[case study]xen virtualization_v20080418

8/2/2019 [Case Study]Xen Virtualization_v20080418

1/6www.open-e.com

Open-E GmbHLindberghstrae 5D-82178 PuchheimT: +49 (89) 800777-0

F: +49 (89) [email protected]://www.open-e.com

Open-E, Inc.2688 Middlefield Rd, Suite ARedwood City, CA 94063

United States of America

T: +1 (770) [email protected]://www.open-e.com

Brilliant Solution for Supplier of Diamond

ToolsVirtualization of Servers and Storage launched at DieWe Diamantwerkzeuge GmbH


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Te CompanyFor 25 years now DieWe DiamantwerkzeugeGmbH has been one o the leading suppliers odiamond instruments in Germany and the rest oEurope. Te company, rom the Augsburg area, isa classic medium-sized industrial enterprise with

just under 120 sta. From the development stagethrough to production and delivery o diamondinstruments, DieWe always orients itsel to thelatest technologies, the situation on the marketand the requirements o its customers. Toroughraw materials selection, extensive tests in the laband documented test series ensure that only highgrade and high-perormance diamond instrumentsare made.

Te Initial SituationTe system integrator and this is typical orsmall and medium-sized companies came across

an I inrastructure with 8 Windows servers andsome 100 clients that had simply developed overthe years. Utility-controlled requirements hadbeen chiey responsible or the extensions. Inparticular, parts o the inrastructure consisted oheterogeneous components involving a variety oserver congurations and dierent ages. Most othe data was stored on local FDDs.

he introduct ion o a new merchandisemanagement system produced databaseperormance problems which were resolved inthe short term by Direct Attached Storage (DAS)on an SCSI basis. However, corporate-widedeployments then resulted in I/O perormanceproblems.

Te data was backed up on various networkdrives, which produced a considerable load onthe network and the backup window becameever larger. Tere was no central backup system which meant that the requirements placed onarchiving security, rapid disaster recovery andcompliance could not be met.

Te administration team was aced with aninrastructure that had developed gradually overtime and was very maintenance-intensive, as there

was no uniorm access to the servers, and thediversity o the server systems and architecturesmeant that collective resource and update planning

was either impossible or only possible with greatmanual eort.

Our inrastructure has grown signicantly overthe past ew years and requirements are certainlynot going to recede over the next ew months,stated Frank Nehmer, Head o I at DieWe.

Tat is why we have decided to run in a solutionin good time one directed towards growth andscalability in all elds.

Te heightened requirements placed on storagespace rom the database systems and documents(Ofce and graphics les) produced considerablecapacity problems within the storageinrastructure. Te customer also wanted greater

resilience rom the entire I system includingserver services, server hardware and storagesolutions, in particular.

System integrator

losstech GmbHLosstech GmbH is a medium-sized systemintegrator rom Lutzhorn near Hamburg.Since 2001 it has been providing supportto small and medium-sized rms acrossGermany in the planning, realization and

maintenance o Windows networks andworkstations. In so doing, losstech GmbH isalways at pains to nd preerably optimumand low-cost solutions or its customers. Itprovides its services not only on the spotbut increasingly through teleservice andteleinstruction via the Internet. As a result,our customers save on expensive travel-overand overnight stay costs and our deploymentrate rockets. Our customers benet romthis in the orm o a quick, exible service

without the delay o a journey across tothem, says Boris Hajek o losstech.

Te DecisionFollowing a number o workshops and a detailedanalysis o the existing structures includingrequirements coming rom the departments andappropriate applications a concept was devisedahead o project planning to both optimize theprocesses and bring about an I inrastructureadapted to uture needs.

Attention was given to the ollowing requirements

in order to provide the customer with simpliedI systems administration and the necessaryunctionalities: Simple, low-on-maintenance administrationo storage and server hardware (Windows ADS,DHCP, DNS, le services, MSSQL databases) Raising the resilience o the whole systemor operation with little or no downtime amaximum two-hour recovery time in worst-casescenarios with due consideration o the totalcost. Scalability o the servers and storages Scalability o the bandwidth and I/Os or

uture enhanced requirements that have not yet

been conceived Reduction/elimination o downtime thanks tomaintenance Hardware liecycle management witharchitecture consolidation

Migration simplication should the systemshave to be transerred to other/newer hardware Emergency and recovery concept or the Isystems based at dierent sites VPN access concept or second company siteand teleworker Reducing the network load and backupexecution rate High availability o the sotware systems andserver services Maximum no-risk investment o the system Hardware consolidation

ImplementationFirstly a test system or the storage domain wasset up and a visualization server attached with

XEN as the lab network. Te storage solutioncame in the orm o the Open-E DSS (DataStorage Server) a complete IP and FC storageoperating system (FC Fibre Channel) providingNAS, iSCSI and FC unctionality (target andinitiator) in a single application complete withstraightorward operation and a high degree oresilience or companies o any size.

