Server Virtualization: Planning And Rollout

1
Server Virtualization Planning And Rollout

• George Crump, Founder Storage Switzerland

2
Agenda

• What is Virtualization
• Understanding Complete Virtualization
• Analyze the Business Environment
• Inventory the Physical Environment
• Analyze the Physical Environment
• Infrastructure
• Workload

3
Planning Flowchart Continued

• Aggregate into combined environmental Analysis
• Develop a Virtual Host Infrastructure
• Moving from Physical to Virtual
• Develop a Guest to Host Mapping
• Develop a Virtual Motion Mapping
• Design the Virtualized Environment
• Make the move
• Develop Ongoing Analysis and Mapping Strategies

4
What is Virtualization?

• Why Total Virtualization
• What is Total Virtualization
• Servers
• Network
• Storage
• Infrastructure

5
Virtualization Rollout Challenges

• Most relate to lack of exposure and fast rollout
  initiatives
• Leads to these problems
• Slow Applications
• Memory over subscription errors
• IP address challenges
• Incompatible Hardware
• Over Virtualization on a box

6
Business Assessment

• Process and Application Analysis
• Multi-Tier application
• Multi-Site application
• Ownership
• Business Unit
• Location
• IT
• Availability
• Zero Downtime?
• Virtual Machine Motion
• Virtualization HA
• Maintenance Windows
• Viewed from application angle or host angle

7
Business Assessment Continued

• Budget
• Knowing the Budget in Advance
• Building the Budget based on assessment
• Skills
• What new skills need to be developed
• Software Supplier Relationships
• Licensing
• Support of virtual environment

8
Motivation Assessment

• Why are you virtualizing?
• Server Consolidation
• Hardware flexibility
• Green
• Improved Efficiencies
• High Availability
• Disaster Recovery

9
Environment Assessment
10
Workload Assessment

• Basic
• One App per server
• Single Network Connection
• Low I/O
• Local or Single Storage point
• Advanced
• Clustered Systems
• Multi-Homed
• High I/O

11
File Services -- A Unique Case

• Better Served by a NAS
• Virtual NAS Heads
• Global File Systems

12
Workload Analysis

• What plays well together
• Trend over the course of time
• Processor Requirements
• Memory Requirements
• Cache
• Addressable Ram
• Security Requirements
• Storage Requirements
• IO Requirements

13
Developing A Workload Analysis Map

• Defines regions of compatibility and
  incompatibility
• Weighting is based on
• Application Stability
• Availability Requirements
• Network IO
• Storage IO
• Processor Requirements

14
Develop A Virtual Host Infrastructure

• Determine the Host Population
• Budget
• Number of Virtual Candidates
• Number of remaining Physical

15
Storage Infrastructure Virtualization

• Access Protocol
• Fibre
• ISCSI
• NFS
• Storage Hardware
• Local Attached
• SAN
• NAS

16
Network Interface Selection

• Challenge with 1 GBE Cards
• 10 GBE
• 10 GBE cards with IOV

17
Infrastructure Virtualization

• Brings Virtualization capabilities to Bare Metal
  Hardware
• Manages Network and Storage Connections

18
Server Virtualization Software Selection

• VMware
• ZEN
• Hyper-V
• Others

19
Server Host Hardware Understanding

• Components
• Memory
• Cache
• Compute
• I/O Capabilities
• Host Types
• Blades
• Dense U Servers
• High Compute Servers

20
Moving From Physical To Virtual

• Allocating compute capacity
• Day to Day operations
• VMotion activity
• Developing a Virtual Guest to Host Mapping
• Develop a Virtual Movement Mapping
• Design the Virtual Environment
• Define the Timeline
• Preparing the Virtual Environment
• Preparing the Physical Environment
• Migrating your Physical Move

21
Providing Virtualization Benefits To The
Remaining Physical Servers

• Leveraging Storage Virtualization
• Leveraging Infrastructure Virtualization

22
Thinking Virtual

• Understanding moveable workloads
• Compute Optimization
• Moving Workloads based on compute needs
• Moving from Physical to Virtual to Physical
• Storage Optimization
• High Availability