System Center Forum » Virtualization

Hyper-V & VMware Architecture Comparison - the truth is out there…somewhere

Pete — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:59:50 +0000

A friend of mine once said “It’s okay to be wrong, just never uncertain. Unless of course you’re a jackass about it, in which case you better be right”.

True understanding of the available virtualization architectures is a complex task.I think the recent and ongoing debate really calls that to light, and we have yet to see the bottom line. It showcases the importance of respectful dialogue. Debate is healthy, but the most productive debate is one that leaves out insulting analogies and heaping spoonfuls of sarcasm. Here’s the story where it stands thus far.

The Catalyst

It all started with this video in which Michael, a well respected blogger a 4 sysops, incorrectly describes Hyper-V as essentially a hosted hypervisor, ala Virtual Server 2005. The explanation leveraged what could only be described as a mildly insulting analogies comparing Hyper-V very unfavorably to VMware’s enterprise platform (VI3)

The Rebuttal

Soon after appeared a detailed rebuttal from Greg Shields titled “How to Incorrectly Explain the Architectural Differences Between Hyper-V and ESX”, in which he explained at length why Michael is patently incorrect.

But wait, it gets better.

Rebuke of the Rebuttal

Kevin of Kevinsvirtualreality.com follows today with a rebuttal of his own, calling Greg to the carpet for his description of paravirtualization in Hyper-V and VMware, along with a few other items, in an article titled “ Reaction to: “How to Correctly Explain the Architectural Differences Between Hyper-V and ESX” “.

But it’s not over yet.

Within a few hours of Kevin’s rant, Ben Armstrong , the Virtualization PM at Microsoft calls out a couple of inaccuracies in Kevin’s analysis.

Smart guys all, but seems some direct and friendly dialogue (and some more answers) are in order here. Sounds like a good theme for the July SC Virtual User Group meeting.

Hyper-V Tip: Remove VM Additions without a mouse

Pete — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:58:15 +0000

I recently converted a large number of Virtual PC guests to Hyper-V (using the VMC to Hyper-V Import Tool), but ran into a bit of a snag in that I forgot to remove VMAdditions before the converion.

Thus, when I attempted to install Hyper-V Integration Services I was greeted with the error message “you must uninstall VM Additions before installing Integration Services…”.

The Problem

And I had to do it without a mouse. (Windows 2003 on Hyper-V…no Integration Services, no mouse). While I was able to get to Add / Remove Programs, I just could hit the Remove button. I thought there must be a faster way.

Turns out, there is.

The Workaround

1. Start by copying the VMAdditions.iso from your Virtual PC 2007 installation directory on your workstation or server to the Hyper-V server.

2. Mount VMAdditions.iso from Hyper-V manager -> Media -> DVD Drive -> Insert Disk…

3. The Remove VMAdditions wizard should launch automatically. If not, you should be able to use a command prompt to get to setup pretty easily.

Additional Resources

Certainly there are other activities with legacy OS setup where keyboard know-how comes in handy. Ben Armstrong, the Virtual PC Guy, has a couple of posts that are helpful when you find yourself lost in a VM without a mouse.

Controlling Hyper-V without a mouse

http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/03/23/controlling-vms-under-hyper-v-without-the-mouse.aspx

Hyper-V Key Combinations

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2008/01/14/virtual-machine-connection-key-combinations-with-hyper-v.aspx

Great Articles on vSwitching and Networking in Hyper-V & VMware ESX

Pete — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:46:13 +0000

There are some truly awesome resources explaining virtual networking and switching in VMware and Hyper-V. The 46 page Dell guide includes best practices for working with network adapters and virtual networking in Hyper-V. The VMware vSwitching series is just amazing…great to see that level of quality together in a blog series.

Hyper-V

____

If you have more Hyper-V resources on virtual networking, I am interested in knowing about them.

____

vSwitches in VMware

PowerShell Hyper-V/SCVMM Webcast

Pete — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:49:54 +0000

On April 23, 2009 Marco Shaw, Darin Pendergraft, and Peter Zerger are giving a TechNet webcast on “Using Windows PowerShell with Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager“:

Windows PowerShell is likely to become the automation tool of choice. In this webcast, we provide examples of Windows PowerShell being used to perform common administration tasks in Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager. We compare the two automation methods in detail, and we discuss some online community-focused PowerShell resources such as http://powershellcommunity.org.

Learn more about the webcast and register here.

SCVMM Tip: Moving guests between Hyper-V hosts with different processor architectures

Pete — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 11:51:10 +0000

A great workaround and hotfix I just saw on my RSS.

The Problem

If you have multiple Hyper-V hosts of varying architectures, some Intel and some AMD, you’ve also no doubt seen the following message when you attempt to migrate a VM guest from one host to the other as I’ve seen in my lab:

“Unable to migrate the virtual machine because the processor is not compatible with the host ”

“Unable to migrate the virtual machine because the processor is not compatible with the host .”

When migrating a Virtual Machine which has a saved state, SCVMM uses built-in checks to determine whether a saved state VM can be migrated between hosts or deployed from a library to a host. If these checks fail then we get the error message. A few things compared include:

Manufacturer (eg. Intel vs AMD)
Processor architecture (x86 vs x64)
Virtual Server version (SP1 vs R2 SP1)
Family of the processor

Workaound

Part of the issue is that you cannot move guests between hosts if snapshots exist.

Apply patch in ‘http://support.microsoft.com/Default.aspx?kbid=969726
Delete checkpoints / snapshots and shut the VM down
You can then move between hosts of differing processor architectures.

Hyper-V FAQ: What is the difference between Synthetic and Emulated devices?

Pete — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:06:57 +0000

This is an FAQ when talking with groups about virtualization on Windows 2008, so I wanted to tatke a moment to provide an explanation here for future reference.

Emulated Device

Emulated devices are the hardware that is presented inside of the virtual machine. If you have used Virtual Server / Virtual PC you have seen this hardware before. This includes devices such as an Intel 440bx motherboard and an Intel 21140 network adapter. These devices are handled through emulation that runs in the management operating system (parent partition). The advantage of emulated devices is that most operating systems have in-box drivers for them and are able to install and boot using them. The disadvantage of emulated devices is that because they were not designed with virtualization in mind they do not perform well.

Synthetic Device

Synthetic devices are the new high performance devices that are available with Hyper-V. Instead of emulating an existing hardware device, a new hardware device is exposed that has been designed for optimal performance in a virtualized environment. Generally speaking you will never see reference to a “synthetic” or “emulated” device in the user interface as that has been hidden as much as possible.

So how can I tell the difference?

Just open the device manager for the guest VM by right clicking Computer (for Windows Server 2008 or My Computer for Windows Server 2003) then select Manage from the context menu. For Windows Server 2008 expand the Diagnostics node to open Device Manager.

If the OS is using the higher performance Synthetic devices you’ll see the “VMBus Video Device” under the Display adapters, Microsoft “VMBus Network Adapter” under Network Adapters, and VMBus under System devices.

Performance Advantages

I have not seen a great many detailed explanations of specific performance advantages (or the architectural differences behind them), but there is some good information in this post on the Windows Server Performance Team blog.

http://blogs.technet.com/winserverperformance/archive/2008/02/29/hyper-v-and-multiprocessor-vms.aspx

Hyper-V Terminology Update

There was also a recent update to Hyper-V terminology you should check out on Ben Armstrongs blog.

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2009/03/04/hyper-v-terminology-update.aspx

Tools: Change Reporting for SCVMM 2008

Pete — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:00:58 +0000

While looking for something else entirely, I ran across an interesting tool for auditing changes in Virtual Machine Manager 20008. It’s called Netwrix Change Reporter for SCVMM. They offer commercial and free versions. The free version basically sends change reports via e-mail on a schedule. Nice way to monitor for VM sprawl.

