virtual server presentation dha

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Virtual Server Design and Implementation at DHMC

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Virtual Server Terms:

• Virtual Host Server – Physical Hardware running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 DatacenterEdition X64 with Virtual Server 2005 R2 X64 application installed.

• Virtual Guest Servers – Servers running various operating systems on the Virtual Host Server. Each Virtual Guest Server is usually comprised of 3 – 4 files.

• ISO - An ISO image or .ISO file is a computer file that contains the complete contents of a CD or DVD. ISO images are often created to backup a CD or distribute CD's over the Internet or other network. They can be used by Virtual Server 2005 as a mounted CD or DVD within a Virtual Guest Server.

• Terminal Services Client – Utility built into XP and an add-on to Windows 2000 to access remote servers or virtual guest servers for administration.

• PCAnywhere – Third-party utility for remote control administration of server or virtual guest servers

• Virtual Machine Remote Control Client – A Microsoft utility for remote control

administration that allows BIOS level access to virtual guest servers.

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Introduction:

There are a number of reasons for considering Virtual Servers as a solution to the growing number of Windows machines in the data center. A few of these are:

Better utilization of hardware A reduction in the number of physical servers and supporting hardware Greater Flexibility and Fault-Tolerance Reduced overall cost and speed to implement servers

It is important to remember that while Virtual Servers provide significant hardware cost savings, there is still a requirement to license all application and operating system software.*

* As of October 2nd 2006 All Virtual Guest Servers running on a Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter Edition host are free.

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Better Utilization of Hardware:

• The Servers proposed for the virtual server environment typically use only a small portion of their processor and memory.

Examples:

1. Typical Test Server or production Web Server may use 1% – 3% of their CPU at peak times.

2. Memory utilization for most servers is a fraction of the standard 1GB – 1.5GB of RAM.

• By bringing these servers into a virtual environment and sharing resources from the virtual host system, these servers will better utilize the virtual host hardware and potentially provide better overall performance for the virtual guest server.

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Reduction in the Number of Physical Servers and Supporting Hardware:

Current Virtual Host hardware will support between 10 and 14 servers (DL380 G4, Dual 3.4GHz Processors, 8/12GB RAM, 300GB Data Drive)

Supporting infrastructure hardware is reduced

• KVM switches (Keyboard, Video, Mouse)

• PDU (power distribution unit)

• Racks

Reduction in Power requirements

Reduction in BTU output

Reduction in Noise

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Greater Flexibility and Fault-Tolerance

Flexibility:

Backups-Shadow copy can take a snapshot of entire virtual host data drive in a matter of minutes. Short period of application downtime needed

Restores- Potential to restore complete servers from any previous day in a matter of minutes instead of hours/days-Single file restores can be handled in various ways

Undo Options

A test server or second test server can be created by shutting down the current virtual guest server, copying files, and remounting those files as another server

Increase virtual guest resources in the time of a reboot (RAM, Number of NICs, etc.)

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Flexibility (Continued):

Increase of disk space without purchase of new drives

Movement of virtual guest servers to another virtual host server in minutes

Movement of virtual guest to balance resource allocation of various virtual hosts

Virtual Host can house virtual guest servers on internal network and DMZ simultaneously

Shorter timeframe between server Approval and Implementation


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Fault-Tolerance:

Virtual Host Server

Redundant Power Supplies

Mirrored System Disks

EVA attached RAID 5 Data Disks

3 NICs available for Virtual Guest Servers (4 total)

Fault-Tolerant Design

Virtual Guest Servers can be moved to an alternate Virtual Host Server if eminent failure of host is detected

If a complete failure of the Virtual Host Server occurs, EVA attached Disks can be redirected to a functioning host and brought back online in a short period of time.

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Reduced Overall Cost to Implement Servers:

Reduction in cost of physical server hardware for lower resource intensive applications

• Approx cost of Standard DL360 G4 = $3500• Approx cost of a DL380 Virtual Host server = $12,000• 3.5 virtual guest servers to cover cost of entire virtual host server.

Reduction in power requirements

Reduction in cooling requirements

Reduction of physical space requirements

Virtual Guest Server licensing costs (OS*, SQL, etc.) would remain the same

* As of October 2nd 2006 All Virtual Guest Servers running on a Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter Edition host are free.

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Systems Proposed to move to Virtual:

Tier A• Test and Development servers

• POL North/South Test• IDX Web Framework South Test

• Low/Medium resource Infrastructure servers• Web Servers • MSDE or certain low transactional SQL servers.

Tier B• Low/Medium resource Application servers

• Web Servers• Various Low/Medium resource vendor applications.

Tier C• Low/Medium resource Application servers

• MSDE or certain low transactional SQL servers.

