Dell First Out the Blocks with 25GbE ServersIT Brand Pulse
IT Brand Pulse Industry Brief describing the market dynamics leading to a new generation of 25, 50 and 100GbE, the Dell products, applications, and guidelines for when to use 25G.
IT Brand Pulse industry brief describing a new approach to configuring virtual networks for virtual machines...layering hypervisor-based virtual networking services on top of hardware based virtual networking services. The result is more efficient management and lower costs.
Dell First Out the Blocks with 25GbE ServersIT Brand Pulse
IT Brand Pulse Industry Brief describing the market dynamics leading to a new generation of 25, 50 and 100GbE, the Dell products, applications, and guidelines for when to use 25G.
IT Brand Pulse industry brief describing a new approach to configuring virtual networks for virtual machines...layering hypervisor-based virtual networking services on top of hardware based virtual networking services. The result is more efficient management and lower costs.
New Networking Technology Survey & AnalysisIT Brand Pulse
Data and analysis from IT Brand Pulse based on IT pro surveys covering new networking technologies. The surveys covered brand perceptions, plus awareness and stage of deployment with 25GbE, 40GbE, NFV, SDN, white box switches and open switch operating systems.
Marvell QLogic 2600 Series 16Gb Gen 5 FC HBAs Double Performance and FlexibilityMarvell
Accelerate Virtualization and Cloud Deployments While Eliminating I/O Bottlenecks
KEY FINDINGS
Support for increased workloads, acceleration of application performance, and meeting the growing demands placed on the enterprise data center is key in the selection and deployment of a 16Gb Gen 5 Fibre Channel Adapter with the right architecture to scale
and support robust databases, mail servers, and secondary storage.
• Performance: QLogic® adapters from Cavium™ deliver double the performance of previous-generation adapters with up to 1.2 million IOPS and 3200 MBps bidirectional throughput.
• Superior Virtual Scalability and Lower Costs: Greater performance, VM density, and cost savings compared to Emulex adapters in VMware® vSphere® 5 and Microsoft® Hyper-V®environments.
• Unparalleled Flexibility: QLogic I/OFlex™ technology—any I/O, any network.
• Integrated Brocade Fabric Features: QLogic adapters deliver improved availability, streamlined deployment, and increased network performance.
To know more visit @ https://www.marvell.com/fibre-channel-adapters-and-controllers/
Turbocharge the NFV Data Plane in the SDN Era - a Radisys presentationRadisys Corporation
On October 8, 2014, Karl Wale (Director of Product Management) and James Radley (Architect) presented: Turbocharge the NFV Data Plane in the SDN Era. This expert duo discussed the evolution of the network and service provider objectives around the challenges of deploying SDN/NFV solutions. They take you through some application use cases and introduce the new Radisys FlowEngine data plane software technology.
Marvell SR-IOV Improves Server Virtualization PerformanceMarvell
Marvell FastLinQ 3400/8400 Series Adapters Enhance I/O Throughput and Reduce Processor Utilization
SR-IOV alleviates bottlenecks in virtual operating systems and enables “bare-metal” performance of virtualized resources.
Carrier Grade MANO for Service Agility - Presented at NFV World Congress 2015Sean Chen
In this presentation, Sean Chen shared Huawei's vision on NFV MANO products. As a result of years of telco experience, heavy R&D investment, as well as close collaborations with various customers, Huawei has strived to deliver an open platform that can be tailored to fit different customer's needs. Service agility recently has become the #1 driver for NFV adoption. Huawei's MANO products can help service providers to continue to deliver carrier-grade network services while enjoying the power of NFV.
Building world class data centers, presented by Mellanox at Ceph Day, June 10, 2014. This event was dedicated to sharing Ceph’s transformative power and fostering the vibrant Ceph community. Hosted by InkTank and HGST
Ibm session tac 2104 - ctg presentation for impact 2013 finalElena Nanos
This presentation titled "Achieving highest availability and best performance with CICS TG on z/OS HA Architecture – User Experience" has been presented at IMPACT 2013.