Storage

Te storage server solution provides a rapid,dependable and scalable platorm or IPstorage permitting collective le access, storageconsolidation, backup and recovery. Anothereld o considerable relevance in todays world isvirtualization or replication something coveredby the Open-E DSS.

Since the operating system has been optimizedor environments with dedicated storage andcompany networks, the solution is especiallysuited or network environments with an array o

clients or utilities with high memory requirements.Tanks to the support o Windows, NIS orLDAP domains, the existing I inrastructurecan be easily extended. Te Web-supportedgraphics user interace or management andadministration ensures dependable control othe storage unit and processes or backing upvital data. Te DSS server provides some o thestorage space secured by RAID-6 as Windowsshared olders (synchronized with the existing

ADS), as iSCSI targets and NFS shares in theEthernet (copper 1Gbit).


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Hardware/Sotware used

Hardware3 x eXtremetec XEN x8 xtcv i r tua l izat ion nodes2 x eXtremetec pureStor 16

storage systems with SAS andSAA ixed disk d rives1 x eXtremetec pureStor NASDisk2ape Bac kup Bot LO-3Various 3COM network and VPNproduct s

Sotware3 x Open-E DSS (Data Storage Server)3 x XENSource Enterprise Servers and

XENCenter Administration tools7 x Windows 2003 Servers1 x Microsot Exchange 2003

2 x Microsot SQL Servers1 x Microsot erminal server

Server HardwareeXtremetec xtc Server and pureStor storagehardware a private brand o losstech GmbHbased on the well-known Supermicro technology.Tanks to sel-construction and complete controlover the components used, customers can rely on astandardized, scalable, stable and tested hardwareplatorm. Tis platorm has been optimizedas an out-o-the-box solution or the dierentrequirement proles and stays standardized acrossthe entire lietime or leasing period.

VirtualizationFollowing the setup o the storage solution andtest servers or virtualization purposes, the serverservices were investigated regarding theirvirtualization eectiveness. Appropriatetechnologies made it possible to migrate images othe ongoing servers onto the virtualization systemand iSCSI drives (a representative section o thedata). No problems arose when virtualized all

the utilities ran exactly as beore.At the same time, a migration plan was drated orthe individual systems. Te ollow-up tests wererelated to the data throughput, I/O throughputand network load. Splitting up the networks(Clients/ServerServer services; Server Storage; StorageStorage; StorageBackup),use o the corresponding switches and Open-EDSS produced a 60% cut in the network load. Teswitch inrastructure was prepared accordingly

MigrationLive migration ollowed the implementation

o all tests and a trial run o the risk scenariosand/or the emergency plan.

he administration network and server/storage hardware (XEN and Open-EDSS) were the irst to be taken into liveoperation.Te le server as the rst service was migratedto the Open-E DSS and directly placed at thedisposal o the clients (a dedicated le server was

dropped). Non-critical services such as DHCPand DNS were then migrated. Finally, the ADSservers, the exchange server and database server

were taken on.

Eective BeneftsUse o centralized storage meant that thecustomer had the assurance that the capacityand perormance (I/Os) o the present systemcould be extended at any time and without anydifculty.Using XENSource as the virtualization solution(precisely with Open-E as the network storage

system) produces a multitude o advantages orthe customer: Te Windows servers and services are nothardware-dependent, which means that theserver container can be migrated at any time toanother hardware node without any downtime.No interruption to operation results, even whensystem hardware components or instancegiven a ault have to be replaced. High availability o the server services is verymuch down to an N+1 redundancy o the serverhardware at unrivalled low costs and withoutthe use o expensive cluster sotware/additionalcluster machinery. Tanks to the storage/mirror system, mirrorreplication and ail-over can be used to saeguarddata high availability. Backup can be carried out at the same time asdaily operations. Tere is thus no need or anytape replacement or intervention in the event oproblems outside ofce hours.

