Eric Vanderburg gave a presentation on virtualization for competitive advantage. He discussed the benefits of virtualization including reducing hardware costs through server consolidation, increasing flexibility, and improving business continuity. Some challenges of virtualization include managing virtual machines at scale, ensuring performance when sharing resources, and securing systems in a virtualized environment. He provided examples of cost savings from power and cooling reductions after virtualizing servers.

1. Virtualization for Competitive
© Eric Vanderburg 2009
Advantage
Cleveland State University
March 13, 2009
Eric Vanderburg

2. About the Presenter
• Network Operations Manager at JurInnov, ltd.
• Adjunct Professor of CIS at LCCC
• Vatterott College Board Member
• Working on Doctorate in Information Assurance
• Over 15 vendor certifications
• Served as an expert witness
• 10+ years in IT
• Given presentations around the world
© Eric Vanderburg 2009

3. © Eric Vanderburg 2009
Overview
• Terminology
• Virtualization benefits
• Challenges
• Options

4. Terminology
• Virtual Machine – a computer that resides on
another operating system consuming a portion
of the available resources
• Hypervisor – Software that virtual machines run
on top of
• Virtualization ambiguity…
© Eric Vanderburg 2009

5. © Eric Vanderburg 2009
Why Virtualize
• Reduce costs
▫ Hardware
▫ Power (Enhances green initiatives)
▫ Rack space
• Increase agility
• Scale better
• Tap unused resources
• Business Continuity Management
• Recover Quicker

6. Hardware Sharing
Most datacenter servers are only 10-15% utilized. (IDC)
• More RAM than exists can be allocated so that
individual machines can “burst”
• Transparent page sharing – the hypervisor
stores only one copy of a duplicate file in the
host RAM.
• Virtual hard drives can be variable size
© Eric Vanderburg 2009

7. © Eric Vanderburg 2009
CAPEX and OPEX Savings
• According to VMWare virtualization…
▫ Increases server utilization by 80%
▫ Allows consolidation of servers at a 12:1 ratio
▫ Reduces datacenter space
▫ Servers can be deployed in hours rather than
weeks

8. © Eric Vanderburg 2009
Power and Cooling Savings
Before Virtualization After Virtualization
• 1 CPU 300 units 475 W
• 2 CPU 500 units 550 W
• 4 CPU 200 units 950 W
• 8 CPU 0 units 1600 W
• 200 racks or 4,700 sq ft
• $289,878 / year in power
• $362,348 / year in cooling
• 1 CPU 0 units 550 W
• 2 CPU 38 units 675 W
• 4 CPU 38 units 1150 W
• 8 CPU 4 units 1900 W
• 10 racks or 235 sq ft
• $36,718 / year in power
• $45,897 / year in cooling

9. Design and Simulation
• Non-production environment
• Variables can be changed on demand
• Machines can be saved “point-in-time”
• Scenarios can be built from templates
• Prototypes can be moved from site to site
electronically facilitating a distributed
workforce.
© Eric Vanderburg 2009

10. Training
• Mistakes can be rolled back
• Reduced setup time for new training
• Same hardware can be used for different tasks
• Students are free to try new things without
impacting other students
© Eric Vanderburg 2009

11. Flexibility and Economies of Scale
• Niche needs can be achieved by taking a small
piece of hardware in a larger system.
• The additive cost for each new machine
decreases since the software scales.
• Management machines can be reused
© Eric Vanderburg 2009

12. Eliminate Legacy Equipment
• Dynamically balance VMs
• Run different operating systems on the same
hardware
• Virtualize systems that are hard to support such
as AS/400 or DOS machines.
• Servers now run on more reliable hardware with
manufacturer support
© Eric Vanderburg 2009

13. Business Continuity Management
• Disaster recovery sites can be brought up much
faster
• Disaster recovery sites can utilize different
hardware to host the same virtualized systems
© Eric Vanderburg 2009

14. Challenges
44% who said they had deployed server virtualization
technology were unable to declare their deployment a success.
Inability to quantify ROI was a key factor in their reticence to
definitively claim positive results. (Information Week)
•Management
▫ It is easier to lose track of virtual machines when
virtualization is implemented at a large scale.
Procedures and controls, especially change
controls, are necessary to protect resources and
licensing.
▫ Viewing virtual machines as free
▫ Employing experienced virtualization
professionals
© Eric Vanderburg 2009

15. © Eric Vanderburg 2009
Challenges
• Technical
▫ Servers need to be prioritized and balanced
▫ VLAN management crosses hardware (switches, routers)
and software (Hypervisors)
▫ Shared storage is necessary
▫ “The single largest outlay for virtualization is shared storage”
(Java World)
• Security and Risk
▫ Consolidation of resources also increases the impact of
resource unavailability
▫ Virtual machines could be transferred
 Secure  less secure - less secure hypervisor giving
unauthorized access
 Less secure  secure – backdoors, viruses, or lax machine
policies existing in a secure site
▫ Hypervisors make tempting targets

16. © Eric Vanderburg 2009
Products
• VMWare ESX
▫ Offers Vmotion to move machines between servers
▫ Single software application for all VM tools – virtual center
▫ Mature product (10 years)
• Microsoft Hyper-V
▫ Server 2008 with Hyper-V has a larger HCL
▫ Requires 3rd party replication to do VM failover
▫ Better than previous Virtual Server platforms because Server 2008 can
run in core mode using fewer resources
• Xen (open source)
▫ Flexible HCL on top of Linux
▫ Complex to administer
• Parallels for Mac OSX
• Virtual PC
• FastScale Composer – lifecycle management for VMs, prompts
when a machine is about to expire, tracks usage, reporting…

17. © Eric Vanderburg 2009
Contact info
evanderburg@gmail.com
http://scholarlyportal.com
http://www.jurinnov.com