NetWrix Change Reporter for System Center Virtual Machine Manager can be used to:

Overview configuration changes on a daily basis to improve internal IT governance.
Prepare reports for your IT compliance auditors, such as SOX, HIPPA, GLBA, and others.
Audit the creation of new virtual machines and control excessive resource utilization.

The product is provided free of charge for unlimited use by organizations and individuals. We also provide free of charge technical support for the freeware version on the Support Forum.

The company also offers a version for VMware.

WHERE TO GET IT

Download the Netwrix Change Reporter for SCVMM at the URL below.

http://www.netwrix.com/change_reporter_system_center_virtual_machine_manager_freeware.html

System Center: Turn your old Windows server into a iSCSI Hyper-V storage array

Pete — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:00:57 +0000

A few months ago, I started using iSCSI storage, primarily for the value it provided in providing easy storage for hosting virtual machines when using Hyper-V in my OpsMgr / Essentials / ConfigMgr lab environments.

Clustered storage without a SAN?

My problem was this: I had a server with a half dozen drives (JBOD), but that lacked the appropriate VT technology to support Hyper-V. So I had to determine how to present this storage to my Hyper-V hosts. Since Windows 2008 has an iSCSI initiator, iSCSI was a obvious choice. But how could I quickly turn this server into an iSCSI target for hosting clustered virtual machines? What I wanted to do was simply an iSCSI based Window 2008 Hyper-V host cluster, like this:

What options do I have?

My first thought was Linux. I knew I could configure this server as an iSCSI NAS to facilitate this. Two problems with this: 1) too much work (I wanted storage NOW) and 2) I’ve never configured Linux as an iSCSI target.

So, I took to searching the web. I found Windows Unified Data Storage Server. The problem here was that it’s an OEM product, so the only download available is a time-limited download intended for OEMs. I have since tried this, and after installing the OS and after about 3 hours with messing around with blog-based setup instructions, I had some storage. This was not an ideal.

So, where could I find software iSCSI that was easy to setup and inexpensive or free and within my capabilites to configure? Well, I can now say I have seen the top of the mountain, and it is good. I found the answer in a previously online-only software company called RocketDivision, which produces an iSCSI solution called StarWind Server. This software can turn any Windows Server into an iSCSI target in 30 minutes. And it meets the requirements of a guy trying to setup a lab in a hurry.

Quick and Easy Setup - WIth their Pro version, I had clustered iSCSI storage in less than 30 minutes.
Inexpensive - They have a free version, which works great if you’re not clustering. If you need cluster capable storage, you will need to Pro version of StarWInd Server, which is still relatively inexpensive at $995.
Documentation - Their documentation library has a host of PDFs that make setup a breeze.

StarWind recently launched their US presense in December 2008, and I spoke with their US head of business development Michael Walsh, who pointed me to their new website - www.starwindsoftware.com. While I was working on a specific lab scenario, the company has several great offerings that will supported a Windows-based iSCSI in a variety of production scenarios.

If you are interested in working with high availability System Center virtualization technologies, but thought it was out of reach due to lack of shared storage, StarWind is your fix. Download StarWind Server free edition or the pro version trial at http://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-server-iscsi-san

Should I attempt OpsMgr X-plat agent deployment to VMware ESX 3.x Servers?

Pete — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:26:35 +0000

Someone recently posed this question, and I’m sure this question will be commonplace in the coming months. Here’s my answer and reasoning behind it. I’ll talk about reasoning in terms of

Current and future ESX architecture
APIs and interfaces for extracting monitoring data
3rd partry add-ons for VMware monitoring in OpsMgr

Although there no doubt someone will try, my answer is that it is not a great idea, and for the following reasons. Even if we throw out the “unsupported” nature of this scenario, there are several other reasons that make this a less than optimal solution in my mind. OpsMgr provides an extensible framework for developing homegrown solutions, and the partner community has several options for solving this challenge.

Current and future architecture

Even though the ESX Service Console is based on the Linux kernel (2.4 I believe) which is used ot boot the ESX Server virtualization layer. This kernel is used to load additional code, referred to the vmkernel. So there are really two kernels here. VMware is progressively reducing their reliance on this in each release. The changes are substanital between releases, and anything we do on the 3.5 platform will almost certainly not work with release 4, in which many changes are expected.

In short, no sense reinventing the wheel for a solution with a limited life span.

APIs and interfaces for extracting monitoring data

By proxy (remotely), you can extract monitoring information from a number of sources in a VMware environment, including:

SDK Web Service (requires Virtual Center) - Mark this as the richest source of VMware performance data, and at the lowest cost to host and guest performance.
SYSLOG - These tend to be pretty cryptic.
SSH (screen scrape) - I believe eXc at minimum makes some us of SSH.
vmcontrol-based APIs (including vmPerl / vmCOM) - These were deprecated a couple of years ago I believe, so definitely not a preferred solution.

Jonathan Hambrook documented how to monitor several aspects of your ESX environment on the cheap in this document.

http://www.systemcenterforum.org/downloads/vmware-esx-monitoring-on-opsmgr-2007-how-to

But in short, I believe proxy-based solutions leveraging the SDK web service are the best route.

3rd partry add-ons for VMware monitoring in OpsMgr

In additional to the free options, there are numerous credible third party add-ons for Operations Manager and Essentials 2007 for monitoring your ESX 3.x / VI3 environment (in no particular order), including:

Veaam (formerly nWorks) - The most robust amongst the third party offerings (IMHO), this one also carries the highest price tag…but worth the money in mission critical virtualization scenarios. It’s helped me uncover configuration and performance issues on a couple of occasions. VMware monitoring and management is their primary focus, and they seem know it well. This offering heavily leverages the SDK web service.
Quest (formerly eXc) - eXc has a broad range of “virtual agents”, a term used for their agentless solutions. Less full-featured than Veaam, but also less expensive. If you’re looking for a provider with a broad range of product support (Oracle, Apache, etc), this is an option to consider.
Jalasoft - Jalasoft focuses on *NIX monitoring today, although I have yet to see anything that leverages the X-plat architecture from this provider.
Xandros - Makers of the much-anticipated Bridgeways MP for X-plat in OpsMgr 2007 R2, I have yet to test their beta offering for VMware ESX monitoring. Xandros has a major focus on X-Plat, so I am hoping for big things from these guys in that arena as well.

Good partners all…I encourage you to talk to all when weighing your VMware monitoring options.

Additional Resources

Conclusion

In short, I think an enterprise monitoring solution for VMware should be supported and comprehensive given the complexity of the VMware platform. Hopefully this provides a clearer picture of the possible routes to a successful VMware monitoring solution with Operations Manager 2007.

OpsMgr: Why is an accurate value for the “IsVirtualMachine” attribute important?

Pete — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:27:15 +0000

I posted a copy of the Virtual Machine Discovery MP the other day, which updates the default discovery behavior in OpsMgr to include VMware guests running Windows computers, it brought about a question from a reader.

Why is knowing which computers are virtual machines important?

While this is nothing fancy (I know several other admins using the very same thing), it offers some important benefits.There are a number of situations where knowing you’re dealing with a VM comes in handy:

A troubleshooting aid when a VM is running poorly. If a Windows server is running poorly and I know it’s a VM, it will prompt me to check my VM host to ensure it is not overburdened.
When a discovery script from a Hardware MP is consuming excessive resources. I’ve sen this happen, and it is not the hardware vendors fault. So when we have a true reading for physical versus virtual, we can disable these discoveries from running on virtual machines using an override using a custom group based on this attribute.
When looking for virtualization candidates. If I dont have SCVMM 2008 in place, spotting good virtualization candidates is difficult if I do not know for sure which machines are actually physical servers!