Blade Server I/O and Workloads of the Future (report)IT Brand Pulse
At the Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 inflection point, this technology brief looks at how the latest Cisco UCS and HP BladeSystem blade servers match-up to workloads of the future.
New Networking Technology Survey & AnalysisIT Brand Pulse
Data and analysis from IT Brand Pulse based on IT pro surveys covering new networking technologies. The surveys covered brand perceptions, plus awareness and stage of deployment with 25GbE, 40GbE, NFV, SDN, white box switches and open switch operating systems.
Marvell QLogic 2600 Series 16Gb Gen 5 FC HBAs Double Performance and FlexibilityMarvell
Accelerate Virtualization and Cloud Deployments While Eliminating I/O Bottlenecks
KEY FINDINGS
Support for increased workloads, acceleration of application performance, and meeting the growing demands placed on the enterprise data center is key in the selection and deployment of a 16Gb Gen 5 Fibre Channel Adapter with the right architecture to scale
and support robust databases, mail servers, and secondary storage.
• Performance: QLogic® adapters from Cavium™ deliver double the performance of previous-generation adapters with up to 1.2 million IOPS and 3200 MBps bidirectional throughput.
• Superior Virtual Scalability and Lower Costs: Greater performance, VM density, and cost savings compared to Emulex adapters in VMware® vSphere® 5 and Microsoft® Hyper-V®environments.
• Unparalleled Flexibility: QLogic I/OFlex™ technology—any I/O, any network.
• Integrated Brocade Fabric Features: QLogic adapters deliver improved availability, streamlined deployment, and increased network performance.
To know more visit @ https://www.marvell.com/fibre-channel-adapters-and-controllers/
Turbocharge the NFV Data Plane in the SDN Era - a Radisys presentationRadisys Corporation
On October 8, 2014, Karl Wale (Director of Product Management) and James Radley (Architect) presented: Turbocharge the NFV Data Plane in the SDN Era. This expert duo discussed the evolution of the network and service provider objectives around the challenges of deploying SDN/NFV solutions. They take you through some application use cases and introduce the new Radisys FlowEngine data plane software technology.
Marvell SR-IOV Improves Server Virtualization PerformanceMarvell
Marvell FastLinQ 3400/8400 Series Adapters Enhance I/O Throughput and Reduce Processor Utilization
SR-IOV alleviates bottlenecks in virtual operating systems and enables “bare-metal” performance of virtualized resources.
Carrier Grade MANO for Service Agility - Presented at NFV World Congress 2015Sean Chen
In this presentation, Sean Chen shared Huawei's vision on NFV MANO products. As a result of years of telco experience, heavy R&D investment, as well as close collaborations with various customers, Huawei has strived to deliver an open platform that can be tailored to fit different customer's needs. Service agility recently has become the #1 driver for NFV adoption. Huawei's MANO products can help service providers to continue to deliver carrier-grade network services while enjoying the power of NFV.
Building world class data centers, presented by Mellanox at Ceph Day, June 10, 2014. This event was dedicated to sharing Ceph’s transformative power and fostering the vibrant Ceph community. Hosted by InkTank and HGST
Ibm session tac 2104 - ctg presentation for impact 2013 finalElena Nanos
This presentation titled "Achieving highest availability and best performance with CICS TG on z/OS HA Architecture – User Experience" has been presented at IMPACT 2013.
Blade Server I/O and Workloads of the Future (report)IT Brand Pulse
At the Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 inflection point, this technology brief looks at how the latest Cisco UCS and HP BladeSystem blade servers match-up to workloads of the future.
Most medium and large sized IT organizations have deployed several generation of virtualized servers, becoming more comfortable with the performance and reliability with each deployment. As IT organizations started to increase VM density, they hit the limits of Hyper-V software and server memory, CPU, and I/O.
