Archive for category ESX
Webcast: Re-architecting Backup and Recovery for Virtual Environments
I recorded a webcast today on the subject of best practices for re-architecting backup and recovery for virtual environments. If you’re interested, you can view the webcast below, or click here to view the webcast in a separate window.
Upcoming Webcast: Hypervisor Competitive Differences
If you missed our latest presentation on hypervisor competitive differences with regards to our evaluation criteria, you can see it for free next week at IT Virtualization Live. The webcast will run Tuesday September 15th at 12:30 ET. To see it, you can register here. The webcast will show our complete evaluation criteria list, and detail how vSphere 4.0, XenServer 5.5, and Hyper-V R2 stack up. The webcast also includes a series of tables that outline side-by-side comparisons between each hypervisor. If you’re interested, here is the webcast abstract.
Hypervisor Competitive Differences: What the Vendors Aren’t Telling You
You mean there are differences between the hypervisors from Microsoft, Citrix, VMware, and others? Of course, and making the right decisions about which to implement are critical for your virtualization success! In this session, analyst Chris Wolf dissects the competitive differences that exist with today’s leading hypervisors, with a special focus on the under-the-hood features that don’t make it onto vendor data sheets. Attendees of this session will see firsthand the differences that exist with all major virtualization hypervisor vendors (e.g. VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, and Virtual Iron) and will leave with a list of pointed questions to ask prospective hypervisor vendors regarding their current solutions and future plans.
Thoughts on the VMworld Day 2 Keynote
Posted by Chris in Cloud, Desktop Virtualization, ESX, Network Virtualization, Security, Server Virtualization, VMware, VMware CVP on September 3rd, 2009
I was very impressed by the information disseminated in the second VMworld keynote, led by CTO Steve Herrod. Here’s a summary of the thoughts I tweeted during the morning keynote (in chronological order).
- Steve Herrod talked about a “people centric” approach. VMware’s technology needs to understand desktop user behavior. The existing offline VDI model (requiring a manual “check-out”) is not people centric.
- VMware’s announcement to OEM RTO Software’s Virtual Profiles was a good move. Burton Group considers profile virtualization a required element of enterprise desktop virtualization architecture.
- VMware’s Steve Herrod and Mike Coleman discussed VMware’s software-based PC-over-IP (PCoIP) protocol. Feedback from Burton Group clients who were early PCoIP beta testers indicates that the protocol’s development is progressing well.
- Herrod showed a picture of “hosted virtualization” for employee owned PCs on a MacBook. Is that a hint of a forthcoming announcement?
- I would like to know if VMware’s Type I CVP client hypervisor will have VMsafe-like support in the 1.0 release. VMware has made few public statements regarding CVP architecture.
- VMware’s CVP demo looked good, but it didn’t reach the “wow factor” achieved by Citrix when Citrix demoed a type I client hypervisor on a Mac at their Synergy conference.
- The Wyse PocketCloud demonstration was impressive. PocketCloud is VMware’s first answer to the Citrix Receiver for iPhone.
- VMware demonstrated the execution of a Google Android application on a Windows Mobile-based smart phone. Many opportunities exist for VMware and Google to collaborate in the user service and application delivery space.
- Burton Group client experience backs VMware’s claims that vSphere 4.0 is a suitable platform for tier 1 applications. We recommend that x86 virtualization be the default platform for all newly deployed x86 applications, unless an application owner can justify why physical hardware is required (e.g., for a proprietary interface that is unsupported by virtualization).
- To support tier 1 application dynamic load balancing, storage and network I/O must be included in the DRS VM placement calculations. It’s good to see that VMware is heading in that direction. DRS will also need to evaluate non-performance metrics such as vShield Zone membership as part of the VM placement metric (no word on this yet).
- I would like to hear more from folks who have tested AppSpeed. Burton Group clients I have spoken with to date have not been impressed.
- The DMTF needs to start doing more to evangelize the role of OVF as it pertains to cloud computing and service manifests.