Hope that clears up the reason behind this sample MP. I’ll have a version out that supports XenServer as well in a few weeks.

In the meantime, you can download the Virtual Machine Discovery MP HERE.

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The Virtualization War Escalates [and where OpsMgr fits in]

Pete — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 06:30:15 +0000

The day before yesterday, Citrix announced a free version of XenServer will be released at the end of March. Clearly this is a strike at VMware, but they’re doing one better to be sure. The software, available to any user for unlimited production deployment, will include new features such as centralized multi-node management, multi-server resource sharing and full live motion, according to Citrix.

http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/66274.html?wlc=1235542540

And now today, Microsoft and Citrix announce a partnership, coupled with the recent Microsoft / Red Hat announcement of mutual virtualization support.

http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7252/

Add to this the R2 release of OpsMgr will rich monitoring capabilities for the RHEL OS and the partner community gearing up with application MPs for X-Plat, where does this leave VMware? Xandros and Quest already have quite a portfolio in the works in beta. Should be an exciting launch at MMS.

What if we could get the ball rolling on some freely availble monitoring solutions for the cross-platform community?

Q&A Follow up to Virtual Operations Manager: Part 1 - Should I Virtualize?

Pete — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:12:48 +0000

Part 1 of the Virtual Operations Manager series prompted some interesting questions, which I wanted to address before we move on to the next installment. The most important question was this one:

Q: Should I virtualize a Management Server hosting the Audit Collection Services (ACS) Collector Role?

A: This is a great question, because management servers are listed as a “recommended”. However, when the management server is configured to function as an ACS Collector, this is not always the case. With the 1-to-1 relationship between ACS Collector and Audit database, we do not have the same freedom to scale out to multiple collectors without impacting the reporting experience (remember there is no summary reporting mechanism in ACS).

My opinion on the topic is that the ACS Collector role should not be virtualized except in small environments or DMZ / gateway scenarios where high scalability is not required. However, this leads to another valid question:

Where is the line between low and high scalability and when do I make the move from virtual to physical?

To answer this question, I wanted to get feedback from the ACS experts at SecureVantage, who have seen and supported more enterprise ACS deployments than perhaps anyone else outside of MS. When I posed this question to Ryan Brennan, co-founder and strategist at SecureVantage.

Ryan suggests the following:

“I typically watch the forwarder disconnect rate, queue lengths, and performance load via AdtAdmin or Secure Vantage Audit Collection Admin Console. For some reason these values are very high in virtualized scenarios that I have seen even if the virtual box has adequate memory and CPU. It could be bad virtual setups and resource allocation or just ACS collectors need a physical box, we have yet to find the proper metrics and design to support a successful virtual setup. To avoid dropping sensitive security data and safeguard the Collector role we recommend physical to our customers. The time spent to tune a virtual setup properly will probably outweigh the cost savings.”

The bottom line? There is no hard limit when virtualizing server roles. Let performance be your guide. When you can no longer allocate resources to maintain optimal performance on your virtualized collector, it may time to make the move to a physical host. We have updated the table in Part 1 to reflect specific recommendations for the ACS Collector role.

Previous Installments in the Virtual Operations Manager Series

In part 2 of the series, we will discuss options and decision criteria when planning your storage infrastructure for virtualizing Operations Manager roles. We’ll also touch on I/O virtualization, which promises to change the way we think about virtualizing SQL today.

——————

About SecureVantage

Formed in November 2005, Secure Vantage Technologies (SVT) focuses on developing technologies in the IT Security Monitoring market for Microsoft System Center products. Secure Vantage firmly believes in providing customers with value adding solutions that improve the fidelity of security monitoring and operations.

Ryan Brennan

Ryan is responsible for the overall technical vision and direction for Secure Vantage Technologies. Ryan brings more than twelve years of solid technology and management experience. Ryan has worked for multiple Fortune 1000 Companies and has experience in System Management, IT & Security Operations, Software Development, Quality Assurance, Systems Administration and Project Management with focus on the industries: banking, energy, technology, software, healthcare. Ryan holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from The University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

How to convert your Virtual PC images to Hyper-V [Tools]

Pete — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 17:18:29 +0000

I was looking for a quick way to convert my OpsMgr Virtual PC 2007 VM’s to Hyper-V a few weeks ago. What I found was a free tool called the VMC to Hyper-V Import Tool. The tool essentially allows you to open your VMC file, update paths to drives, add/remove mounted media, resource settings, etc. It then imports the VM into Hyper-V Manager. It made the job pretty easy, allowing me to make the transition in only a few minutes time.

On the negative side, the tool seems a bit buggy, but hey, it’s free. The paths to drives and media must be correct for the convert and import to work. The tool threw some .NET exception errors that required I start over a couple of times, but went away when I updated all drive paths to correct values. Matt definitely deserves some thanks for taking the time to put this together.

Where to get it

You will find a download link for the VMC to Hyper-V Import Tool on MattHij’s blog, as well as detailed features and instructions for use at the URL below:

http://blogs.technet.com/matthts/archive/2008/09/12/vmc-to-hyper-v-import-tool-available.aspx

Virtual Operations Manager: Part 1 - Should I Virtualize?

Pete — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 01:59:54 +0000

This is the first installment of our Virtual Operations Manager series mentioned previously. I expect this post will spark discussion (and potentially debate), all of which is welcome. Leave your feedback as a comment on this post.

Virtualization offers a number of potential benefits, such as reduced power consumption, hardware expense and licensing expense through server consolidation. Snapshot technologies make rolling back changes easier than on a physical server. Clustering options offer flexible options for high availability and disaster recovery scenarios as well. Virtualization is everywhere, and it’s only natural that Operations Manager 2007 architects and administrators would be curious know about the possibilities and best practices for virtualizing OpsMgr 2007 server roles in their production environments.

In our first installment, we’re going to examine what is supported versus what is recommended. In short we’ll answer the questions “Which OpsMgr roles can I virtualize?” versus “Which OpsMgr roles should I virtualize?” I’ll be sure to cite official Microsoft sources whenever possible so you have materials to make your case to management when arguing in favor of virtualization for your OpsMgr environment.

NOTE: In this series, we will limit our discussions to Hyper-V and VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.x. There will be a later architecture installment in which we cover platform-specific pros and cons of Hyper-v and VMware platforms.

Supported for Virtualization Versus Recommended for Virtualization

All Operations Manager roles are supported on Microsoft enterprise virtualization platforms (Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Hyper-V officially - more on VMware in a moment), but this does not mean that all should be. Let’s have a look at each of the OpsMgr roles and examine which are good candidates for virtualization.

IMPORTANT: See the OpsMgr Performance and Scalability Whitepaper and for detailed hardware sizing info, and provide CPU, memory and disk in equivalent quantities to virtual machines hosting these roles.