A new VM Engine is now available and this documents describes how it can help IT organizations maximize use of their servers running Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012.
IT Brand Pulse industry brief describing a new approach to configuring virtual networks for virtual machines...layering hypervisor-based virtual networking services on top of hardware based virtual networking services. The result is more efficient management and lower costs.
Application Report: University of Chicago Lab SchoolIT Brand Pulse
In late 2010, Apple announced it will no longer offer Xserve servers after January, 2011. As a result, the University of Chicago had to migrate their Laboratory School servers and applications from Mac OS X to Windows and Red Hat Linux running on VMware ESXi.
Blade Server I/O and Workloads of the Future (slides)IT Brand Pulse
At the Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 inflection point, this technology brief looks at how the latest Cisco UCS and HP BladeSystem blade servers match-up to workloads of the future.
The first Technology driven reality competition showcasing the incredible virtualization community members and their talents. Virtually Everywhere · virtualdesignmaster.com
Oracle усиливает свои позиции на рынке Cloud Computing, приобретая компанию Ravello Systems - лидера на рынке nested virtualization (вложенная виртуализация) и стремительно развивая решения по переносу on-premise мощностей в облако.
VMworld 2013: Developer Services on vCloud Hybrid Services VMworld
VMworld 2013
Raja Krishnasamy, VMware
Sunder Parameswaran, VMware
Learn more about VMworld and register at http://www.vmworld.com/index.jspa?src=socmed-vmworld-slideshare
App to Cloud: Patrick Kerpan's DataCenter Dynamics Converged KeynoteCohesive Networks
App to Cloud: Patrick Kerpan's DataCenter Dynamics Converged Keynote
About the talk:
Customers don’t care where their cloud networks and infrastructure are, they just want apps to work. This session explains how overlay networks can help to do more networking at the IaaS level and how developers can build on top of overlay networking to extend traditional networks to the cloud.
Compact, high-performing servers and streamlined software are a necessity for any data center that provides multi-tier hosted Web solutions, cloud services, or other scale-out implementations. Customers need quick access to Web applications that power their business, and the databases that power those Web applications. In our tests, we found that the Dell PowerEdge C6220 server with an open-source LAMP software stack was able to complete up to 38,793 orders per minute for one Web site, 79,759 orders per minute for two Web sites, and 119,758 orders per minute for four Web sites – all while providing the flexibility, efficiency, and maintenance features that large-scale deployments require.
The 2022 Flash brand leader surveys cover 9 Flash products.
This report includes the results of voting for six categories of brand leadership for each service: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation.
The 2020 Storage Brand Leader Survey covers 14 Storage products. This report includes the results of IT Pro voting for six categories of brand leadership for each service: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Innovation, and Service & Support.
The 2019 Servers Brand Leader Survey covers 11 server products. This report includes the results of IT Pro voting for six categories of brand leadership for each service: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Innovation, and Service & Support.
The 2019 Storage brand leader surveys cover 14 storage products. This report includes the results of IT Pro voting for six categories of brand leadership for each service: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Innovation, and Service & Support.
AWS #3 Storage Vendor in 2017 | #1 in 2020IT Brand Pulse
This IT Brand Pulse industry brief uses crowd-sourced data about storage and cloud revenues to estimate the size and ranking of the AWS storage business. The bottom line is AWS is the #3 ranked storage vendor in 2017 and will be #1 in 2020.
The 2018 IaaS brand leader surveys cover fourteen Infrastructure-as-a-Service products. This report includes the results of IT Pro voting for six categories of brand leadership for each service: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation.
This IT Brand Pulse report includes data from the independent, non-sponsored annual survey on Scale-Out File Storage--voted on by IT professionals--covering six categories of brand leadership: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation.
Please contact us at info@itbrandpulse.com for information on this or other technology product brand leader surveys.
