This document discusses how infrastructure virtualization can benefit disaster recovery (DR), high availability (HA), server consolidation, and testing/development. For DR, virtualization allows backups to be performed efficiently from snapshots without impacting production servers. For HA, virtual machines can be migrated seamlessly between host servers in the case of failure. Server consolidation maximizes hardware utilization reducing costs. For testing, a virtual infrastructure provides isolated virtual environments that accelerate development cycles.

1. Infrastructure VirtualizationOverview of Server and Infrastructure Virtualization.How and where can Sentrana benefit? Bryan RandolIT/Systems Manager1

2. I. Virtualization’s history and basic concepts...II. Industry adoption and application of virtualization...2Infrastructure Virtualization: Discussion OutlineIII. Area’s within an infrastructure that can benefit from virtualization...IV. Summary/Questions/Comments

3. 3Infrastructure Virtualization: Brief History & Terminology“Virtualization”Term was coined in the 1960’s by IBM referring to a pseudo or “virtual” machine used to partition a large mainframe into smaller virtual machines.

4. Creation and management of virtual machines is called platform virtualization or “server virtualization”

5. Enables IT administrators to create several virtual machines (servers) on a single host.

6. A software control program called a “hypervisor” creates an abstraction layer, decoupling the physical resources on the host from the virtual machines installed above.

7. Operating systems installed within virtual machines are referred to as “guests”.

8. Guests run within their virtual machines as they would on normal stand-alone hardware.Infrastructure Virtualization: Core ConceptsApplications and ServicesGuest Operating SystemsVirtual Machines (VMs) created.Software Control Program (“Hypervisor”)Physical Server Resources (Host)[CPU, Memory, Network card, Disks]4VMs are software containers for operating systems and software applications.

9. VMs are isolated from one another as if physically separated.

10. VMs are hardware independent and highly portable, relying only on a compatible hypervisor to run them.5Infrastructure Virtualization: Industry Adoption

11. 6Infrastructure Virtualization: Industry ApplicationTraditional Hardware ScalingEvery new software application requires a new server...”server sprawl”.Each new physical server compounds the costs of cooling, powering, storing/hosting, and administering the infrastructure.Physical servers are rarely above 19% utilization...Slow IT response time to organizational needs...

12. 7Infrastructure Virtualization: Industry ApplicationVirtualized Hardware Scaling (Server Consolidation)A single physical server can host several guest servers...general rule of thumb is 2 VMs to each CPU (or Core)... [e.g. - a Dual Quad Core server can virtualize up to 16 hosts]ROI of physical servers is increased as utilization is maximized...target is 60-80% utilization per ser physical server.Total cost of ownership (TCO) is reduced throughout the infrastructure...Drastically increases an organization’s IT growth potential...less power, space, and maintenance.Rapid IT response, less time spent deploying and recovering systems.

13. 8Infrastructure Virtualization: Industry ApplicationServer Consolidation Case StudyAnonymousUS Insurance CompanySource: “Bitpipe.com”

14. 9Infrastructure Virtualization: Types1. Full Virtualization (e.g. “VMware Workstation”)Full virtualization allows the use of unmodified guests within isolated virtual machines...these guests can still execute privileged operations as though they’re running directly in ring0 on the host’s processor...giving them the illusion that they’re running on a physical machine.Guests are unaware of each other, unless through virtual networking...“Independent” virtualization... VMware Workstation is a good example.

15. Infrastructure Virtualization: Types2. Para Virtualization (e.g. “Xen”)Each guest has an operating system modification replacing their need to run in ring0 with system calls (referred to as “hypercalls”) to the hypervisor.... giving the hypervisor the ability to perform scheduling tasks on behalf of the guests.10Performance is near native speed.Cohesive virtualization.... Open Source Hosts only. (Linux or BSD variants)

16. Infrastructure Virtualization: ProductsVMware used to monopolize the virtualization market, however, in recent years, several companies and open source initiatives have taken a foothold in the virtualization market: FreeVPS

17. Microsoft Virtual Server

18. Parallels

19. Qemu

20. SWSoft

21. Virtual Iron

22. Virtuozzo

23. Xen

24. VMware Workstation

25. VMware ESX Server11

26. 12Infrastructure Virtualization: Sample Vendor SuiteVMware’s Datacenter ProductsVMware Infrastructure (VI)ESX ServerVMware High Availability (HA)VMware VMotionVMware Consolidated Backup (VCB)VMware’s vCenter Lab Manager