Role	Supported	Recommendation
Root Management Server	Yes	Not Recommended. This role uses large amounts of memory and CPU. Should only be virtualized in smaller environments (<500 servers). I’ve seen the RMS virtualized in smaller environments, but memory and processor demands (which can reach multi-proc servers with 12GB RAM in large deployments) make virtualization a challenge in high scale scenarios.
Management Server	Yes	Recommended. Since resource requirements are light (4GB RAM max), this role can be easily virtualized. Most important resources for this role are memory and CPU.
Gateway Server	Yes	Recommended. Since resource requirements are light (about 2GB RAM in most cases), this role can be easily virtualized. Most important resources for this role are memory and CPU.
Operational DB	Yes	Not Recommended. This role uses large amounts of CPU, Memory and Disk I/O. Should only be virtualized in smaller environments (<500 servers).
Data Warehouse	Yes	Not Recommended. This role uses large amounts of CPU, Memory and Disk I/O. Should only be virtualized in smaller environments (<500 servers).
Web Console*	Yes	Conditionally Recommended (unofficial) There are no official sizing guidelines for a dedicated server hosting the Web Console today, but we’ve virtualized this role successfully in several environments. This leaves more resources on the RMS for cocnsole connections and other core RMS functions. CPU and memory are important, but in large and busy environments, the IIS log writes will generate some disk I/O, so make sure you keep an eye on the disk subsystem.Start with 2GB RAM and equivalent of dual core CPU allocated to the VM. Scale up as usage levels demand.
Reporting Role*	Yes	Conditionally Recommended (unofficial) Moving SQL Reporting Services off of the RMS can eliminate competition for resources and provide SRS with dedicated resources, resulting in a better reporting experience. HOWEVER, the Operations Console communicates directly with this role, so failure to provide adequate resources can affect the console experience.Start with 2GB RAM and equivalent of dual core CPU allocated to the VM. Scale up as usage levels demand.
Management Server hosting ACS Collector role	Yes	Usually Not Recommended. The primary scenarios where this role is successfully virtualized are for either the DR/Failover Collector (a feature added in OpsMgr SP1), or in scenarios where high scalability is not necessary. Such scenarios would inlude satellite offices or perimeter networks with a small number of hosts.Let performance dictate when a move from virtual to physical is required.

Table 1 - Virtualization Support and Recommendations for OpsMgr Server Roles

*I see and hear of these two roles most often being separated (and sometimes virtualized) in very large environnments. I do not suspect most environments will see the need to do this. Because these roles can affect the user experience, it’s important to get it right if you do choose to virtualize.

Resource Requirements and the Virtualization Decision

To expand a bit on the recommendations above, whether it is practical to virtualize comes down to resource requirements, performance and scalability. Gateways and secondary management servers (SMS) can be easily virtualized because their resource requirements are generally more modest when compared to the RMS. Gateways and Secondary Management Servers are also easier to virtualize because these roles do not scale up, they scale out. I’ll clarify what I mean here with an example.

Example:

In an OpsMgr implementation for an environment with 1,000 - 3,000 servers, consider the following sizing requirements as described in the OpsMgr Performance and Scalability Whitepaper.

Secondary management servers (secondary meaning “not the RMS”) will have a max of about 4GB RAM and a 2-way processor configuration. When a maximum of 2,000 agents are reporting to a single management server, you must add additional management servers to share the additional load.
A Gateway in comparison will have 2GB RAM and a 2-way processor configuration. When a maximum of 800 agents are reporting to a single Gateway, you must add additional management servers to share the additional load.

By comparison, in a 1000-3000 agent environment, the RMS sizing recommendations are 12GB RAM 64-bit quad processor and 4-drive RAID 10! This is because the RMS handles several important roles not shared by other management servers. For example, the RMS is responsible for Operations Console connections, state calculation, and notification.

In the case of the RMS we cannot scale out (add additional servers), and the RMS is going to aggressively make use of these resources (especially RAM) - they will not sit idle. With the resource requirements, the virtualization host would have to be quite large to provide this level of dedicated resources.

The bottom line is this: If you have to scale up and high performance is a high priority, you should probably go physical.

Common Mistakes / Considerations

Overcommitting Memory Resources on the Host- Not committing enough CPU and memory to a server role is a common source of poor performance. You need simply follow the resource requirements listed in the Performance and Scalability Whitepaper regardless of whether the server is virtual or physical. On the VMware platform, this means being careful to not overcommit memory. This is really a more of an issue on VMware, which offers advanced memory management (transparent memory page sharing and memory ballooning) allowing you to achieve greater VM density (higher VM counts) on a single host, but at a potential cost of performance. This type of memory management is not possible in Hyper-V today. I don’t want this to sound like I’m knocking VMware, because this is a great feature when used appropriately.

The moral of the story is, be very sure to dedicate the required CPU and memory resources to OpsMgr server roles, especially when virtualizing the RMS role, as it needs both in substantial quantities. If you place the RMS (or any MS, for that matter) on an overcommitted host, you are asking for trouble.

Failing to plan for availability - If you put multiple management and / or gateway servers on the same host, when the host goes down, you lose all those server roles. If you virtualize multiple server roles, spread them across multiple VM hosts and host clusters when possible.

Inadequate Storage Infrastructure - VMs generally reside on shared storage, whether local direct-attached (DAS), SAN or iSCSI. When placed on the same shared array, VMs compete for disk I/O. Be sure to plan for adequate disk I/O, just as you would with a physical server.

Virtualizing SQL Server (any version)

While there are potential hardware, power and SQL licensing savings in virtualizing SQL Server, SQL is not a good candidate for virtualization in scenarios that require high throughput. In addition to the CPU and memory intensive nature of SQL Server, the most significant hurdle is the disk subsystem.

You will most likely use the native virtual storage technique that comes with the virtual server software. This means that the hard drive that the virtual machine sees is actually a single file stored on the host machine’s hard drive. You could opt for SAN or iSCSI storage to provide greater (and easily expandable) disk I/O, but even this fails to address performance in one respect. In a virtual environment, your I/O is going to pass through an additional virtual layer. In Hyper-V this is a virtual device driver in the root partition, or in VMware, a device driver in the hypervisor itself. This results in lower throughput to the disk subsystem.

For the official Microsoft party line on virtualizing SQL Server, see Using SQL Server in a Virtual Environment.

Platform Support

While Hyper-V is Micrsoft’s preferred platform for virtualizing Windows, VMware has gained a degree of official support through the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). For more information, visit the SVVP website. I would estimate that more than 95% of the OpsMgr environments I see virtualized today reside in a VMware environment, so it definitely works.

Making the Case for Virtualization

There are several good resources out there you can use to make your case for virtualizing OpsMgr

The OpsMgr 2007 Infrastructure Planning and Design Solution Acceletor includes recommendations around virtualization. This is officially supported guidance.
Satya Vel (aka DeploymentMan) has a post on the Operations Manager Team Blog where he discusses support for the RMS, MS, Gateway and SQL in particular and his personal recommendations.
As mentioned previously, always consult the OpsMgr Performance and Scalability Whiteaper for hardware sizing requirements. VMs should be allocated equivalent resources required by their physical counterparts!

Conclusion

Hopefully this provides some food for thought and the basis for useful community discussion. Next in our series we will tackle an interesting topic…..storage options and considerations for your virtual OpsMgr infrastructure.

Please leave your feedback as a comment on this post.

Virtual Operations Manager: End-to-End Virtualization for OpsMgr 2007 [blog series]

Pete — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 01:42:07 +0000

Questions about when and how to virtualize server roles in Operations Manager 2007 is something that comes up more-and-more all the time. Certainly there is some guidance for this already in the product documentation (like the OpsMgr IPD Solution Accelerator), and on the product team blog and other blogs. But nowhere do you see thorough best practices guidance at the nuts-and-bolts level when virtualizing Operations Manager 2007 on Hyper-V or VMware VI3.x platforms.

Something to Talk About

I wanted to start tonight by setting the stage. In this series, my colleagues and I are going to provide end-to-end insight into when and how to make the most of virtualization with OpsMgr in the lab and in production in areas such as:

Planning
- When and Where to Virtualize
Virtualization Architecture
- Storage
- Networking
- High Availability
Management
- Automation (scripting, templates, etc)
- Patch Management
- Tuning and Optimization for Hyper-V / VMware
- Monitoring!

