DataCenter

VMware adds ODM relationships with Tyan, ASUS, Gigabyte, Inventec

At Computex Taipei 2008on June 3, VMware, Inc. announced new relationships with original design manufacturers ASUS, Gigabyte, Inventec and Tyan, adding to VMware’s current relationship with Supermicro announced in February 2008.

The relationships lets channel partners and system builders make virtualization available to a broader range of customers by certifying various one-, two- and four-socket servers and blade servers for the VMware virtualization platform.

The vendors are certifying their server systems for the VMware ESX and ESXi hypervisor, with availability expected by the end of the third quarter of 2008.

VMware acquires performance management software company B-hive Networks

VMware, Inc. today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire B-hive Networks, Inc., a privately-held application performance management software company with headquarters in San Mateo, California and principal R&D facilities in Herzliya, Israel.

By acquiring the company, VMware will add B-hive’s technology for performance management and service level reporting for applications running within VMware virtual machines on both servers and desktops. In addition, B-hive’s R&D facility and team will be the core of VMware’s new development center in Israel.

The terms of the B-hive acquisition, which is expected to be completed during the third quarter of 2008, subject to customary closing conditions, were not disclosed. This is VMware’s seventh acquisition in the past year.

VMware’s President and CEO Diane Greene said during a JP Morgan technology conference in Boston last week that VMware will continue acquiring companies as a growth strategy. The company grew 69% last quarter compared to the same quarter in 2007.

“We are always looking for technologies we don’t have. In the past year we have bought six small companies; we look to grow organically and through acquisitions,” Greene said at the conference.

What is B-hive?

Founded in 2005, B-hive developed a technology that gives visibility into application performance in virtual environments, such as end-user transaction response time, virtual machine utilization and cross-virtual machine dependencies. Unlike operating system-based performance monitoring products, B-hive’s product is designed to measure performance across multi-tier or service-oriented architecture applications that are distributed across clusters of ESX hypervisors and virtual machines.

B-hive’s flagship product, an agentless virtual appliance called B-hive Conductor, which was a “Best of VMworld” finalist at VMworld 2007, monitors end-user performance and issues service level reports, and also proactively resolves application performance problems by automatically triggering actions such as dynamically allocating more resources, migrating the application to a different server, provisioning additional virtual machines, changing transaction routing, or system reboots, accoridng to VMware.

For example, if B-hive identifies degradation in application response time, it can remediate the problem by automatically instructing VMware Infrastructure to adjust the resources allocated to the application or provision an additional virtual machine with an additional instance of the application, according to VMware.

VMware’s Virtualization Forum 2008 in New York vendor centric

When attending a vendor sponsored conference, you expect that most - or all - of the sessions will focus on that vendor’s products along with partner products. So, I wasn’t all that surprised when I found that to be the case at VMware Inc.’s Virtualization Forum 2008 in New York, NY on May 8.

But I felt a tad cheated when I left.

You see, the agenda I received from VMware prior to the event looked great. There would be analysis from Gartner’s Distinguished Analyst, Thomas Bittman, about virtualization technology adoption and trends. Also, Quest Diagnostics was scheduled to talk about their specific pain points and challenges and how virtualization saved the day. Good, and good.

Other sessions included Introduction to Server Virtualization, Datacenter Management and Automation, Business Continuity, Application Virtualization and Remote and Branch Office Management.

The agenda I received in my inbox before the event also included three afternoon sessions scheduled from 2:15 to 3:15 for Platinum Sponsor / Customer Story; the latter being of most interest to me.

So, I got up at 5 a.m. on Forum day and drove from Rhode Island to New York City - a lovely four and a half hour trek with traffic.

I registered, got my Conference Guide, ID badge, marketing package full of VMware ads, and headed to hear Bittman talk. It was interesting enough. Then Quest Diagnostics did a quick talk about their VMware implementation. Cool.

Then lunch. Which was free. Which is awesome.