2017 Servers for Software-Defined Storage Brand Leader ReportIT Brand Pulse
This IT Brand Pulse report includes data from the independent, non-sponsored annual survey on Servers for SDS--voted on by IT professionals--covering six categories of brand leadership: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation.
Please contact us at info@itbrandpulse.com for information on this or other technology product brand leader surveys.
This IT Brand Pulse report includes data from the independent, non-sponsored annual survey on Enterprise HDDs--voted on by IT professionals--covering six categories of brand leadership: Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation.
Please contact us at info@itbrandpulse.com for information on this or other technology product brand leader surveys.
2017 Flash Storage and NVME Brand Leader Mini-ReportIT Brand Pulse
This IT Brand Pulse mini-report includes only market leader data from the independent, non-sponsored survey covering six categories of brand leadership—Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation—for twelve Flash Storage and NVMe products.
Complete survey data for each product category is available. Please contact us at info@itbrandpulse.com for information and pricing.
2017 AI and Cloud Brand Leader Mini-ReportIT Brand Pulse
This IT Brand Pulse mini-report includes only market leader data from the independent, non-sponsored survey covering six categories of brand leadership—Market, Price, Performance, Reliability, Service & Support and Innovation—for nine AI and Cloud products.
Complete survey data for each product category is available. Please contact us at info@itbrandpulse.com for information and pricing.
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
Securing your Kubernetes cluster_ a step-by-step guide to success !KatiaHIMEUR1
Today, after several years of existence, an extremely active community and an ultra-dynamic ecosystem, Kubernetes has established itself as the de facto standard in container orchestration. Thanks to a wide range of managed services, it has never been so easy to set up a ready-to-use Kubernetes cluster.
However, this ease of use means that the subject of security in Kubernetes is often left for later, or even neglected. This exposes companies to significant risks.
In this talk, I'll show you step-by-step how to secure your Kubernetes cluster for greater peace of mind and reliability.
GDG Cloud Southlake #33: Boule & Rebala: Effective AppSec in SDLC using Deplo...James Anderson
Effective Application Security in Software Delivery lifecycle using Deployment Firewall and DBOM
The modern software delivery process (or the CI/CD process) includes many tools, distributed teams, open-source code, and cloud platforms. Constant focus on speed to release software to market, along with the traditional slow and manual security checks has caused gaps in continuous security as an important piece in the software supply chain. Today organizations feel more susceptible to external and internal cyber threats due to the vast attack surface in their applications supply chain and the lack of end-to-end governance and risk management.
The software team must secure its software delivery process to avoid vulnerability and security breaches. This needs to be achieved with existing tool chains and without extensive rework of the delivery processes. This talk will present strategies and techniques for providing visibility into the true risk of the existing vulnerabilities, preventing the introduction of security issues in the software, resolving vulnerabilities in production environments quickly, and capturing the deployment bill of materials (DBOM).
Speakers:
Bob Boule
Robert Boule is a technology enthusiast with PASSION for technology and making things work along with a knack for helping others understand how things work. He comes with around 20 years of solution engineering experience in application security, software continuous delivery, and SaaS platforms. He is known for his dynamic presentations in CI/CD and application security integrated in software delivery lifecycle.
Gopinath Rebala
Gopinath Rebala is the CTO of OpsMx, where he has overall responsibility for the machine learning and data processing architectures for Secure Software Delivery. Gopi also has a strong connection with our customers, leading design and architecture for strategic implementations. Gopi is a frequent speaker and well-known leader in continuous delivery and integrating security into software delivery.
Generating a custom Ruby SDK for your web service or Rails API using Smithyg2nightmarescribd
Have you ever wanted a Ruby client API to communicate with your web service? Smithy is a protocol-agnostic language for defining services and SDKs. Smithy Ruby is an implementation of Smithy that generates a Ruby SDK using a Smithy model. In this talk, we will explore Smithy and Smithy Ruby to learn how to generate custom feature-rich SDKs that can communicate with any web service, such as a Rails JSON API.