- I like vSphere’s VMsafe security API, but I want to see tighter integration with external management (exposed via the SDK), and better integration with VMware’s DRS and DPM services.
- VMware talked about Lab Manager as a tool to promote user self-service for server VMs and applications, but I haven’t heard mention of a similar interface for desktop applications (like Citrix Dazzle). A user application service catalog is a missing part of VMware’s current virtual desktop architecture, and will need to be addressed by either VMware or a third party.
- The data center on the show floor running 37,248 VMs on 776 physical servers would be more impressive if VMware disclosed the applications running on the VMs, along with the application workloads. Otherwise, the demonstration is really just a density science project.
- I liked VMware’s coverage of virtual data centers. They are also defined in Burton Group’s internal cloud hardware infrastructure as a service (HIaaS) reference architecture.
- Herrod mentioned forthcoming network L3 improvements that will make it easier to separate location and identity. This is something to follow.
- Both Cisco and F5 are enablers for VMware’s long distance VMotion and are vendors to follow as this technology further matures.
- VMware’s cloud layered architecture is very similar to the architecture defined in the Drue Reeves’ report “Cloud Computing: Transforming IT.”
- Herrod did a great job articulating the importance of SpringSource to the VMware software solution. VMware needs an application platform to have a chance at holding off Microsoft long term, and SpringSource gives them that.
That’s it for my thoughts on day 2. As always, I’d love to hear your feedback. VMworld 2009 was a great conference. I enjoyed my time meeting with Burton Group clients as well as the several conversations that I had with many attendees. See you next year!
Catalyst Server Virtualization Wrap-up Part I
After taking the weekend to catch my breath and get some much needed rest, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the highlights from last week’s Catalyst North America conference. I’d like to start with recaps of last week’s opening day cloud and virtualization sessions.
Wednesday AM – Defining the Cloud
Drue Reeves chaired the Wednesday morning cloud track and offered his thoughts on the morning here. The morning offered some very interesting perspectives from early cloud adopters International Hotels Group and Eli Lilly. Later in the morning, Drue challenged Peter Coffee, Director of Platform Research at Salesforce.com, on the fact that Salesforce.com does not offer customers an SLA. I received feedback from many clients who were glad that Drue asked the question. Peter indicated that Salesforce.com has thrived in spite of not offering an SLA, and it’s hard to argue with their success. However, I don’t know of many Burton Group clients who will consider putting production workloads on cloud-based infrastructure as a service solutions without an SLA. Amazon – I hope you’re listening. Speaking of service providers, I found the announcement from VMware’s Raghu Raghuram that VMware now has over 700 service providers on board to be impressive. None of VMware’s competitors are anywhere near that number. Sure – it’s very early in the public cloud era (too early for most of our clients to put production resources on it due to security/compliance concerns), but it’s clear that VMware is being very aggressive. I’m curious to see how many VMware service provider partners are locked into exclusive agreements with VMware, as that may impact Microsoft and Citrix’s ability to rival VMware when it comes to provider choice.
Wednesday PM – Server Virtualization: The Foundation for Cloud Infrastructure
The afternoon track focused on server virtualization topics as they relate to public and private cloud infrastructures. During my opening keynote, I highlighted the following points:
- The time to rework business processes to support a service-oriented model for IT service delivery (i.e., internal cloud) is right now. IT must own the physical infrastructure assets and offer them as a service. In 5-10 years, public cloud providers will compete against internal IT for the rights to host business applications. IT organizations that do not build out a service delivery model may find themselves like many US factory workers, and be faced with the realities of unemployment.
- Improvements in x86 hardware (e.g., hardware-assisted memory virtualization) are allowing most top tier x86 applications to successfully run in VMs. Application owners should now have to justify why an app cannot run in a VM, instead of the other way around.
- Tools that can fully visualize the data path are important for application troubleshooting as well as security/compliance auditing and enforcement. End-to-end (i.e. network and storage) views remain a challenge today, and additive virtualization layers (e.g., storage, network, and I/O) can further complicate visualization efforts.
