Virtualizing OTM: Real World Experiences and Pitfalls

MavenWire: Agenda

!  Overview !  Why Virtualize? !  Why Not Virtualize? !  Types of Virtualization

!  What Works !  What Doesn’t !  The Cloud !  Performance !  Q & A

Overview: Why Virtualize?

!  But Ma! Everyone’s doing it!

Overview: Why Virtualize?

!  Get ready for a long list! !  Ease of:

!  Environment deployment !  Environment agility !  Data backup and archival !  HA / DR configuration

!  Reduced costs for: !  Datacenter costs (energy, cooling, etc) !  Hardware maintenance

!  Plus, it’s cool!

Overview: Why Not Virtualize?

!  Rebel against the mainstream

Overview: Why Not Virtualize?

!  Complexities !  Hardware and infrastructure !  Maintenance interdependencies

!  Costs !  Hardware and infrastructure costs

!   Sliding scale !  Premium skill set !   Licensing models are catching up

!  Performance !  Overhead of virtualization

!   Security Concerns

Overview: Types of Virtualization

!  Vmware !  Partially supported by Oracle

!  Xen (Oracle VM) !   Fully supported by Oracle

!  AWS EC2 – is it considered virtualization? !  Yes – and more. It’s virtualization, without

buying hardware and with additional services.

!  Partially supported by Oracle

Overview: Definition Time!

!  Paravirtualization !   In computing, paravirtualization is a virtualization technique that presents

a software interface to virtual machines that is similar but not identical to that of the underlying hardware.

!  Hardware-assisted virtualization !   Hardware-assisted virtualization (HVM) offers new instructions to support

direct calls by a paravirtualized guest/driver into the hypervisor, typically used for I/O or other so-called hypercalls. It also provides additional execution modes: "root mode" and "non-root mode".

What Works?

!  Most of the benefits !   In one word - Management !  Deployment!

!   Environments available in under 30 mins

!   Backups !   More data – more risk, easier to backup

!  DR / HA !   Disagree with HA – akin to standard clustering

!  Agility

What Doesn’t?

!  Automatic OTM Performance Scaling !   (It’s not really even a feature!)

What Doesn’t?

!   Seriously – be on the watch for: !  Driver Issues !  Rapidly evolving technology

!   i.e. Frequent upgrades !  Vendor lock-in !  Oversubscribing your hardware !   Single points of failure !  Traditional change control

!  Concerns that are being addressed !  Performance and Security! !  Vendor support

Random Picture

The Cloud: AWS EC2

!  How do services like Amazon’s EC2 fit in? !   First – simply AMAZING for DEV environments !  Benefits

!  Completely on-demand !  Highly scalable (just not with OTM) !  Rapidly evolving

!  Cons !   Security concerns – times 10 !  Poor per-server (instance) performance !  Evolving network management !   Less cost effective (point of argument)

The Cloud: AWS EC2 - Details

!  My main concerns have been addressed (mostly) !  Persistent storage for instances

!  Can now use EBS as the instance storage !   Storage I/O performance

!  EBS (mostly) addresses these !  DBs still a concern

!   Future releases will address network mgmnt !  Allocate specific IPs with persistence !  Enterprise-level VPN connectivity options

!   Future Oracle Competitor? Amazon RDS

Performance: VolanoMark

Higher is Better

Performance: Hammerora

Lower is Better

Final Thoughts

!  Virtualization is Great for: !  TEST / DEV / QA environments !   Software development !  Many non-intensive applications

!   (i.e. not OTM!)

!  Virtualization is Not Ready for: !  Production OTM with significant volumes

!   It’s only a matter of time. Pick a low-risk (or skunkworks) project and learn.

Discussion: Q & A

!  Questions?

Thank you

Chris Plough - @cpMavenWire

Find out more at www.MavenWire.com