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 4DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 4. In this session, we will cover Test Manager overview along with SAP heatmap.
The UiPath Test Manager overview with SAP heatmap webinar offers a concise yet comprehensive exploration of the role of a Test Manager within SAP environments, coupled with the utilization of heatmaps for effective testing strategies.
Participants will gain insights into the responsibilities, challenges, and best practices associated with test management in SAP projects. Additionally, the webinar delves into the significance of heatmaps as a visual aid for identifying testing priorities, areas of risk, and resource allocation within SAP landscapes. Through this session, attendees can expect to enhance their understanding of test management principles while learning practical approaches to optimize testing processes in SAP environments using heatmap visualization techniques
What will you get from this session?
1. Insights into SAP testing best practices
2. Heatmap utilization for testing
3. Optimization of testing processes
4. Demo
Topics covered:
Execution from the test manager
Orchestrator execution result
Defect reporting
SAP heatmap example with demo
Speaker:
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Connector Corner: Automate dynamic content and events by pushing a buttonDianaGray10
Here is something new! In our next Connector Corner webinar, we will demonstrate how you can use a single workflow to:
Create a campaign using Mailchimp with merge tags/fields
Send an interactive Slack channel message (using buttons)
Have the message received by managers and peers along with a test email for review
But there’s more:
In a second workflow supporting the same use case, you’ll see:
Your campaign sent to target colleagues for approval
If the “Approve” button is clicked, a Jira/Zendesk ticket is created for the marketing design team
But—if the “Reject” button is pushed, colleagues will be alerted via Slack message
Join us to learn more about this new, human-in-the-loop capability, brought to you by Integration Service connectors.
And...
Speakers:
Akshay Agnihotri, Product Manager
Charlie Greenberg, Host
Encryption in Microsoft 365 - ExpertsLive Netherlands 2024Albert Hoitingh
In this session I delve into the encryption technology used in Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Purview. Including the concepts of Customer Key and Double Key Encryption.
UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series, part 3DianaGray10
Welcome to UiPath Test Automation using UiPath Test Suite series part 3. In this session, we will cover desktop automation along with UI automation.
Topics covered:
UI automation Introduction,
UI automation Sample
Desktop automation flow
Pradeep Chinnala, Senior Consultant Automation Developer @WonderBotz and UiPath MVP
Deepak Rai, Automation Practice Lead, Boundaryless Group and UiPath MVP
Epistemic Interaction - tuning interfaces to provide information for AI supportAlan Dix
Paper presented at SYNERGY workshop at AVI 2024, Genoa, Italy. 3rd June 2024
https://alandix.com/academic/papers/synergy2024-epistemic/
As machine learning integrates deeper into human-computer interactions, the concept of epistemic interaction emerges, aiming to refine these interactions to enhance system adaptability. This approach encourages minor, intentional adjustments in user behaviour to enrich the data available for system learning. This paper introduces epistemic interaction within the context of human-system communication, illustrating how deliberate interaction design can improve system understanding and adaptation. Through concrete examples, we demonstrate the potential of epistemic interaction to significantly advance human-computer interaction by leveraging intuitive human communication strategies to inform system design and functionality, offering a novel pathway for enriching user-system engagements.
2. About
Company Overview
Vonage (NYSE: VG) is a leading provider of communications services
connecting individuals through broadband devices worldwide. With
approximately 2.4 million subscribers, Vonage maintains and operates a robust, high-quality, VoIP network that supports over six billion communications per year. Through portable land-line phone replacement and mobile calling applications, Vonage World and
Vonage World Mobile plans offer unlimited calling to more than 60
countries for one low monthly rate. Vonage's service is sold on the
web to customers in the U.S. (www.vonage.com), Canada
(www.vonage.ca) and the United Kingdom (www.vonage.co.uk), and
through regional and national retailers.
