virtualization.info Editors

The toolkit supports migration of Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 systems to virtual machines running on Virtual Server 2005. According to Microsoft, the toolkit will also support the movement of operating systems and applications running in other virtual machine environments to Virtual Server 2005.

The problem: Under moderate server loads, users of Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server, Microsoft Terminal Server and VMware frequently experience poor response times, extended log-in periods, protracted screen-refreshes, and very slow print queues. Under heavy loads, application loading can increase to minutes instead of seconds, SQL queries and other compute- and data-intensive operations can lengthen to the point where the process must be killed for lack of responsiveness. The result is increased user frustration, decreased user productivity. And more calls to system administrators.

Context switching and disk thrashing: As increased demands are placed on system resources – particularly storage resources – context switching rates can quickly rise above healthy levels. At very high rates, less work is actually being accomplished. This is because threads and processes are increasingly unable to access the resources they require, so the operating system must switch many times from one waiting thread or process to another until it finds one with available resources. This condition is frequently accompanied with high levels of disk thrashing.

The solution: SuperCache mitigates this problem. SuperCache inserts itself into the disk I/O path at the block level, and caches the most active blocks of data on the logical disks selected. With the deferred-writing feature enabled, SuperCache dramatically improves the effectiveness of each context switch, greatly enhancing server responsiveness, resulting in a much more satisfying and productive user experience.

We’re taking the same approach with this book that we have with our previous Citrix and Terminal Server books. VMWare ESX Server: Advanced Technical Design Guide will be a real-world architectural field guide that shows you how to design VMWare ESX environments. It will not be a re-hash of the instruction manual, and it will not be filled with screenshots.

It will follow the look and feel of our past books, including the bulleted lists of advantages and disadvantages for each design point.

The book will be available in April 2005. A preview chapter is now available for download. We’ve chosen “Chapter 5: Designing the Guest Environment” as the preview chapter. This huge chapter goes into all the details you need to understand to design a guest environment, including master installation, ISO management, virtual machine networking, controlling resource usage, managing DSK files, and virtual machine deployment.

We’ll bring more chapters online over the next several months. At this point, the final book’s table of contents will look something like this:

Section 1. Introduction to ESX Server
1. VMware Overview
2. ESX Architectural Overview
3. VMware ESX Implementation

Section 2. Infrastructure Design
4. Network and Storage Strategies
5. Designing the Guest Environment
6. Managing the server (Console OS and MUI)

The Leostream VMC is a software application that provides centralized management and control of “virtual machine” software available from market leaders VMware Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. and Microsoft of Redmond, WA.

Virtual Machine software carves up large multi-processor servers and divides it into individual and multiple computing units, or “virtual” servers, hence allowing multiple copies of Windows(R) or Linux(R) operating systems to be run simultaneously, and independently, on the same Intel-powered server.

Storage Area Networks (SANs) do an analogous job for computer disk storage – a large pool of storage can be split up into a number of “virtual” disk drives and shared between the servers attached to that SAN.

The Leostream VMC SAN Edition is the first shipping product to integrate the management of Virtual Servers with Virtual Storage in a low cost and easy to use system.

It extends Leostream’s existing Virtual Machine management functionality (management, reporting, and access control) to include a unified view of the virtual storage as opposed to the myopic view of the individual servers.

In addition, it enables “SAN clustering” where a number of servers running virtual machine software are attached to a common SAN in such a way that the hardware failure of one server automatically results in the affected Virtual Machines automatically “failed-over” and restarted on another server in the cluster with the minimum of downtime. Without Leostream the failure of one server can affect 20 or more virtual servers. With Leostream the affected Virtual Machines are quickly rebooted on new hardware, significantly mitigating the effect of hardware failure.

“We designed our SAN solution from the ground up for a virtual machine world. With suitable SANs we can even fail over virtual machines running in one building to a host system running in a building several miles away,” said David Crosbie, Leostream CEO.

Pricing & Availability

VMware virtual infrastructure enables companies to reduce their IT infrastructure costs by virtualizing computing, storage and networking and managing it centrally. The company’s virtual infrastructure software creates a single pool of computing, storage and networking resources that can be re- allocated to workloads as business needs change.

BMC Software is working with VMware Virtual Infrastructure API’s to deliver BSM solutions such as enterprise-class tools for capacity management that enable VMware customers to allocate server capacity based on business needs. BMC Software is also working to associate VMware virtual infrastructure directly with business services via PATROL management. BSM directly benefits VMware customers by enabling them to better align virtualized resources with business objectives. VMware solutions directly map to BMC Software’s Capacity Management and Provisioning Route to Value (RTVs). Capacity Management and Provisioning is one of eight of BMC Software’s RTVs, which are methods for quickly implementing BSM solutions.

“BMC Software has more than 20 years’ experience in virtualized performance management, bringing a level of expertise to VMware management that is unmatched in the industry,” said Mary Smars, vice president and general manager, Distributed Systems Management, BMC Software. “With the management depth we offer with our PATROL solutions, BMC provides customers with a comprehensive approach to maximizing their VMware environments, resulting in lowering their cost of operations and increasing their IT efficiency and ultimately their business success.”