Scott Weisler, a VMware virtualization guru and storage geek has some advice on storage, networking and tuning that are not to be missed. We’ll also show you some cool technology along the way, and reconcile some terms and concepts between the Hyper-V and VI3 platforms.

Virtualization In the Lab

In order to talk about this, I needed to put together a lab with the requisite components. I wanted to show you some key scenarios, including SC Virtual Machine Manager 2008 managing a heterogeneous environment (Hyper-V / VMware), OpsMgr integration with SCVMM (PRO). I’ve also thrown in a cool component at the storage later you’re going to like - iSCSI storage.

With the native iSCSI iniator on Windows 2008, you’ll find it’s easy to convert your old lab hardware into a WIndows 2003 iSCSI storage array. In my case, I used StarWind PRO (a reasonably-priced third party iSCSI software solution). You’ll notice in this case I traded Windows 2003 for CentOS 5.2 as the iSCSI host, just so we could works some OpsMgr R2 cross-platform into the mix!

Figure 1- My System Center Virtual Lab

What’s Next

Now that the stage is set, let me set at least some of the agenda

In part 1, we’ll start by answering the question Should I virtualize?.
In part 2, we’ll talk about storage, including DAS, NAS,iSCSI, SAN and a bit on storage virtualization.
In part 3, we’ll move on to a discussion of Virtualization Architecture (Hyper-V vs VMware)

Have a virtualization scenario you’d like to talk about? Leave your question as a comment to this post.

Configuring SCVMM 2008 PRO Integration with Essentials 2007

Pete — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 06:19:40 +0000

While the steps for how to enable Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) integration between Operations Manager 2007 (OpsMgr) and Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM) are well-documented at this point, I’d yet to find anyone who had attempted to enable PRO between System Center Essentials 2007 (SCE) and SCVMM. It seemed to me that since the SCE server is the Root Mgmt Server, in theory this should work just as it does in OpsMgr.

So a couple of weeks ago, I thought I’d give this a try and share my results.

As it turns out, the process was successful just as expected with no really unexpected issues. I’ve noted a couple of hurdles to be aware of that will make your journey a bit faster. These suggestions are equally applicable to OpsMgr 2007.

INSTRUCTIONS:

The instructions I followed were those documented by Alan Goodman of the SCVMM team at the following URL: http://blogs.technet.com/rakeshm/archive/2008/08/22/configuring-scvmm-2008-s-pro-feature-with-ops-manager.aspx

These are now posted on TechNet in almost exactly the same format, but without the screenshots.

ITEMS OF NOTE:

Make sure you put the WIndows 2008 hotfixes required for OpsMgr / Essentials support on your SCVMM server. You have to load the Essentials / OpsMgr console (and ultimately an agent) on this server, so you’ll need these fixes in place. That’s documented in this KB - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954049
Make sure your SCE server’s action account has local admin rights on the SCVMM server.
Don’t bother looking for the SCVMM 2008 MPs - they are included on the SCVMM media and imported automatically when you run the installer from the SCVMM media
Remember when adding the SCE ReportServer URL that it is a named instance if you installed SCE with included SQL Express instance, so your URL will be http://sceserver/reportserver$SCE

The most disappointing point right now is that as of the time of this article, no reports exist in the SCVMM MPs. I have some interesting details to share about PRO Integration delivered in the SCVMM MPs, but I’ll save that for a later post.

Powershell in SCVMM 2008: Retrieving SCVMM Cmdlets

Pete — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:10:21 +0000

I’ve been working with Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM) quite a bit, and wanted to share some tips around optimization and automation, as well as some SCVMM / VMware VI3 comparisons, especially where Powershell is concerned. Today, I wanted to start off with some interesting background and an SCVMM Powershell tip I think you’ll find handy.

The SCVMM Admin console is layered on the SCVMM Powershell cmdlets, and every task you performed in the GUI has a Powershell equivalent. using the “View Script” control in the SCVMM GUI, you can actually perform the task in the interface and then view the underlying script.

Fig 1 - View Script control in SCVMM 2008 Console

When you run the New Virtual Machine Wizard, the last screen of the wizard has the “View Script”. Clicking this script exposes the Powershell script that will perform the task according to your specifications selected by you in the wizard. A few tweaks and you have a reusable script for next time.

Retrieving a List of SCVMM Cmdlets

If you want to venture out and write some scripts on your own, your first step will likely be to retrieve a list of the SCVMM-specific cmdlets. So how do we do this? Well, I googled a bit, and found articles that involved multiple wildcard searches with get-command to retrieve partial lists (SCVMM does not have an equivalent to get-operationsmanagercommand).

However, I did a bit of looking with get-help, and found the answer. If you run get-command with the -PSSnapin parameter, you can pass the name of the snapin and returned to the screen will be a list of all cmdlets contained in the specified snapin. to retrieve a list of SCVMM cmdlets, perform the following steps:

Launch the SCVMM Powershell shortcut from the Start Menu
Run the get-command cmdlet with the -PSSnapin parameter as shown below - microsoft.systemcenter.virtualmachinemanager is the name of the Powershell snapin for SCVMM.

Get-Command -PSSnapIn “microsoft.systemcenter.virtualmachineManager” | write-host

The output is a list of approximately 160 SCVMM Powershell cmdlets:

Add-LibraryServer
Add-LibraryShare
Add-Patch
Add-VirtualizationManager
Add-VMHost
Add-VMHostCluster
Add-VMHostNetworkAdapter
Associate-VMHost
Backup-VMMServer
Compress-VirtualDiskDrive
Convert-VirtualDiskDrive
Copy-HardDisk
Copy-VMDK
DisableUndoDisk-VM
DiscardSavedState-VM
Discover-Cluster
Discover-Computer
Discover-LibraryShare
Dismiss-PROTip
Expand-VirtualDiskDrive
Get-Certificate
Get-CPUType
Get-DependentLibraryObject
Get-DirectoryChildItem
Get-GuestOSProfile
Get-HardwareProfile
Get-ISO
Get-Job
Get-LibraryRating
Get-LibraryServer
Get-LibraryShare
Get-MachineConfig
Get-NetworkLocation
Get-OperatingSystem
Get-PROTip
Get-Script
Get-SshPublicKey
Get-Step
Get-Template
Get-VirtualCOMPort
Get-VirtualDiskDrive
Get-VirtualDVDDrive
Get-VirtualFloppyDisk
Get-VirtualFloppyDrive
Get-VirtualHardDisk
Get-VirtualizationManager
Get-VirtualNetwork
Get-VirtualNetworkAdapter
Get-VirtualSCSIAdapter
Get-VM
Get-VMCheckpoint
Get-VMHost
Get-VMHostCluster
Get-VMHostDisk
Get-VMHostGroup
Get-VMHostNetworkAdapter
Get-VMHostRating
Get-VMHostVolume
Get-VMMManagedComputer
Get-VMMServer
Get-VMMUserRole
Get-VMPerformance
Get-VMwareResourcePool
Get-VMXMachineConfig
Invoke-PROTip
Merge-VMCheckpoint
Move-VirtualHardDisk
Move-VM
Move-VMHost
Move-VMHostCluster
Move-VMHostGroup
New-GuestOSProfile
New-HardwareProfile
New-MachineConfig
New-P2V
New-PhysicalAddress
New-Template
New-V2V
New-VirtualDiskDrive
New-VirtualDVDDrive
New-VirtualNetwork
New-VirtualNetworkAdapter
New-VirtualSCSIAdapter
New-VM
New-VMCheckpoint
New-VMHostGroup
New-VMMUserRole
New-VMRCCertificateRequest
New-VMXMachineConfig
Reassociate-VMMManagedCompute
Refresh-LibraryShare
Refresh-VirtualizationManager
Refresh-VM
Refresh-VMHost
Refresh-VMHostCluster
Register-VM
Remove-GuestOSProfile
Remove-HardwareProfile
Remove-ISO
Remove-LibraryServer
Remove-LibraryShare
Remove-MachineConfig
Remove-Script
Remove-Template
Remove-VirtualDiskDrive
Remove-VirtualDVDDrive
Remove-VirtualFloppyDisk
Remove-VirtualHardDisk
Remove-VirtualizationManager
Remove-VirtualNetwork
Remove-VirtualNetworkAdapter
Remove-VirtualSCSIAdapter
Remove-VM
Remove-VMCheckpoint
Remove-VMHost
Remove-VMHostCluster
Remove-VMHostGroup
Remove-VMHostNetworkAdapter
Remove-VMMUserRole
Remove-VMXMachineConfig
Repair-VM
Restart-Job
Restore-VMCheckpoint
Resume-VM
SaveState-VM
Set-GuestOSProfile
Set-HardwareProfile
Set-ISO
Set-LibraryServer
Set-LibraryShare
Set-PROTip
Set-Script
Set-Template
Set-VirtualCOMPort
Set-VirtualDiskDrive
Set-VirtualDVDDrive
Set-VirtualFloppyDisk
Set-VirtualFloppyDrive
Set-VirtualHardDisk
Set-VirtualizationManager
Set-VirtualNetwork
Set-VirtualNetworkAdapter
Set-VirtualSCSIAdapter
Set-VM
Set-VMCheckpoint
Set-VMHost
Set-VMHostCluster
Set-VMHostGroup
Set-VMHostNetworkAdapter
Set-VMHostVolume
Set-VMMServer
Set-VMMUserRole
Shutdown-VM
Start-VM
Stop-Job
Stop-VM
Store-VM
Suspend-VM
Update-VMHost
Update-VMMManagedComputer