Vonage is one of the largest VoIP providers
Development & QA Lab
and an industry pioneer. Its name is a play on
their motto "Voice-Over-Net-AGE.”
Located at corporate headquarters in Holmdel, New Jersey, is the Vonage Development & QA Lab. It’s here
that Vonage new technology and products are evaluated before they can enter a production environment.
The Development & QA Lab also is where Vonage IT architects and engineers develop and certify the standard hardware and software images which will be used in production systems ranging from front-end web
servers to back-end database servers.
Migrating from Discrete to Virtualized Data Center
Taking advantage of technologies which will allow the company to
consolidate infrastructure, reduce costs, and speed new server deployments, the Vonage data center in Holmdel is migrating from a
mostly non-virtualized “discrete” environment, to a virtualized data center. This installation features approximately 40 data center
cabinets with 1,100 rack-mount servers — each dedicated to specific applications. The power-hungry rack servers are connected to
data center LANs and SANs by over 3,000 cables; deploying a new
server takes about 2 weeks from the time a user makes a request.
Goals
Production servers in Holmdel, New Jersey
host a range of business-critical applications
ranging from front-end web servers to backend database servers.
Reduce the space, power, cooling, and cabling needed by 1,100 rackmount servers. Shorten the time to deploy new application servers.
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3. Key Technologies
The Vonage migration from discrete data center to virtualized data center involves
many new technologies, products, and processes. Blade servers, server virtualization and network virtualization stand out as technologies which are key to slashing
costs, while maintaining application performance and availability.
Blade Servers
Vonage is deploying HP ProLiant BL490c G7 blade servers to perform the same function as rack servers, but with far less floor space, power, cooling, and cables. By
sharing resources through a single enclosure, blade servers will also eliminate a
great deal of management complexity and overlap.
A fully populated HP blade
system includes 16 server
blades, interconnected by a
single backplane, to LAN and
SAN switch fabrics embedded
in the chassis.
Server Virtualization
A typical application server utilizes only 1% to 5% of available CPU. Server virtualization allows Vonage to fully utilize the compute power of each physical blade server by running multiple virtual machines (VMs) and applications. The result is another level of massive consolidation and cost savings.
Network Virtualization
To accommodate the proliferation of VMs, the HP BladeSystems feature virtual networking capabilities which
allow server admins to configure unique virtual networks for each VM. Embedded on G7 servers used by
Vonage are dual-port integrated HP Virtual Connect 10Gb FlexFabric Adapters, which are based on Emulex
OneConnect® technology. A single HP 10Gb FlexFabric Adapter port can be configured as 4 FlexNICs, with an
option to configure one as a FlexHBA for either FC or iSCSI storage connectivity. Each FlexNIC or FlexHBA can
be configured with its own set of network policies tailored to the needs of specific VMs and applications.
One or two dual-port 10Gb HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric mezzanine cards can be added.
The dual-port 10Gb HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric Adapter based
on Emulex OneConnect technology is embedded on the server
blade motherboard and can be partitioned into 4 FlexNICs.
HP ProLiant BL490c G7 Server Blade
Dense Compute
Nodes
Document # APP2012001 v10, August, 2012
The combination of blade servers, server virtualization and network virtualization, allow hundreds of
VMs to be deployed in a single cabinet.
Page 3 of 6
4. Killer App
Getting Started
The 1,100 rack servers which form the Vonage discrete production environment
are highly tuned for maximum performance and availability. The Vonage IT team
was skeptical a mass migration to virtual servers could be accomplished without
compromising one or both. Therefore the first step was to pilot the technology
with a single blade system chassis and 2 server blades.
It took about six weeks for Vonage architects to learn how to efficiently configure The migration project started with
a physical server with VMware ESXi, and HP VirtualConnect Flex-10. Then, one
a pilot using 2 server blades.
application at a time, the number of VMs in the Development & QA lab grew to
900. The confidence of the IT team also grew as applications running in the lab demonstrated the performance needed in a production environment.