After that, I hit the Datacenter Automation and Management Session, where John Suit, CTO and co-founder of Fortisphere, discussed how their product,Fortisphere Virtual Forsight, helped Duke University Hospital set policies for virtual machines. Then John Brock, senior product marketing manager at VMware, stepped up to bat to talk about all the wonderful things Virtual Infrastructure can do for IT.

Fine.

Now for the 2:15 session - Platium Sponsor/ Customer Story. Much to my chagrin, the Customer Story portion of those sessions were not included in the eight page guide. All I see listed are Platinum Sponsor EMC Corp., Platinum Spronsor HP, Platinum Sponsor Dell/ Equalogic Corp., Platinum Sponsor NetApp. Brows furrowed, I flipped the pages looking for the customer stories. Were the times changed? Confused, I asked the nice VMware marketing representative if VMware mistakenly ommitted the customer stories from the guide.

“No, there won’t be anymore customer stories this afternoon,” she said.

“Oh, but the schedule I received last month had customer stories as part of the afternoon sessions,” I said.

Uncomfortable silence.

“The sponsors will probably talk about some customer stories,” she said.

What the *%#@?

But, I was not too surprised by this program change. It happened at the last VMware event I attended as well.

The VMware Virtualization Seminar Series in Providence, RI in February was the same way - customer story on the schedule, but not at the podium.

I complain about this not because of the horrid commute I made expecting to hear from more than one real user, but because I can safely assume that, like me, data center managers want to hear about virtualization implementations from their peers–the folks who manage virtual environments in real data centers every day. You know, the people who don’t have the word “marketing’ in front of their name. I’m sure that attendees would have like perspective from the system engineers and architects who can give honest, detailed descriptions about pitfalls to avoid, the real costs and ways to deploy virtualization successfully.

I understand users also want to learn about products that can solve their IT issues, and I am sure that some of the information vendors provide is very useful. But, VMware, I beg of you–please include real users in your future seminars, and if you don’t, then don’t put it in your agendas.

VMware announces new desktop virtualization services, thin client certification

VMware, Inc. recently made two announcements surrounding its Virtual Desktop Infrastruture (VDI) product–a new certification program for thin client devices, and a suite of services to help implement and manage virtual desktops.

VDI is desktop virtualization software that replaces traditional PCs with virtual machines (VM) deployed from and managed in the data center. This presents a number of potential benefits: all of the information on that desktop VM, is protected from disaster and theft; thousands of VMs can be updated from the data center without touching actual desktops; and employees can also log into their virtual machine remotely.

VMware is not alone in the desktop virtualization space, however. Several vendors offer desktop virtualization products, including Sun Microsystems, Inc., Citrix Systems, Inc. and Pano Logic, Inc.

VMware’s certification program is based on the company’s open standards. Virtual desktop users can expect a consistent experience when using VMware certified thin client devices.

After thin client devices have been certified, they will be listed on the VMware Certified Compatibility Guide. The devices listed in the Guide will have passed VMware’s testing criteria for interoperability and quality assurance .

VMware’s other announcement today is a set of new Professional Services that offers best practices and guidance from virtualization experts. Here is a rundown of what these services include:

*Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Jumpstart: A VMware Certified Professional will train up to five staff in setting up VMware products, provide knowledge transfer and discuss best practices of deployment.

*Application Virtualization Jumpstart: VMware Professional Services offers training on running any version of any application on a single OS without conflict.

*Plan and Design for VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and Application Virtualization: Begins with assessment and analysis of the customer’s objectives and existing infrastructure. VMware Professional Services then builds a blueprint for VDI and/or Application Virtualization deployment

*Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO) Services Acceleration Kit: helps simplify the process of optimizing customers’ remote and branch offices using VDI.

The list price for Jumpstarts in North America range from $6,000 to $13,500. For education classes, it’s $2995 for the four day class, accoring to a VMware spokesperson.

VMware releases management and automation products, new bundles

Palo Alto-based VMware, Inc. made three product announcements today; its disaster recovery software, VMware Site Recovery Manager will be available for orders next week, VMware Stage Manager will begin shipping May 19th, and these products will also be available as part of two new management and automation software bundles from VMware starting May 19th.