Free Virtualization eLearning and ebooks

Pete — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:00:02 +0000

Check out this seriously good free learning material on virtualization technologies. I posted these free e-learning courses a few weeks ago, which still seem to be free. I’ve also come across 3 free virtualization e-books (one from MS Press) you need to have a look at.

Free Virtualization eLearning

Free virtualization e-learning collection

Take Microsoft E-Learning Collection 6333: Exploring Microsoft Virtualization Technologies for free! Collection 6333 includes the following:

Free Virtualization ebooks

Virtualization for Dummies
Virtualization Solutions from the Desktop to the Datacenter (MS Press)
Definitive Guide to Virtual Platform Management (Realtime)

Improvements and Value-adds in the Veaam MP for VMware 4.0

Pete — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:30:22 +0000

The purchase of nWorks by Veaam was exciting for the same reasons as the absorption of eXc into Quest: when a small innovator becomes part of a much larger (and likely better capitalized) company, the gurus can focus on what they do best.

That being said, we see the first harvest of the fruits from this change in the version 4.0 of the Veaam MP for VMware (ESX). And one really good thing stands out that I have been wishing for, for some time now - Hardware Monitoring. They are doing this with CIM/SMASH, which incidentally VMware has published a programming guide for. Add to this additonal performance counter collections and an expanded set of Data Warehouse reports, and you have a good product that should arguably be even better.

nWorks delivered the most comprehensive (albeit also the most expensive) monitoring ESX solution for OpsMgr 2007,and that doesn’t seem to have changed. The architecture was easy to understand and configure; a collector role talks to the SDK Web Service on the Virtual Center Server, collects data and publishes it to the local Operations Manager agent.

I know the team actually polls customers for feedback, and I have had a couple of good long conversations about areas for improvement. I’ll be looking at the object classes in the MP for accessibility (previously all were marked ‘internal’), as well as the SYSLOG messages to see if those have been translated into plain English.

But for my money, the hardware monitoring will be golden. This fills a pretty significant gap in monitoring ESX hosts with Operations Manager and Essentials 2007.

Have a look at the features and architecture of Veaam 4.0 on the Veaam website at

https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vc-sdk/visdk25pubs/cim_smash_pg.pdf

SC Virtual User Group - OpsMgr R2, FCS with SCCM, OpsMgr & AD and a couple of surprises!

Pete — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:35:13 +0000

The System Center Virtual User Group has some great presentations on advanced System Center topics coming today you will not want to miss. You can register HERE. Our sponsors have offered up some good stuff for the raffle after the show I should mention.

Topics

1PM - Raphael Burri: Active Directory Integration for System Center Operations Manager 2007
1:30PM - Kevin Colby: Integrating Forefront Client Security with System Center Configuration Manager
2PM - Baelson Duque: Operations Manager 2007 R2 Features and Fixes

*All times are Central Standard Time (New York time minus 1 hour)

Raffle After the Show

After the show, we’ll be drawing names to give away a Zune personal media player AND a copy of Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed - signed by all the authors!

Thanks Again to Our Sponsors

SecureVantage - Is the industry leader in security management, security audit and security compliance solutions for System Center Operations Manager 2007, Configuration Manager 2007 and a growing list of products in the System Center suite.

Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed is THE BOOK for Operations Manager 2007 administrators. A little birdie told me an update for R2 is in the works!

Thanks to Jeremiah Beckett (SecureVantage) and Kerrie Meyler of the Unleashed team!

Visio Stencils for System Center and Virtualization Technologies

Pete — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 04:13:04 +0000

I was working on a Visio diagram that required representation of a variety of technologies, and went fishing for some options. Below is a collection of stencils I found for MS virtualization technologies, as well as VMware Infrastructure 3.x. Operations Manager 2007 and System Center 2007 stencils are included for good measure.

Visio Stencils Collection for System Center and Virtualization Technologies

Rack Server Virtualization Visio Add-in
Softgrid
VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 - Includes a Xensource icon and couple of other third parties.
Virtual Center VI3 Template
System Center Configuration Manager 2007
System Center Operations Manager 2007

Enjoy!

Free E-Learning for MS Virtualization Technologies (Hyper-V, SCVMM)

Pete — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 03:47:05 +0000

Saw someone posted a link this morning to some free E-Learning resources for Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager 2008…

Free virtualization e-learning collection

Take Microsoft E-Learning Collection 6333: Exploring Microsoft Virtualization Technologies for free! Collection 6333 includes the following:

VMWorld 2008 Day 2 - The Virtual Data Center, Desktop and the Cloud

Pete — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 17:00:36 +0000

Tuesday was a busy day. It started off with Paul Maritz keynote speech, which focuses on three key areas on the mind of all the players in the virtualization space…..The Datacenter, the Desktop and the Cloud.

(NOTE: While we are still exploring the many partner offerings avaialable for Hyper-V, I will provide some bits of comparison between the two platforms off the top of my head where I can.)

Virtual Datacenter O/S (VCD-OS) – I covered some of the high points of this in yesterday’s post.
vCloud Initiative – extends the VCD-OS concept beyond the firewall. VMware is working with 100+ partners to develop a common framework to federate resources between the internal cloud and external clouds. The VMware vCloud Initiative is aimed at helping companies safely tap compute capacity inside and outside their firewalls – how they want, when they want, and as much as they want.
vClient Initiative – solving what Paul called the “desktop dilemma”. The vClient Initiative is the next generation of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). VMware is looking to move beyond the current device-centric model of end-user data and application presentation. The goal is to tether the data and applications to the user, with universal (and secure) access across a multitude of devices – desktop, thin client, laptop, pda, smartphone. I know Microsoft and MS partners like VDIworks have similar offerings and initiatives in motions as well. I’ll do a drill down on those in a future post.

Another "Key" Keynote - The other keynote of interest to me on the day was the Cisco Keynote – "Designing the Next Generation Datacenter". The focus of the keynote was the need to evolve the network beyond the traditional physical/virtual components (where the physical network is unaware of the virtualized network and the virtualized network has little-to-no visibility or manageability), to a synthesis of the two.