“As the market leader in virtual infrastructure software, VMware welcomes the availability of BMC Software’s respected production support tools such as PATROL Performance Assurance and PATROL management for VMware virtual infrastructure. Together, we provide customers managing mission-critical environments with a powerful solution for gaining complete control over their virtual infrastructure,” said Brian Byun, vice president of alliances at VMware. “Our relationship with BMC Software promises to enable customers to lower IT costs and demonstrate the contribution of IT to the overall success of the business.”

New PATROL Solutions Add Intelligence and Speed to Dynamic Provisioning Efforts

BMC Software is delivering comprehensive management solutions for VMware virtual infrastructure software, including monitoring, capacity management and optimization, with the introduction of PATROL Performance Assurance for Virtual Servers and PATROL for Virtual Servers. BMC Software’s PATROL Performance Assurance solutions offer capacity management and analysis tools that enable companies to better understand and manage the performance of their IT infrastructure and the business services that execute across the infrastructure. PATROL Performance Assurance for Virtual Servers offers comprehensive performance analysis and sizing support for VMware software deployments. The solution helps to determine which servers can be virtualized as well as how to ensure optimal performance, response time and throughput of business services on virtual infrastructure when deployed in daily production environments.

Through BMC Software’s exclusive methodology, customers can profile the application assets and their resource requirements on current systems and test VMware deployment scenarios before implementation. In production, PATROL Performance Assurance for Virtual Servers gives customers the ability to view historical trends and exceptions to identify and resolve resource issues before they affect users. IT also can publish daily performance charts to business users, including detailed application views to allay concerns about application responsiveness on virtual infrastructure. PATROL Performance Assurance for Virtual Servers will be available with PATROL Performance Assurance version 7.2, which will be generally available in October. PATROL Performance Assurance 7.2 is a significant upgrade that also extends BMC Software’s application and database support with the addition of analytic tools and predictive modeling for applications that run on IBM’s DB2 UDB or Microsoft SQL Server database environments.

Today, BMC Software is also announcing PATROL for Virtual Servers, which provides real-time management of the VMware virtual infrastructure, generating events when critical availability and performance thresholds are exceeded. The native intelligence in BMC Software’s PATROL solutions, based on the company’s strong partner relationships and enterprise-wide solutions, helps customers improve productivity by minimizing errors and downtime, improve performance and customer service by proactively managing service levels, and reduce costs by maximizing existing resources.

“As a VMware Technology Software Alliance partner, we look forward to participating in this conference and having the opportunity to show how Troika’s virtualization software and volume management solutions can benefit and integrate with VMware’s virtual infrastructure software products,” said Steve O’Brian, vice president marketing, Troika Networks.

Troika’s storage virtualization solution extends VMware’s virtual infrastructure software by adding full Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (SAN) virtualization capabilities through Troika’s Accelera Network Storage Services Platform. As a result, administrators will be able to create and provision any-sized storage from a common storage pool at the same time they are creating and provisioning virtual storage servers.

The integrated Troika and VMware solution leverages software from StoreAge Networking Technologies. The Troika Accelera/StoreAge SVM storage virtualization solution features a full set of data management tools, including snapshot, mirroring and replication functions, which provides users with a comprehensive set of business continuity tools that run in a heterogeneous environment. The solution is ideal for VMware environments, and supports high availability configurations for increased uptime and reliability. The generally available solution is now shipping globally to end users, and has been deployed at multiple customer sites in both the U.S. and across Europe.

PlateSpin’s flagship conversion product, PowerP2V?, accelerates VMware virtual infrastructure deployments by automating the process of converting between physical servers and virtual machines, saving tremendous amounts of time and lowering the risk for server consolidation, test lab deployment and high availability projects. PlateSpin?s innovative conversion technology supports the migration of Windows and Linux based servers to VMware virtual infrastructure hosts. PowerP2V fully automates the process of performing physical-to-virtual (P2V) migrations without requiring users to install software agents, which allows users to remotely execute and monitor migration projects without requiring any physical contact with data center servers.

“We are very excited to be an official technology software alliance partner of VMware.” said Stephen Pollack, CEO of PlateSpin Ltd. “The partnership will give VMware customers the ability to convert large numbers of physical servers to virtual machines quickly and easily, enhancing the ability for the data center to evolve rapidly to the virtual infrastructure paradigm.”

?PlateSpin?s solutions allow us to provide extremely high value services to customers.? Said Sean Shea, Virtualization Specialist at Expert Server Group. ?We use PowerP2V as a solution to assess server inventory and automate conversions for our customers.?

?As a customer of VMware and PlateSpin, we are excited to see both companies working closely together through the VMware technology alliance program.? said John Lamb, Systems Engineer of Pearson Education. ?Currently, we are using PlateSpin?s automated server conversion technology to further leverage the capabilities of our VMware virtual infrastructure; and in the future, we are looking forward to continued innovation from both companies.?