Site Recovery Manager
VMware Site Recovery Manager, which provides integrated management of disaster recovery (DR) plans with VirtualCenter, offers automated DR plan testing, failover and recovery.

Jon Bock, senior product marketing manager for VMware, said that Site Recovery Manager should allow users to implement DR plans where they could not do so before.

“Because of cost and resources required for DR, disaster recovery has only been done for mission critical applications, but virtualized workloads can be protected with minimal cost and effort,” Bock said.

More and more companies have started virtualizing mission critical workloads, as VMware has been quick to point out.

The company presented a number of case studies showing companies like Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls Inc., which uses virtual machines (VMs) for “almost everything” including its Microsoft SQL database, EMC Corp.’s Documentum, and Active Directory, with success.

Companies virtualizing those types of apps should use DR capabilities from software like VMware’s to protect those applications during disaster.

Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group analyst and virtualization expert Chris Wolf explained in a tip recently that Site Recovery Manager makes disaster recovery planning and execution simple.

“With Site Recover Manager, you can automate your disaster recovery plan with software, initiate that plan with a mouse click, and pre-program the sequence in which VMs are brought online at a disaster recovery site,” Wolf wrote. “During the course of this year, I expect other vendors to offer similar technologies as well.”

Stage Manager
VMware Stage Manager automates the process of moving application environments through release stages — from integration to testing to staging and to user acceptance — before being released into production.

Stage Manager, which was highly acclaimed during its beta phase, is also managed by VMware Infrastructure 3. It aims to reduce time spent on configuring hardware and prevent virtual machine sprawl, which commonly occurs when virtual machines are released across the data center for staging, Bock said.

New management and automation bundles

VMware has designed two new software bundles that include the management and automation products now available. The VMware IT Service Delivery Bundle includes all of VMware’s IT lifecyle automation products, including VMware Lifecycle Manager, VMware Lab Manager and VMware Stage Manager.
The VMware Management and Automation Bundle includes all of the above, plus the disaster recovery product VMware Site Recovery Manager. It is priced at $2,995 per two processors.

The new Management and Automation Bundle includes all products from the IT Service Delivery Bundle with the addition of VMware Site Recovery Manager, priced at $3,995 per two processors.

Both software bundles will be available form VMware distributors, resellers and OEMs beginning May 19.

VMware’s convenient truth; virtualization lowers greenhouse gas emissions, power costs

VMware, Inc. released a statement today pushing the point that consumers can significantly reduce CO2 emissions and data center power consumption using virtualization. The company reports that consolidating 10 or more physical machines onto a single server can reduce power consumption and costs by 80-90%. VMware customers that have moved from a 1:1 application to server ratio to 60:1 or higher have achieved millions of dollars in capital and operational savings.

Of course, 60:1 is a very high ratio, and most users report a 30:1 or 40:1 application to server ratio. That said, it can be done; a VMware case study on the Ecclesiastical Insurance Group shows the UK based company was able to consolidate 120 servers on two host machines, with two machines for disaster recovery purposes. VMware estimates that for every server virtualized, customers can save about 7,000 kilowatt hours (kWh), or four tons of CO2 emissions, every year. The virtualization giant has virtualized more than 6 million server workloads since 1998, resulting in an estimated energy savings of nearly 39 Billion kWh, or roughly $4.4 billion. This is roughly equivalent to the total energy consumption of Denmark for one year.

VMware reduces power and related costs by increasing server utilization rates and with power management capabilities that can power down servers when not in use. By powering down idle servers and desktops during inactive times, consumers can reduce power consumption by about 25%, according to VMware.

UK-based Sheffield Hallam University, for instance, implemented VMware Infrastructure 3 to reduce power and cooling requirements in the datacenter. Using VMware, they created 170 virtual machines, virtualizing over half of their servers. The virtual infrastructure at Sheffield Hallam runs 170 virtual machines at only 60,500 kilowatt-hours (kWh); this compares to the power required to run 170 physical machines, estimated at 686,000 kWh per year. In all, the company cut 269 tons of CO2 and saved £43,000 ($85,006.62 USD) on their annual power bills.