With the mobility of the virtual machine in the virtual infrastructure, the problem has always been how do you tie policy-based management to a VM, or troubleshoot network issues with a VM, when the virtual machine’s location on the network is fluid and dynamic.

VMware’s answer to the dilemma is the introduction of the distributed virtual switch, and a set of API’s that allow 3rd parties to introduce inline filtering, or even replace the switching logic. Cisco has leveraged this architecture and developed their VN-Link technology and the first virtual switch implementation – the Nexus 1000V. The Cisco Nexus 1000V is a software based switch solution that integrates with ESX and offers end-to-end integration of the physical network with the virtual network to deliver a virtualization aware access layer and policy based network management. The Nexus 1000V should be available in 1H 2009.

Break-out Sessions - The two break-out sessions I would like to spend a little time delved into a some components of the upcoming VCD-OS. First up is the new Fault Tolerance feature set. Fault Tolerance (FT) is a technology that allows failover of protected virtual machines with no downtime and no data loss. vLockstep is used to keep a secondary copy of the virtual machine synced with the primary copy.

Some highlights:

FT integrates with HA
All Guest O/S e supported
FT avoids the split-brain scenario possible with HA because both copies of the virtual machine are sharing the same back-end storage (vmdk files and virtual RDM mappings)
FT requires an extra dedicated NIC on the ESX host to carry the logging traffic between hosts that keeps the primary/secondary pair synchronized

However, there are some limitations to FT:

FT is for uni-processor VMs only
ESX hosts will need to have HV-compatible CPUs (introduced in the Intel Harpertown and AMD Barcelona lines)

FT is best used for:

Applications that run well in a uni-processor environment
o Applications that can tolerate a small increase in network latency (due to logging)
o Applications that have medium network bandwidth utilization (<600 Mb/sec)

The second break-out session was on ESX architectural directions. Some highlights from that session:

The next ESX kernel will be 64-bit. (Hyper-V resides on the 64-bit version of Windows 2008).
Will allow for more kernel-mode address space.
Support larger hosts – hosts will be able to run up to 512 virtual machines (dependent on available resources)
Support larger virtual machines – VMs will be able to utilize up to 8 vCPUs and 256GB of RAM (If memory serves, Hyper-V supports up to 64GB in a single VM today)
There will be no impact on support for 32-bit and 64-bit VMs (Likewise, Hyper-V supports 32-bit and 64-bit VMs. More than enough for any scenario I’ve encountered)
Distributed virtual switching – build a virtual switch configuration at the cluster level and apply to all hosts in a cluster. No more individual ESX host configuration necessary. (Ben has a post on his site about virtual switching in Hyper-V)
Updated Service Console
64-bit Linux 2.6 kernel
All hardware device drivers have moved into the VMkernel (and out of the Console O/S)
Service Console file system will housed in a vmdk on shared storage
Storage plugins
Existing storage drivers have moved into the VMkernel
Native Multi-pathing plugin (NMP) – think PowerPath for ESX (and others)
VMDirectPath I/O
ESX will be able to pass the control of a physical PCI device on the host directly to the guest
Benefits I/O appliance VM’s and reduces per-I/O CPU overhead
Hardware compatibility
Native 64-bit device drivers (not a port of 32-bit to 64-bit)
3rd party development kit

That’s all for today. Wednesday is about VI security and labs for me. See you tomorrow.

The future of Enterprise Virtualization from VMWorld 2008 - Day 1 (Monday)

Pete — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:00:39 +0000

We have a strong virtualization practice at my organization, so VMWorld is generally an important event to ensure our team stays abreast of recent technologies. With that in mind, Scott W. will be our "man on the ground" in Las Vegas this week, sharing thoughts each day on significant announcements and finds on the expo floor. We’ll also have some Operations Manager update from VMWorld as Scott talks to partners like Veaam, who recently purchased nWorks, which offers a great ESX monitoring extension for OpsMgr and Essentials 2007.

What you’ll learn this week is that diversity is going to be a key theme in the enterprise space, as the partner community works to support not only VMware, but Hyper-V and Citrix Xensource as well. As Microsoft has stepped squarely into the world of enterprise-level server and application virtualization, this conference takes on a new importance as we try to identify how the two platforms, and their respective partner communities, compare in terms of functionality. There are already many partners supporting both technologies (as Scott will point out) and will no doubt only increase over time. We will see the two technologies coexist within a single enterprise, I like to call this "Heterogeneous Virtualization".

Scott’s Day 1 Highligts:

Two areas that come to mind as areas seeing key advances are capacity planning and security. And while VMware is showcased at this event, you’ll find a big chunk of the VMware partner community has thrown their hat into ring" where Hyper-V is concerned. Here are three solutions from the partner community I was very impressed with, all of which come from companies offering Hyper-V support in some form.

Cirba – (www.cirba.com) has the premier analysis and capacity planning tool out there, and are a leading provider of Placement Intelligence software. In talking with them, they are expecting to have storage analysis/planning integrated into the product by the end of the year. Cirba has already announced an offering for Hyper-V in conjunction with the Microsoft Virtualization launch event.
vKernel – (www.vkernel.com) Capacity Analysis and Modeler appliances – "awesome tools from what I can see". vKernal has also already stepped up to the plate with support for Hyper-V
Reflex Security – (www.reflexsecurity.com) I was intrigued by these guys – their ReflexVMC product was very robust. It looks to be very powerful configuration management and security product. Check it out if you have some time. Reflex has already announced Hyper-V support in the their Reflex VSA (Virtual Security Appliance).

That’s a wrap for day 1. I’ll be back with more on tonight with some day 2 highlights.

-Scott

Official MS Virtualization Launch Day and Related Resources

Pete — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:40:34 +0000

The official launch of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Hyper-V and Microsoft Desktop Virtualization (Softgrid) happen today. There is a launch event in Bellevue, WA today.

More information see https://www.getvirtualnow.com/main.aspx.

There are several hands on labs available at the event. Hopefully we’ll see those find their way into general availability after the event.

System Center Supported on VMware ESX? (This is big!)

Pete — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 01:44:09 +0000

We’ve all read the MS support statement that includes something along the lines of “best effort”, but it turns out that looks to be changing in the near future. VMware has officially signed on to the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program Program (SVVP), which will allow VMware to certify their ESX hypervisor with Microsoft, to provide an official Microsoft support for the platform.

From VMware: VMware is now part of the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program Program (SVVP), and is happy to work with Microsoft to deliver better support to our many mutual customers. Under SVVP, customers running Windows and Microsoft applications on the VMware ESX hypervisor will receive the support they need from Microsoft, in addition to the support they have enjoyed from VMware. VMware customers can continue to leverage the full flexibility and benefits of using Virtual Infrastructure. (continue at source)

From Microsoft: Various people noticed that VMware were not on the list of companies participating in the SVVP. Any player in virtualizing Windows workloads needs to be on the program: don’t participate and your customers don’t get properly supported. There is no valid justification for staying out. In the last 48 hours two new names have appeared on the list: VMware and Unisys. And you can read VMware’s view from the top on this (continue at source)

Virtualization: Quick Migration versus Vmotion

Pete — Sun, 04 May 2008 18:47:25 +0000

A few weeks ago here on System Center Forum, I descibed (at least in part) the role of Operations Manager 2007 in virtualization initiatives.