Live Migrations Emerge as a Killer App for On-board 10GbE
Usage in the Development & QA Lab also demonstrated the
benefits of automated server performance optimization
and maintenance. With VMware Distributed Resource
Scheduler (DRS), scheduling server downtime to move applications to less utilized servers was no longer needed.
Without anyone knowing, DRS was automatically moving
VMs when servers became hot.
This made quick evacuation of VMs during vMotions a killer
application for the 10Gb HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric
Adapters onboard the G7 server blades. Vonage engineers
provisioned 4Gb FlexNICs to minimize the time required to
move hundreds of gigabytes of data involved in live migrations, and quickly found the vMotions over-running the 4Gb
bandwidth.
Each of 1,100 rack servers
has its own power &
cabling system.
Maintaining application performance during live migrations
means moving hundreds of gigabytes of data as fast as possible — a killer application for the 10GbE FlexFabric adapters.
Based on their experience in the lab, Vonage system architects decided to use 10Gb FlexNICs in production so
that ESXi has available the full bandwidth of the FlexFabric Adapter for live migrations.
DRS
A utility which allows ESXi admins to define the rules for manual or
automatic allocation of physical resources among VMs.
Document # APP2012001 v10, August, 2012
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5. Results & Lessons Learned
Mission Accomplished
Today Vonage is implementing dense compute nodes consisting of blade servers, server virtualization, and network virtualization technology. As a result, the company will
consolidate 1,100 rack-mount servers, 40 cabinets and 3,000 cables into only 2 cabinets, 4 blade server chassis, and a handful of cables. Along the way, Vonage architects
have identified a best practice for configuring I/O for live migrations, and a killer application for 10GbE.
Lessons Learned
The following are a few lessons the Vonage staff want to share with their peers:
Share your system designs with your vendors—Vonage architects discovered that
HP technical staff were aware of issues they encountered and would gladly have
reviewed their system design.
It takes a while to learn how the virtualization layers work together—It took six
weeks to learn how to use the server and network virtualization tools efficiently.
However, after learning proper configuration techniques, profiles can be cloned by
level 1 operators for rapid VM deployment.
One step at a time—18 months ago there was not a single VM in the Holmdel
Development & QA Lab. Starting with a couple of server blades, Vonage architects slowly added application workloads which allowed the rest of the IT team to
build confidence in the ability of VMs to perform.
vMotions can use an entire 10Gb Link—Testing showed that vMotions were saturating the 4Gb FlexNICs provisioned in the lab.
Before—Each of 1,100 rack
servers has its own power
and cabling system.
After—Power and cabling
for one chassis supports 16
server blades and 550 VMs.
Results
Before virtualization—40 cabinets, 27.5 servers per cabinet. After virtualization—2 cabinets, 2 blade server chassis per cabinet, 16 blade servers
per chassis, 17.2 VMs per blade server, 550 VMs per cabinet.
Document # APP2012001 v10, August, 2012
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6. Resources
Related Links
To learn more about the companies, technologies, and products mentioned in this report, visit the following
web pages:
HP FlexFabric Adapters Provided by Emulex
HP BladeSystem
HP VirtualConnect Technology
IT Brand Pulse
VMware ESXi 5.0
VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Manager
Vonage
About the Author
Frank Berry is founder and senior analyst for IT Brand Pulse, a trusted source of data
and analysis about IT infrastructure, including servers, storage and networking. As former vice president of product marketing and corporate marketing for QLogic, and vice
president of worldwide marketing for the automated tape library (ATL) division of Quantum, Mr. Berry has over 30 years experience in the development and marketing of IT
infrastructure. If you have any questions or comments about this report, contact
frank.berry@itbrandpulse.com.
Document # APP2012001 v10, August, 2012
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