More information on how other companies have gone green and reduced costs using VMware virtualization is available on VMware’s website.

In addition, VMware works with utility companies including Pacific Gas and Electric and Austin Energy to provide cash incentives based on the amount of energy savings achieved through virtualization - which few data centers have taken advantage of so far.

Fortune 500 company uses VMware to slash long term power costs

Santa Ana, Calif.-based First American Corp., a Fortune 500 company that provides business information and analytics, is standardizing its data center with virtualization software from VMware, Inc. to improve power efficiency and better server utilization rates.

First American’s Enterprise Architect, Jake Seitz, said the increasing cost of power was the most significant driver for virtualization.

“In Q407 we started looking at our utility costs and our data center footprint, and realized that embracing virtualization would help us maximize what we have and shrink our utility footprint,” Seitz said. “My hope is that we can get to 80% virtualzed environment – we are at about 30% right now.”

Low hardware utilization rates also prompted the company to invest in VMware virtualization. “We wanted to better utilize our existing hardware. We had some hardware utilization as low as 4%, and rarely would be see anything above 15% utilization,” Seitz said.

When Seitz began looking at virualization about two years ago, he also deployed small Microsoft Virtual Server and Citrix XenServer environments - both less expensive than VMware - but decided to standardize on VMware going forward because he liked the management tools and support.

When the project started, the data center at First American was equipped with 2,800 physical servers running that many OSes. After virtualizing 700 of those servers, First American runs 3,500 OSes, Seitz said.

The OSes are mostly Microsoft Windows, though there are some Unix systems on mainframes and in Xen containers, he said. The physical servers supporting the virtual machines are x86 servers rom Hewlett Packard and Dell, and many are equipped with Intel Xeon quad-core processors, Seitz said.

First American hasn’t gotten rid of many physical servers because they lease them, but it will save power in the long run because with better server utilization, they won’t have to add more physical servers in the future, Seitz said.

Also, because their hardware is leased, it is refreshed every three years. When this happens, the IT staff has to port all of the applications and OSes from the old hardware to the new hardware. Normally, this takes months to accomplish, but it should be a lot easier using virtualization, Seitz said.

“Now, instead of doing a one-to-one refresh, we will virtualize our environment and it will shave off a few months in man hours,” Seitz said.

The company is starting to virtualize their mission critical applications now, and have even adopted a “virtual machine first” policy.

“You need a really good reason to get a physical server,” Sietz said. “Everything we do now is virtual.”

Is the mixed virtualization vendor data center possible?

I recently floated the idea of implementing a mix of virtualization products in your data center as a way to better customize your virtual environments. The query was part of a larger discussion I wanted to get going about how VMware will compete when Hyper-V is generally released. I threw out the notion that data center managers might use, for example, Hyper-V for end-user file servers; VMware ESX for apps that require dynamic load balancing, sophisticated disaster recovery and migration; and Xen for commodity Linux boxes.

The idea behind that supposition was to match your enterprise investments to appropriate workloads because, let’s face it, running everything on ESX is going to be expensive compared to other options. Big deal if you don’t get ESX-level features because you may get enterprise level features on silver-medal products.

Now, I wish I could take credit for that idea (for better or for worse), but that really came from SearchServerVirtualization.com’s editor, Jan Stafford. At any rate, a few people had comments about that note and I thought it would be fitting to continue that conversation with their input:

Hi,

One of the reasons I think Hyper-V is interesting is the server core concept. The ability to create appliance virtual machines for specific roles such as DNS, DHCP, DC etc. means you can drastically reduce the manageability overhead and the attack surface for those servers. Weird - I’m finding myself suggesting that an all-MS platform may actually be more secure than the alternatives!

On the other hand, you may be correct that fully-fledged servers with complex HA needs will be better off on ESX.