Recently, I ran across a good deep dive on how Quick Migration (Hyper-V) and Vmotion (VMware) actually work under the hood I think will be of interest to many of you.
While the technical bits in these articles are great, take the business case in part 2 with a grain of salt. While Vmotion definitely has the advantage over Quick Migration in terms of downtime, I think one could plausibly develop some alternate strategies for maintaining high availability at the application layer that could offset some or all of the disadvantages of Quick Migration shown in the scenario described.

As you may be aware, Virtual Machine Manager 2008 beta was announced at MMS. VMM 2008 provides management of not only Hyper-V and VS 2005 R2, but VMware ESX as well. With this release and the Operations Manager 2007 integration with VMM, it is clear MS plans to fight its next battles in the virtualization war on the front-end, providing effective management tools with broad heterogeneous management capabilities.

Update your MOM skills to Operations Manager 2007 at the Operations Manager 2007 Bootcamp! Check the 2008 Bootcamp Schedule and request pricing and availability HERE.

Using Opsmgr 2007 & SCVMM integration to drive your virtualization initiatives

Pete — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:08:40 +0000

While it’s clear MS has a long journey to take the lead in the virtualization market, it’s interesting to see how System Center technologies can drive virtualization, often on the cheap. But with hyper V on the way, we’re going to see more Windows shops looking to consolidate servers on the new virtualization platform.

Operations Manager 2007 plays an obvious supporting role in monitoring VM hosts and guest operating systems. However, Operations Manager can play a key role in actually planning your organizations virtualization initiative.

Did you know you can order up Operations Manager 2007 virtualization reports from the System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) Administrator Console?

The reports are generated by Operations Manager 2007 monitoring, but can be ordered through the VMM Console. This makes it convenient for your virtualization gurus to analyze their piece of the infrastructure, even if they don’t know a thing about Operations Manager 2007.

This does require three things to make the magic happen:

1. You must import the Server Virtualization MP for Operations Manager 2007.

2. You must enable reports in SC Virtual Machine Manager.

3. The second item is that to see and order reports in SC Virtual Machine Manager, you must be a member of an Operations Manager Report Operator role

Available Reports:

The available virtualization reports through Opsmgr include these listed below.

Virtualization Candidates report - Helps identify physical computers that are good candidates for conversion to virtual machines. The Virtualization Candidates report displays average values for a set of commonly requested performance counters for CPU, memory, and disk usage, along with hardware configuration, including processor speed, number of processors, and total RAM. You can limit the report to computers that meet specified CPU and RAM requirements, and you can sort the results by selected columns in the report.
Virtual Machine Allocation report provides information you can use to calculate chargebacks to cost centers for virtual machines.
Virtual Machine Utilization report provides information about your virtual machines. For the identified time, this report shows average usage and total or maximums for virtual machine processors, memory, and disk space.
Host Utilization report shows the number of virtual machines running per host. For the identified time and host group, this report shows average usage and total or maximums for host processors, memory, and disk space.
Host Utilization Growth report shows the percentage growth of host resources and number of virtual machines running for the identified time period.

What is this worth?

VMware partners (like EMC) actually offer a services package in which they collect data from your environment, which they then analyze and make recommendations. I’ve had some customers tell me they actually paid for this service.

The real value here is that System Center takes the planning process from a professional services engagement to an in-house activity.

How about a contest? (Your feedback requested)

Pete — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:37:23 +0000

As you might have read earlier, the System Center Virtual User Group was launched, on March 27th. It?s a user group dedicated to providing resources for education and collaboration between users of Microsoft System Center technologies everywhere. Check it out at www.systemcenterusergroup.org.

To get the user group off to a fun start, we were discussing the possibility of hosting a contest for the best custom System Center solution, and need to know if you?d be willing to participate. Please read the following, and then post a comment to this thread if you would be willing to play.

The contest would showcase the best custom System Center community solution for a number of categories, including custom Management Pack (Opsmgr / Essentials), Configuration Pack (SCCM), Scripts (any System Center product), etc. Users would submit their entries to the site for judgement by a panel of System Center experts. Prizes would include XBOX 360 (for the overall winner), a Zune for the first couple of runners-up overall, and then books and miscellaneous prizes for the runners-up in each category.

Would you be willing to participate?
If so, register on the site (free) and add a comment to this post. If it looks like there will be a good number of participants, we will announce something official in the next few days!

VMware to release management toolkit based on Powershell

Pete — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:30:42 +0000

This has been floating around the virtualization community for awhile, but saw an official announcement of the VI Powershell Toolkit beta, a new management interface for VMware virtualization platform.

Do you think they’re going to aim for the same cross-platform management coming in SCVMM vNext?

Update your MOM skills to Operations Manager 2007 at the Operations Manager 2007 Bootcamp! Check the 2008 Bootcamp Schedule and request pricing and availability HERE.

SCVMM vNext: Microsoft takes at aim at VMware in the battle for virtualization supremacy

Pete — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 18:30:22 +0000

The next release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (currently ?dubbed “SCVMM vNext”) aims to consolidate management of virtual machines from multiple platforms and sources (VS 2005, VMware 3.x, and Xen in a future release). But to really win the war in the end, I believe MS needs to target the following key areas:?

DR / HA?- MS currently has no true? VMotion equivalent today. Addressing disaster recovery scenarios is definitely a key area. Check out the High Availability with Hyper-V webcast.
Performance - By some estimates I’ve seen, VMware outperforms Virtual Server 2005 by 15-20%. We’ll see how far Windows 2008 cuts into that.
Make virtualization accessible for the mid-market - Virtualization has found it’s way into shops as small as 35 users amongst my clients, but the VMware mgmt interfaces (and let’s face it, virtualization concepts in general) are tough for IT generalists to grasp. Delivering a better mouse-trap to this market is critical for adoption.
Appliances - With the release of 3i, VMware enterered the world of plug-and-play virtualization with minimal user knowledge of necessary configuration items.?This would no doubt ease deployment not only in mid-market, but branch office deployment in the enterprise space.

Read more about Microsoft’s plans for the next version of VMM HERE.

Operations Manager “Virtualization Candidates” from the Project Team

Pete — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 05:52:42 +0000

Virtualization support and guidance for MOM 2005 and OpsMgr 2007 is an often discussed, yet ill-documented subject. Ops Mgr PM Satya Vel shared some of his thoughts on which Ops Mgr 2007 server roles are good candidates for virtualization.

More at the source

Monitoring VMware ESX / VI3 with Ops Mgr 2007

Pete — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:11:24 +0000

VMware ESX 3.x / VI3 provides a variety of methods for collecting critical performance and configuration data, including SNMP, Syslog, ESXTOP utility (via ssh), the SDK Web Service and the now deprecated ESX COM API.

Jonathan Hambrook has created a very nice 60-page how-to guide taking users through the configuration process of discovery and configuration of basic (and free!) ESX monitoring using SNMP and Telnet. He put many hours into this no doubt. You can down his guide HERE. Very well done Jonathan.

With no budget this is a great start. For those who can spare an extra $975 US (retail), nWorks offers a full-featured ESX management pack leveraging all the available data sources, most importantly the SDK Web Service, which is a very rich data source in the latest release. For a demo of the nWorks offering, see the demo on their product homepage at: http://www.nworks.com/vmware/

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) Resources

Pete — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 13:34:18 +0000

SCVMM is moving along, bringing MS somewhat closer to competing with VMware ESX. Bear in mind that the V-motion functionality of ESX / VI3 is not expected from MS until the release after this one in the neighborhood of 2010.

Resources

Key features

Centralized deployment and management of virtual machines
Intelligent Placement analysis to determine the best servers for virtualization
Powershell command shell interface
Conversion Â? features physical-to-virtual and virtual-to-virtual
Ease of use with a familiar interface and seamless integration with other Microsoft products
Self-service provisioning of VM resources
Resource efficiency with server consolidation and increased processor utilization