In addition, the dedicated admin-network andprotected VPN connection now enable theadministrator to administer the system at any

time, wherever he/she is (notebook and Internetconnection being the prerequisites). 3rd levelsupport can also be carried out by losstechGmbH at any time.We can now access the systems at any time andenter remotes into ault rectication withoutbeing directly on the spot, reported Mr.Nehmer o DieWe. Tis has allowed internalsupport costs to be substantially cut and the loador administrators to be successively adjusted. It

was also possible to reduce the number o serversto 3 energy-efcient hardware nodes in the arm.Tey provide a 30% reserve or uture growth

i.e. lower basic purchasing costs, lower energyrequirements, less power to be backed up or the

USV systems, less heat generation and highavailability rates at the same time, no downtime

when hardware is being serviced, extensions bymeans o extra nodes and space requirementscaling, CPU and RAM possible without anydifculties and at any time. Te same holdsgood or storage systems in view o the excellent

extendability o the Open-E DSS systems.Te I system also became extremelymigrationtransparent. Tis will lower theollow-up to a minimum in 36 months time,

when the hardware is replaced, and ensure transerwithout any outage or aults. In addition, therewere the energy economizing eects o the newI system making up 40% o previous costs.

ConclusionTe Open-E and Xen solution rom losstechGmbH have totally complied with ourrequirements and expectations, says Mr.

Nehmer o DieWe. Some o the benets didnot come to light at the very beginning it

was only later that they did so. Even or smalland medium-sized undertakings, virtualizationsolutions have a lot to oer in many elds.

And in association with a centralized storagesolution, they are o real benet to both classicutilities, such as merchandising management,and resource-devouring applications, such asdatabases and communication systems.

losstech services comprise: Centralized storage solutions (NAS/SAN/iSCSI/FC) with innovative Open-E products Full server hardware and virtualizationsolutions based on XEN and Microsot Documentation o existing, developed Isystems and their re-planning and migration raining and certication o the in-companysta to the Windows Administrator Level1 and 2 Level 2 and/or Level 3 assistance or yourinternal administrators on an hourly basisor under the provisions o a maintenanceagreement

Maintenance o your complete network eitheron the spot or through teleservice (Levels 1/2/3) Drating I reports as the basis or emergencyplans and deployments (member o theDeutsche Sachverstndige Gesellschat German association o qualied experts) I needed, supplying agreed-to components andconsumables or your entire I inrastructurerom a single source (PCs, servers, storage,network components and printers) Areas o deployment: Germany, Austria andSwitzerland Tere are contacts or you in Lutzhorn (near

Hamburg) and Augsburg.


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Conservative inrastructure: beore project realization, the company I amounted to a classic,conservative structure with lots o potential and work.

AD01 -Windows 2003

AD01 -Windows 2003 Fileserver

Exchange

Terminalserver

MSSQL01 MSSQL02 ISA Server Weitere Remote Sites

Direct attatched storageNetwork backup with high loadHigh administrative eortHigh maintenance and investment costsHigh electricity costs

Complex reinstallation on new serversLong recovery times


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Virtualized inrastructure: ollowing project planning and implementation, the companys I isnow housed in an optimized, efcient structure scalable to a pronounced degree and providingmaximum availability.

XEN01(xtc16: 2HE/2xQC XEON/16GB RAM)AD01, Exchange

Open-E DSS:16-fach SAS/SATARaid10 und Raid6

Open-E DSS:6-fach SAS/SATA

LTO-BOT

XEN02(xtc16: 2HE/2xQC XEON/16GB RAM)AD02, DB01

XEN03(xtc16: 2HE/2xQC XEON/16GB RAM)

DB02, TS, ISA

Open-E DSS:16-fach SAS/SATARaid10 und Raid6

X5Unified VPN

Weitere RemoteSites


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I/O perormance, storage extendability

Administration

Raising resilience storage

Raising resilience server

Hardware liecycle management

Vereinachung der Migration

Reducing network load and raising backup

speed

High availability o the systems

Reducing duration o the maintenancewindow

Alternatives:1)Local storage in the servers with SAS technology andhigh-perormance RAID controllers2)Local Solid State Discs (SSD)3)Network storage (NAS/SAN) on iSCSI/FC technology

Running in an out-o-band admin. Network or thecentral administration o storage and servers; assimilationor same layout or the server hardware (Problem: dierentrequirements on CPU/RAM/IO perormance/storage)

Centralized system with scope or mirroring data ontoail-over storage or replication o the data (also between thesites)

Alternatives:1)Cold standby/Cluster systems or individual servers2)Virtualization o the servers and services or hardwareautonomy; saving on the local disks or the virtual systems

Replacing the servers every 36 months with up-todate hardware (to be had rom leasing with no-changeinstallments)

Launching virtualization or all server systems and services

Data is centralized on network storages connected to a

suitable LO-3 autoloader. It can communicate with thestorages over a dedicated VLAN.

Is the result o deploying virtualization

Is the result o deploying virtualization

Field Solutions

[case study]xen virtualization_v20080418

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