27. Infrastructure Virtualization: VMware ESX ServerVMware ESX Server is unique, in that it’s a “bare metal” hypervisor, meaning it installs directly on top of the host server’s hardware, without requiring a conventional host operating system. ESX Server is the product of choice in most server virtualization solutions.ESX Server has an exceptionally small resource footprint on the overall hosting platform.ESX Server is Red Hat Enterprise Linux containing a “microkernel” serving as the hypervisor.Hardware vendors such as DELL and EMC typically bundle ESX with their storage devices and servers, making it relatively inexpensive and highly supported.13

28. Infrastructure Virtualization: Disaster Recovery ImpactDisaster RecoveryVirtualized backup strategies improve DR strategy by eliminating excess hardware, utilizing faster (and redundant) direct access storage media, and offloading traffic from the data network.Traditional physical server tape backups require components and software agents that ultimately backup data onto slow error-prone tapes.... these components include:Host adapter on the backup server and available network bandwidth to each server being backed up.

29. Tape library/drive... Single tape drives cost as low as $350, libraries cost literally thousands... both become obsolete fairly quickly.

30. Tapes (costly and slow, sequentially accessed media)... Tapes are notoriously prone to error and can cost $50-100/each. Backup Software with complex and costly licensing, typically with agents for each specific server type (e.g. SQL Server Agent, Exchange Server Agent, etc.) 14

31. 15Infrastructure Virtualization: Disaster Recovery ImpactVirtualized infrastructure backups offer many benefits over traditional tape backups for protecting virtual machines:Backup proxy server offloads backup demands from the production host server and installed guests.

32. Virtual machines are encapsulated into software files that are easy to copy, clone, and backup & recover.

33. Backup traffic on the local area network is eliminated. Traffic is on SAN fabric only.

34. Backups are performed on server snapshots not the actual system...thereby eliminating backup overhead on production servers.

35. Integrated with major 3rd party backup products that have specialized API’s.

36. High AvailabilityWhat are your recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTOs and RPOs)?16Infrastructure Virtualization: High Availability BenefitsIT Service Levels are directly impacted by the ability to rapidly respond to or prevent service outages.How soon (Recovery Time Objective)?How current (Recovery Point Objective)?

37. 17Infrastructure Virtualization: Ideal HA DeploymentIn a properly configured HA virtualized infrastructure, if any physical host server goes down, all of the virtual machines that were on it will migrate automatically (while still running) to a failover host within the virtualization resource pool and resume there. There is no outage, users don’t notice the migration from host to host...Virtual disks (data) are stored on SANs, with redundant access points, disks, and power sources.Redundant network access through a switched fabric.Virtual machines are independent of hosts.VMotion allows for transparent VM failover between hosts.Application Uptime IncreasesDemanding high availability of services and applications.

38. 18Infrastructure Virtualization: Benefits to Testing/R&DVirtualized Testing and DevelopmentVirtual Lab Features: Creates a pool of virtualized test servers...Automatic and rapid setup and tear down of complex multi-machine configurations for testing scenarios.Gives every engineer the equivalent of their own fully equipped data center...Maintains a library of customer and production system environments...IT Benefits:Accelerated software development cycles...Reduces provisioning time/costs by over 50%...Removes the repetitive support burden from IT...Maintains a historical record of builds and test scenarios for future improvements...

39. Infrastructure Virtualization: SummaryI. Disaster Recovery (DR):Having a virtualized infrastructure makes it possible to offload the demanding backup processes from production servers onto a backup proxy. Production systems are never touched by the backup processes, only their snapshots, which are on a shared SAN. The snapshots are mounted by the backup proxy server and then backed up across the SAN as though the snapshots were actual live systems. Recovery is as simple as copying a folder from one SAN to the other.II. High Availability (HA):A virtual infrastructure can dramatically increase service levels and availability by allowing virtual servers to be migrated (while still running) across host servers as needed. Users on properly configured highly available VMs rarely experience service outages.III. Server Consolidation:Server virtualization can drastically reduce “server sprawl” while proportionately increasing the efficiency of physical servers used for hosting. ROI is increased on each physical virtual host server by making full use of its idle resources, maximizing the use of hardware investments while simultaneously driving down the infrastructure’s TCO.IV. Testing and Development:A virtual infrastructure allows administrators to create virtual labs that are specific to engineer’s testing and development needs. Each engineer can be given their own “virtual datacenter” (playground) with the same configuration and state as a production infrastructure, allowing them to test various scenarios and software versions without touching the production environment.19

40. 20Infrastructure Virtualization: References“Platform Virtualization” ,Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_virtualization2. “Leveraging virtualization to optimize high-availability system configurations.” S. Loveland, E. M. Dow,F. LeFevre, D. Beyer, P. F. Chan. October 2008. http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/sj/474/loveland.pdfVarious images were borrowed from “Google Images”.http://images.google.com4. “Industry experience!” Bryan Randol. Circa 1997-2009.