do you see in the next 6 months, year, 3 years?

– Will there be additional add-ons or features which will have to be installed?

– Will these add-ons require additional connectivity to external applications, file shares, databases, etc?

AGREEMENT

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Step #5 - Implementation Some quick pointers that worked well for us:

– Update the firmware on all hardware prior to deployment

– Confirm that your processor settings are identical on all host servers

– You may want to isolate your normal ISCSI traffic from your vMotion traffic

– Consider how large the drives on your servers will be

– Utilize resource pools

Step #6 – Monitoring Success Keep an eye on any potential problems – monitor

your infrastructure!

Performance monitoring is key and will ensure that you did your job right

Virtualization can introduce new management challenges:

– Discover and document both physical and virtualized resources

– Maintain an accurate physical to VM mapping at all times

– Ensure that applications perform at optimal pre-virtualization levels

– How do you integrate alerting, escalation and response procedures across your entire infrastructure including both physical and virtual resources?

Infrastructure Management Strategies

Lessons Learned

Virtualization is rapidly becoming mainstream worldwide

Take time to investigate

Develop a project plan and get buy-in

Remember, it can have an impact on the overall performance of your mission-critical applications.

Remember the Checklist! (part 1)

Properly scope your virtualization project, objectives and goals, as well as success metrics

Get buy-in from all key stakeholders

Put a policy in place for how physical to virtual migrations are to be executed

Put strict controls in place to allow for VM creation

Closely monitor physical resources, cpu, interface, memory, and disk utilization.

Use Resource pools allowing production servers to take precedence over hardware.

Inventory your physical and virtualized environments on an on-going basis

Look for a management tool that offers single console monitoring across network devices, servers, applications, virtual resources, network traffic and events and log data

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Remember the Checklist! (part 2)

Good luck in your virtualization endeavors!

Questions?