- Development practices need to evolve so that applications can leverage dynamically allocated resources within the virtual infrastructure. Sure, unaltered apps run in the virtual infrastructure, but they could run more efficiently (more on that shortly).
- Burton Group is working with several vendors and end user organizations to build reference architecture models for internal cloud. You can see a preview of the initial work here.
Mark Templeton (CEO, Citrix)
Mark Templeton (Citrix CEO) followed my presentation by sharing his vision of cloud-based infrastructure. Templeton spent considerable time outlining how IT organizations must move to a service-oriented model. IT creates and advertises services. Users and business units purchase them (like ordering a channel package or pay-per-view movie). Templeton made a great point when he stated that to improve IT efficiency and reliability, you need to eliminate parts. According to Templeton, IT service delivery should have the following characteristics:
- Any-to-any, secure when needed
- Device, network & content independence
- Self-service desktop & app provisioning
- Elastic service capacity & infrastructure
- Consumption-based, variable costs
During the Q&A, an attendee asked Templeton about XenClient (Citrix’s bare metal client hypervisor) on a Mac. Templeton’s response – “Ask me again by the end of the year.” Templeton hinting that Apple is ready to support a Mac client hypervisor with the ability to run Mac and Windows OSs side-by-side is very big news. If Citrix gets the client hypervisor on Mac (and VMware doesn’t), it could tip the scales for desktop virtualization dominance in Citrix’s direction. Citrix hinted at much of its Mac strategy at their Synergy conference, and I’m looking forward to hearing what VMware has to say at VMworld.
Matt Lavallee (Director of Technology, MLS Property Information Network)
Matt Lavallee followed Templeton and provided a great amount of detail on his multi-site Hyper-V implementation. Lavallee is using iSCSI over 10GbE using software initiators using 802.3ad NIC teaming, and orchestrating management activities using System Center Operations Manager.
That’s it for Part I. In the second part of my server virtualization recap, I discuss “The Thrilla in California,” Mark Russinovich’s thoughts on new development trends, and hypervisor competitive differences.
Catalyst Server Virtualization Wrap-up Part II
In the second part of my Catalyst server virtualization coverage wrap-up, I reflect on three sessions:
- Mark Russinovich – New Trends in Application and OS Development for Virtual Environments
- Simon Crosby and Scott Drummond – The Thrilla in California
- Richard Jones and Chris Wolf – Hypervisor Competitive Differences
Mark Russinovich (Technical Fellow, Microsoft)
Mark Russinovich spoke about the importance for developers to understand the nuances of virtualization and to write code capable of taking advantage of virtualization’s dynamic resource management capabilities. He specifically made the following recommendations:
- Applications must be able to adapt
- Avoid relying on hypervisor services that expose underlying physical hardware or topology
- Use operating system notification services to monitor changes to I/O, memory and CPUs
- Separate state to enable composition scenarios
- Operating systems must adapt
- Leverage hypervisor services to enable dynamic resource assignment
- Enable virtual disk as both physical and virtual image format
- Management tools must adapt
- Include system load balancing, migration, and dynamic resource allocation policies
I’ve been pressing clients for months to use RFPs to press software vendors on how their applications support dynamic resource add (without a restart, of course). I asked Mark about Microsoft offering a best practices guide for developers on MSDN, and he said this was something they would look into. MSDN already has good information on Large Page Support, a feature that when leveraged by the application, can significantly improve memory performance on platforms that support Intel EPT or AMD RVI.
The Thrilla in California (Simon Crosby – Citrix, and Scott Drummonds – VMware)
Many at the conference called this debate their personal conference highlight, and you can view it online if you missed it. There were plenty of sound bites in the debate, including this one by Scott Drummonds -
“You guys aren’t even benchmarking your own product. Why are you going to benchmark ours?”
When talking about Project Virtual Reality Check’s benchmark results and VMware’s benchmark requirements, Simon noted -
“That methodology that Scott has espoused basically prohibits the notion of the legitimacy of that result.”