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List of Current and Proposed Virtual Servers:

DH318 WINS - Primary 10 A

DH338 Profile Server 10 A

DH509 Patient Online South Web Server 10 A

DH517 Referring Physician MBE 10 A

DH518 REX 10 A

DH521 CodeMaster 10 A

DH530 Cerner File Server 10 A

DH532 Cerner 10 A

DH545 HPA/APC Server 10 A

DH567 Paging System MDR1 10 A

DH571 Ansos 10 A

DH588 Patient Online North Web Server 10 A

DH593 Central Sterile 10 A

DH615 Pedi-Neo Server 10 A

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Backup Strategy:

Multi-tiered Backup Scheme

Virtual Server COM Object Scripting

Efficient use of Tape Library Backup

Daily, Weekly and Monthly restores

Simple and Easy Disaster Recovery

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DEMO:

AdministrationWeb Console

Virtual Machine Remote Control Client

Virtual Server COM Object Programming CapabilitiesVSBrowser - Patrick Dyke

Shadow Copy Backups – Terry Ball

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What did it Cost?:

Break-down of Hardware and Software savings over deploying a standard physical server.

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Tier of Guest

ServersVirtual Host

DL380 G4 Cost

Disk Array/EVA

Usage Cost

Backup Infrastructure Usage Cost

Number of Server Per

Virtual Host

Average Cost of Server if it were on New

Physical Hardware Hardware (A Only)

Cost if New Hardware Were

Purchased

Cost Minus Hardware

Investments

One-Time Saving of

Hardware Per Virtual Guest

Server**

Tier A/B $12,000 $0 $0 10 $3,500 $35,000 $23,000 $2,300

Tier A $12,000 $0 $0 14 $3,500 $49,000 $37,000 $2,643

Tier of Guest

ServersVirtual Host DL585 Cost

Disk Array/EVA

Usage Cost

Backup Infrastructure Usage Cost

Number of Server Per

Virtual Host

Average Cost of Server if it were on New

Physical Hardware Hardware (A + B)

Cost if New Hardware Were

Purchased

Cost Minus Hardware

Investments**

One-Time Saving of

Hardware Per Virtual Guest

Server**

Tier B $22,500 $10,000 $0 17 $4,500 $76,500 $44,000 $2,588

Tier A/B $22,500 $10,000 $0 28 $4,500 $126,000 $93,500 $3,339

Type of Virtual Host

W2K3 R2 Datacenter

Edition Licensing Cost Per Processor

(EA)Number of Processors

OS Licence Cost Per Server

Number of Guests Cost of Guest OS (EA)

OS License Cost for Guest Servers

License Savings of Host OS

Minus Guest OS

One-Time Saving of

Hardware and Software Per Virtual Guest

Server**

Virtual Host DL380 G4 $1,869.12 2 $3,738.24 10 $660.00 $6,600.00 $2,861.76 $2,586.18

Virtual Host DL380 G4 $1,869.12 2 $3,738.24 14 $660.00 $9,240.00 $5,501.76 $3,035.84

Virtual Host DL585 $1,869.12 4 $7,476.48 17 $660.00 $11,220.00 $3,743.52 $2,808.44

Virtual Host DL585 $1,869.12 4 $7,476.48 28 $660.00 $18,480.00 $11,003.52 $3,732.27

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Disadvantages/Risks of Virtualizing

More complex hardware with a large price tag.

Larger amount of data to backup due to fixed disk configuration

Virtual Host System failure could mean a large number of servers down at once.

Balancing the load of all guest servers can be tricky and requires ongoing performance monitoring of the virtual host systems.

Infrastructure applications can cause problems with your virtual hosts. i.e. Symantec scheduled scans 20% CPU resource hit against 12 servers adds up to a number well about 100%

No physical server to walk up to. There is no need to do this, but those responsible for the application on the server are used to having something physically in front of them.

Is the virtualization layer making my application run incorrectly? Most likely No, but maybe.

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Where do we go from here?

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 – New Features

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Virtual Servers at the hardware level. Hardware partitioning. Partitioning physical resources to servers.

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Common Virtual Server Technologies:

Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/software/default.mspx

VMWarehttp://www.vmware.com/products/server/

XenSourcehttp://www.xensource.com/

Virtuozzohttp://www.swsoft.com/products/virtuozzo/

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/software/default.mspx

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Other tools:

Automated Deployment Serviceshttp://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/ads/default.mspx

Virtual Server Migration Toolkithttp://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/evaluation/vsmt.mspx

Volume Shadow Copy Service SDK 7.2http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0B4F56E4-0CCC-4626-826A-ED2C4C95C871&displaylang=en

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QUESTIONS?

virtual server presentation dha

Technology

virtual servers

virtual server environment

virtual guest servers

current virtual guest

alternate virtual host

dl380 virtual host server

virtual environment

dhmc virtual server