Cheers,
Dan Flower

There are flaws to this query, the base of which stem from whether ESX, Hyper-V and Xen-based virtualization products can even be compared; never mind that there are disparities between Xen-based virtualization vendors (xVM isn’t Red Hat isn’t Citrix Xen etc). This was the point that some folks took issue with:

Just a comment about an “apples and oranges” comparison you made:

I understand the point you were trying to make about using the right virtualization product for the right job, and at times this might mean using multiple solutions, but you can’t really compare Hyper-V or VMware to Xen. Both Virtual Iron and Citrix offer a virtualization solution based on Xen technology, but neither sells just Xen. Your reference to Xen brings to mind what a Suse or Red Hat shop might do with Xen technology, but not those that would consider Hyper-V or VMware as a virtualization solution.

David Roden

So, there are still many problems that have to be approached before we even ask the question of implementing a mixed enterprise virtualization infrastructure. Ultimately, people will have to decide on what functionality, support and management interfaces are important. Is quick migration support good enough, or do you need live migration? How does each platform approach P2V conversions? Does VirtualCenter have the right kind of management options for your installation? Will you be better off using System Center Virtual Machine Manager?

Let’s keep prodding at this idea and brainstorm ways that using multiple virtualization products in one environment could work. Send us your comments and feedback. If you’ve tried the mixed virtualization environment, we’d love to hear about it.

Using Hyperic to Manage VMware Environments, part 1

At the risk of sounding like a commercial, Hyperic HQ is my leading-choice for agent-based systems management tools to handle both VMware and non-VMware systems. Personally I tend to prefer non-agent-based systems, but the Hyperic tools work, and work especially well for VMware environments. I like them because I’m an open-source nut - first attracted to it because of the price; I found I had a zero-dollar a day addiction to the LAMPP stack, MySQL, and Dia. Like all GPL junkies, I kept looking for more, and after a few years I found Nagios, then Groundwork, then Hyperic while doing some research for a presentation at Data Center Decisions 2006. I’ve been hooked on them since. I particularly like Hyperic’s rewards program for contributors who find bugs, fix bugs, and make the software better.

From 50,000 feet, Hyperic’s monitoring architecture looks like this:

You may be wondering why I use anything to monitor my VMware environment aside from VirtualCenter - number one is that I do use VC, but I prefer not to use multiple tools. I’ve been in a Fortune 100 company where there were so many 32″ LCD screens on the wall that you didn’t really know what was happening because you were getting so many different results from so many different tools. It was about as useful as having nothing at all except for a user’s phone call to tell you something was down. I have physical and virtual systems that I need to monitor, and until the day comes that my company goes 100% virtualized, I need one tool to monitor them all (please feel free to insert your own LotR joke here).

I’ll bypass the non-VMware material and get to the relevant point - using Hyperic to monitor VMware products - after this brief warning:

Reading the install manual is generally a must - there are several caveats to getting Hyperic fully functional, notably around graphing and charting and deprecated libraries that may need to be installed. Or, you can skip all that by downloading the pre-made Virtual Appliance. If you opt for that option, install the VMware Tools, or else time drift will cause a problem with reporting.

For this run I’m using the prebuilt virtual machine. If you need to install your own server, you need the following:

• 1 GHz or higher Pentium 4, or equivalent (2 x 2.4GHz Pentium Xeon or equivalent recommended)
• 1 GB RAM (4 or more GB recommended)
• 1-5 GB Free Disk Space

On Linux systems, you’ll also need an X server running (or at least the libraries).

To install, you need to run the command setup.sh -full and answer the prompted questions. Overall, it’s a straightforward installation. On a Linux system, execute w/ hq-server.sh start. At another point in the series, I’ll go into using datbases other than the default. You can use Oracle or Postgres, but not MySQL. I’m a big MySQL fan, so I would like to see support for it added later. EnterpriseDB, being a Postgres database engine, is supported.

Now, onto the agent part of the installation… it requires touching the guests, and this can be easily forgotten when you’re of the mindset that you can manage so much through VC. Some preparatory work is needed in order for proper operations on the ESX host. First amongst these is the creation of a user account (hqadmin is the default used by the agent) on the local machine. This account needs to have the admin-level role in ESX.