I have watched the replay three times and still have a hard time declaring a winner. I liked the factual data presented by Scott and his advice on leveraging industry standard benchmarks to assess workloads for applications such as Exchange, Oracle, Apache, and SQL Server. However, a couple of attendees commented that they were surprised that Scott would compare VMware to Oracle when defending VMware’s EULA restrictions on public benchmarking. Many attendees voiced displeasure over Oracle licensing and support for virtual environments while at the conference. Simon’s point that user experience is what matters most is also true, but you need quantitative methods to measure something that can be very subjective. That’s why I have been a fan of Project VRC. I’d like to see VMware address their issues with Project VRC so that we’ll have at least one independent standard we can use (albeit for virtual desktop and terminal services workloads) before the SPEC Virtualization benchmark is released. VMware has done a very good job showing performance results of enterprise apps (e.g., Exchange and Oracle) on VMware infrastructure, while providing a community to share best practices. I’d like to see something similar from the folks at Citrix.
There was considerable coverage of the debate in the blogosphere, and you can read additional perspectives in these posts:
- Drummonds vs. Crosby on Virtualization Performance
- The Thrilla in California: Citrix Dukes it out with VMware over Virtualization Performance and VMware’s EULA
- VMware/Citrix Hypervisor Performance Ding Dong
- Citrix and VMware Debate Hypervisor Performance at Catalyst – VIDEO
- FIGHT: VMware vs Citrix
- VMware vs Citrix @ Burton Group Catalyst event
- Hypervisor Performance Debate – VMware versus Citrix
- Debate between Simon Crosby (Citrix) and Scott Drummonds (VMware)
- Drummonds vs Crosby
Hypervisor Competitive Differences (Richard Jones and Chris Wolf)
Richard and I wrapped up the day with a talk about hypervisor competitive differences. We received some great feedback following the debate and are incorporating it into our upcoming competitive differences presentation at VMworld North America. Attendees were most interested in hearing about competitive differences between VMware, Citrix, and Microsoft server virtualization platforms. VMware and Citrix offer solutions that meet 100% of our requirements, and at VMworld we’ll be going deep on the small differences that exist between features that may appear similar on the surface. If you’ll be at VMworld in a few weeks, I recommend signing up for session TA2400, which is Tuesday September 1st at 4:00.
Thanks to all of the attendees for sharing your insights throughout the week. The next Catalyst conference will be in Prague in April 2010. Strong client participation helped make Catalyst North America a huge success. If you have suggestions for Prague or future conferences, please let us know.
Thrilla in California Video Now Online
The Thrilla in California debate lived up to the hype. You can view the video and read a more detailed description on Burton Group’s Data Center Strategies blog. Please go there to vote for the winner!
GPL Hyper-V Paravirtualized Drivers and Industry Next Steps
Yesterday Microsoft announced what I believe was a brilliant move – Hyper-V paravirtualized drivers (Microsoft calls them Integration Components) released under GPL 2.0. This announcement reflects Microsoft’s long term Linux strategy, in my opinion, and is the first step toward positioning Hyper-V as a platform for hosting Linux workloads. Getting Hyper-V paravirtualized device drivers in the mainline Linux kernel will simplify deployment of Linux-based VMs on the Hyper-V platform in coming years. In the short term, it’s important for Microsoft’s key partners (Novell and Red Hat) to backport the paravirtualilzed drivers so that their currently shipping Linux distros will run more efficiently on Hyper-V. Given Microsoft’s close partnerships with Novell and Red Hat, I see SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10/11 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 support as foregone conclusions.
With this move, I think that Microsoft has acknowledged that Linux is here to stay, and has provided additional momentum to the growing number of Linux-based VM appliances. A growth in Linux-based VM appliances benefits everyone, including the Linux community and VMware (who hosts the Virtual Appliance Marketplace). Microsoft still has more work to do on this Linux front. Open sourcing Hyper-V paravirtualized drivers was a great first step. Next up, I would like to see Microsoft support Linux VMs with multiple virtual CPUs on Hyper-V. This opens the door for Microsoft to tout Hyper-V as a platform for production-class Linux workloads.
