This document discusses virtualization and provides guidance on virtualizing servers. It covers: - Reasons for virtualization like increased server utilization and efficiency - Steps for planning virtualization including addressing organizational challenges - Factors for identifying good candidates for virtualization like application vendor support - Best practices for the virtualization process including establishing a baseline and testing - Potential issues to watch out for called "gotchas" and hints to improve performance - Case studies on how Allstate and Accenture benefitted from virtualization.

1. Avanade: Virtual Server notes from the field Bernt Lervik | berntl@avanade.com Infrastructure Architect Avanade

2. Avanade is the leading technology integrator specialising in the Microsoft platform. Our people help customers around the world maximise their IT investment and create comprehensive solutions that dive business results. Additional information can be found at www.avanade.com

3. Agenda Why virtualise? Planning for virtualisation Identifying candidates for virtualisation? The process of virtualising “ Gotchas” & hints for virtualisation Case studies

4. Why virtualise? Increased server utilisation Typically 80% as opposed to 5-15% Reduced data centre costs Beyond server hardware to space, power, network, cooling etc & licensing Increased efficiency/reduced administrative costs : Quicker server provisioning/deployment Backup simplification The next step in server consolidation: Support for multiple operating systems Increased security over traditional consolidation Ideal target for development/testing environments: Patching and upgrade validation Security segregation

5. Planning for virtualisation Don’t underestimate planning, commitment and upfront investment Address organisational challenges: internal business customers may envisage losing ownership of servers - benefits communication and buy-in is essential Plan to treat virtual servers the same as physical servers Planning must be completed tightly with networking and storage teams Pay specific attention to security and management Look at testing and administration environments first to gain experience and confidence before considering production systems Plan to control and manage virtual server “sprawl”

6. Identifying candidates for virtualisation? Understand and measure performance characteristics System Center Virtual Machine Manager Server management tools – MOM (or other) Windows PerfMon Avoid high I/O and CPU intensive systems Consider support on virtual platform of application vendor Balance with standard server consolidation in production Typically SQL Server better addressed by “farm” consolidation Exchange & AD servers scale! Evaluate host & guest clustering versus standard server clustering

7. The process of virtualisation Approach is generic (applicable to physical and virtual): Establish a baseline Rapid build – virtualisation allows copying VMs (VHD and VMC files) Configuration and refresh – automate (MSI packages and scripts) “ Safe State” the environment – virtualisation allows differencing disks Test automation (scripted) Consider Physical to Virtual (P2V) tools Microsoft VSMT, Microsoft SCVMM, Platespin, LeoStream Many pre-P2V tasks that must be completed prior to performing any migration – key step in all P2V work is planning In reality, you will have to do some work on a small percentage of your conversions due to the configurations on your source servers Remember the old saying, Junk in – Junk Out applies with P2V Often “new build” and data migration is the best approach

8. “ Gotchas” & hints for virtualisation Exclude VM files from Antivirus real time scans .vhd .vud .vsv .vfd .vmc The faster the disk, the faster the Virtual Environment Consider dedicated disks per VM Use multiple disks or ideally SAN storage Use NTFS compression for the files It seems writing a big chunk to disk is slower than first compressing the chunk and then write it to disk. Additionally the files are around 30% smaller on the hard disk /3GB should not be used on the host This setting increases the user memory space at the expense of Kernel space. Virtual machines use more kernel memory than user memory – so enabling this switch on the host will decrease the amount of virtual machines that you can laun ch

9. “ Gotchas” & hints continued VS 2005 runs smoother when selecting Best performance for “Background Services” and selecting Memory Settings to Optimize for “System Cache” Using Gigabit Ethernet network interface cards can improve overall performance Even though the guest OS emulates a 100Mb connection, when you have multiple VMs running, the performance increase will be noticeable Use D ifferencing disks Differencing disks offer the ability to create a base .vhd (including just an OS, for example), and then write all differences to a new virtual disk. The differencing disk might contain alternate applications or configurations. By doing this you can safe space

10. “ Gotchas” & hints continued Always make sure the latest Virtual Machine additions are installed Always have the VMs connected to a network – even if it is the “internal only” Use RDP to connect to your VMs You can copy and paste data into the virtual machine You can share data between your host and virtual machine directly You can share access to your host's printer The smaller (and less fragmented) the VHD files the faster In the VM run defrag Run the VM precompactor

11. “ Gotchas” & hints continued Create the VHD as fixed size disk The space is allocated as one big chunk – more fragments will slow down the system If you have to copy files from the host to the Guest, use the shared folders Copy with drag and drop is 50% slower & copy through network is only 16 % of the performance of shared folders Make sure the VMs have sufficient RAM allocated to them Typically the “working set” from the measured performance characteristics This avoids the need to swap too much memory as this is HD intensive

12. Case study: Allstate Problem: Allstate had ~ 3,500 servers The number of servers in its data centres was increasing quickly Vast majority of its servers were using less than 10% CPU Time required to acquire a new server was from six to eight weeks Virtual Server 2005 used for test & development environment: Improved h/w efficiency by reducing server growth and associated costs Reduced demand for more data centre floor space Increase server utilization to 35 to 50 percent during the peak shift Eliminated server acquisition time Reduced server operating system deployment times from between 1 to 3 hours, to 5 or 10 minutes Time savings increased administrator productivity http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=53154

13. Case study: Accenture Problem: Test a hosted service offering that included a new third-party desktop management application Engineers had four weeks to build the environments Neither purchasing nor leasing new servers/workstations was a cost-effective option as the systems were only required for a few months Virtual Server 2005 & Virtual PC 2004 environment: Virtual Server: Windows Server 2003/Windows 2000 Server for Active Directory & SQL Server 2000 Virtual PC: Windows NT Workstation 4.0/Windows 2000 Professional/ Windows XP Professional/Red Hat Linux Met goal ahead of schedule, enabling more extensive testing Significantly reduced its total cost of ownership (accelerated the setup of model environments by more than 200%, streamlined system administration, improved IT responsiveness with a smaller staff, and enabled more robust testing of products and service offerings) http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=1000004028