To install the agent:

agent-x.x.x/hq-agent.sh start

(where x = the version number of the agent you’re installing)

You will get some prompts, most of them self-explanatory, about what sort of install you want to perform. I recommend saying yes to secure communications and using port 7443 instead of 7080 as the default port. When you are prompted for the user name, use the account you created earlier.

Configuring ESX3 to report to the HQ server requires some modification of the firewall. It’s easily accomplished with a couple of commands:

esxcfg-firewall –openPort 7443,tcp,out,HypericHQAgent
esxcfg-firewall –openPort 2144,tcp,in,HypericHQAgent

Note that if you selected the default port (7080) when you set up the agent, rather than the SSL port of 7443, you will have to use that port number. Again, I recommend using 7443 for secure communications.

Once the host has the agent installed, you can install agents on the guests (virtual machines) in the same fashion. When these agents are installed, their descriptor the Hyperic management console will indicate to which host they belong.

The VMware-specific monitoring information covers a lot of VM- and Host-specific functions on ESX hosts. The following, taken straight off Hyperic’s documentation, lists them:

Vmware Monitoring Specification

1. General Server Metrics (CPU used, Total Memory Used, etc.)
2. Availability
3. Memory Available for VMs
4. Memory Used by VMs

VMware ESX 2.x and 3.x VM NIC Metrics

1. Availability
2. Packets Transmitted
3. Packets Transmitted per Minute
4. Packets Received
5. Packets Received per Minute
6. Bytes Transmitted
7. Bytes Transmitted per Minute
8. Bytes Received
9. Bytes Received per Minute

VMware ESX 2.x and 3.x VM Disk Metrics

1. Availability
2. Reads
3. Reads per Minute
4. Writes
5. Writes per Minute
6. Bytes Read
7. Bytes Read per Minute
8. Bytes Written
9. Bytes Written per Minute

VMware ESX 2.x and 3.x VM Metrics

1. Availability
2. Process Virtual Memory Size
3. Process Resident Memory Size
4. Process Page Faults
5. Process Page Faults per Minute
6. Process Cpu System Time
7. Process Cpu System Time per Minute
8. Process Cpu User Time
9. Process Cpu User Time per Minute
10. Process Uptime
11. Process Cpu Total Time
12. Process Cpu Total Time per Minute
13. Process Cpu Usage
14. VM Cpu Wait
15. VM Cpu Wait per Minute
16. VM Cpu Used
17. VM Cpu Used per Minute
18. VM Cpu Sys
19. VM Memory Shares
20. VM Memory Minimum
21. VM Memory Maximum
22. VM Memory Size
23. VM Memory Ctl
24. VM Memory Swapped
25. VM Memory Shared
26. VM Memory Active
27. VM Memory Overhead
28. VM Uptime

Most of these have a default report time of ten minutes, though some of the more critical and/or volatile report every five minutes. Most of the ESX host reporting and all of the VM Disk and NIC reporting are on ten-minute report timers.

This has some unique operational opportunities in managing virtual desktops as well as servers - namely being able to proactively monitor individual workstations and prevent system faults from becoming productivity-impacting problems for users and generating helpdesk tickets on desktops the way it’s done on servers in most enterprises.

That should be enough for now… more in later posts in this series, complete with some screenshots.

VMware heads 50K network user school district data center and DR plan in hurricane country

If the Collier County Public School district IT department can trust VMware to to head its disaster recovery program in hurricane-ridden Florida, then you can probably trust it with your company’s IT and DR needs, too.

A SearchDataCenter.com coworker sent me this YouTube video in which Tom Petry of Collier County School District talks (rather quickly) about the disaster recovery realities of running a school district that has 44,000 students and 6,000 staff members “for a total of 50,000 network users” in hurricane-ridden southwest Florida.

Collier uses VMware to leverage failover sites to ensure robust business continuity — even if a rogue hurricane decides to eat the district’s data center for lunch.

In the video, you’ll get glimpses of Collier County school district’s data centers’ hardware, the generators on stand-by in case power goes down, you’ll see how VMware helps the IT department bridge the 120-mile distance between the main data center site and the failover site.