To take this a step further, let’s turn back the clock to October 2008. At Catalyst Europe, I asked Steve Herrod and Ian Pratt about VMware and Citrix collaborating on an exchange of device driver libraries to further reduce VM compatibility issues between hypervisors, and both agreed to continue the conversation (more details here). Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V share device driver libraries and include the driver libraries for each platform as part of their paravirtualized driver installation (i.e., XenServer Tools and Hyper-V Integration Components). With Microsoft releasing Hyper-V paravirtualized Linux drivers, I think it’s a good time to revisit the idea of an open source driver framework that supports the core paravirtualized driver libraries of each major hypervisor platform (ESX, Xen, Hyper-V, and KVM). Sure, we’ll need a community/standards body (or whatever you want to call it) to manage driver library updates, but I can’t see why it isn’t possible. Such collaboration would make life easier for everyone. Imagine being able to run a few tests on one of your VMs “in the cloud,” and not having to care what the hypervisor is. Isn’t that what cloud’s supposed to be about anyway? Here’s my service level and security requirements. Can you give me the service I need?
Yes I understand that my cloud analogy is overly simplistic and there will always be some benefits to having a consistent virtual infrastructure both internally and with external providers. Still there are times when such consistency isn’t needed, and that’s why shared driver libraries make a lot of sense (besides removing another barrier to vendor lock-in). VM configuration metadata is addressed with Open Virtualization Format (OVF). From a technology perspective, nothing is preventing collaboration on a common VM device driver framework and shared driver libraries (that is something I’d love to see in the mainline Linux kernel). And finally, hypervisor vendor support for both .vmdk and .vhd virtual hard disk formats is the last major hurdle blocking VM compatibility (without the necessary conversions) between hypervisors. Vendors – let’s not talk about cloud openness, open architectures, etc. Let’s do something about it. Microsoft made a great move yesterday. Next I’d like to see collaboration between all virtualization vendors that further promotes choice among users, IT departments, and service providers. VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Novell, Red Hat, Oracle – what do you say?
It’s Official – Citrix XenServer 5.5 with Citrix Essentials 5.5 Platinum Edition is Enterprise-Production Ready
Posted by Chris in ESX, Hypervisors, Server Virtualization, XenServer on July 9th, 2009
Today we completed certification of Citrix XenServer 5.5 with Citrix Essentials 5.5 Platinum Edition. The result – there are now two hypervisor platforms Burton Group considers enterprise-production ready. Enterprise production-ready certification requires a hypervisor platform to meet 100% of our required features (27 in all). Our criteria also includes 42 preferred features and 24 optional features. Preferred and optional features often drive the feasibility of a particular platform across a number of different use cases, but are not considered must-haves for enterprise production workloads. Citrix added several key features for the 5.5 release, including directory service integration, security logging and auditing of administrative actions, and role based access controls (via the Lab Manager interface included in Essentials 5.5 Platinum Edition). Also, Citrix reworked its XenServer support policy to meet our minimum 3 year market support requirement.
If you haven’t seen the full feature list and don’t have access to Burton Group content, stay tuned. We’ll be presenting the complete criteria list at our Catalyst conference in a couple of weeks. By meeting 100% of our required features, Citrix has demonstrated that its platform meets the security, management, availability, storage, network, compute, scalability, and performance requirements typical of many enterprises. Today Citrix has reached a plateau. Like VMware they do not meet 100% of our preferred or optional features (and as expected VMware is further along). Still, XenServer has demonstrated itself as a virtualization platform worthy of the demands of large scale enteprise environments. Congratulations, Citrix.
Having multiple production-ready hypervisors on the market means more choice for the customer, and a greater push for vendors to continue furthering innovation and competitive differentation. Regardless of where your hypervisor loyalties stand, we’ll all benefit from the progress of the XenServer platform.
My VMworld 2009 Sessions
Posted by Chris in Citrix, ESX, Hyper-V, Hypervisors, Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, Server Virtualization, VMware, Virtual Iron, Xen on June 15th, 2009
I’ll have four sessions at the upcoming VMworld Conference. If you’re interested, here are the details…
BC2541 – Re-architecting Backup and Recovery for Virtual Environments: Best Practices
Server virtualization is one of the fundamental building blocks of the dynamic data center and with it brings new management challenges, especially in the area of data protection and recovery. Existing data protection architectures may provide a short term serviceable solution, but lack the scalability to be a mainstay in tomorrow’s data center. Continued data growth is also compounding data protection complexity, as enterprises must accommodate data growth by increasing backup system performance in order to stay within backup windows for data protection. We are at a time where organizations should reevaluate existing data protection practices and leverage new technologies to improve data recovery and lessen or eliminate the performance tax posed by many existing data protection architectures. This session breaks down modern VM data protection solutions, including VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), array-level snapshots, and third party enterprise backup software solutions. Attendees will be exposed to common data protection pitfalls as well as successful blueprints for modern VMware data protection architectures. Chris Wolf has been architecting data protection solutions for enterprise virtualization environments since 2002 and includes an abundance of lessons learned and best practices drawn from real world implementations in this session.
DV2439 – Breaking Down Desktop Virtualization Alternatives
Numerous methods exist for delivering applications to endpoint devices today: virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), application streaming, presentation virtualization, and hybrid approaches. The session breaks down the use cases that drive client virtualization choices and highlights future developments such as desktop hypervisors that will likely impact long term client virtualization architectures.
EA2442 – Software Licensing in the Virtual Enterprise: Current Problems and Future Trends
Virtual environments present new challenges for software license management across an enterprise. In this session, Burton Group senior analyst Chris Wolf breaks down the current state of software licensing and support for both server and desktop virtualization environments, while highlighting the technical elements of the virtual infrastructure that impact product licensing. He will also describe the licensing and support model best suited for modern virtualization platforms, with examples of vendors that provide best-in-class virtualization licensing policies today. All major enterprise application and OS vendors will be covered, including Microsoft, Sun, Red Hat, Novell, Oracle, HP, IBM, CA, SAP, Symantec, and Citrix. The session concludes with guidance on how to leverage RFPs to obtain licensing and software support clarity.
TA2400: Hypervisor Competitive Differences: What the Vendors Aren’t Telling You
In this session, Chris Wolf and Richard Jones dissect the competitive differences that exist with today’s leading hypervisors, with a special focus on the under-the-hood features that don’t make it onto vendor data sheets. Attendees of this session will see firsthand the differences that exist with all major virtualization hypervisor vendors (e.g. VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, and Oracle) and will leave with a list of pointed questions to ask prospective hypervisor vendors regarding their current solutions and future plans. Vendor scorecards will also be presented, allowing attendees to see how each major hypervisor ranks against Burton Group’s enterprise production-class hypervisor evaluation criteria. Areas where hypervisors fall short of production readiness will be clearly highlighted as well.
VMware Webinar: Best Practices for Capacity and Configuration Management with Virtual Infrastructure
Posted by Chris in ESX, Speaking Events, VMware, Virtualization Management, Webcast on April 2nd, 2009
Event: VMware Webinar: Best Practices for Capacity and Configuration Management with Virtual Infrastructure
Date: April 29th
Location: Online
Session Abstract:
Capacity and configuration management are often misunderstood or overlooked when virtual infrastructures are first deployed. This session examines practical capacity management practices, with a special focus on ensuring that applications meet required service levels. Attendees will learn about setting alert thresholds, dynamic VM load balancing and ensuring that I/O, compute and memory requirements are met. The second half of this session focuses on configuration management topics, while highlighting tools and trends that ease configuration management and enforcing change control processes in the virtual infrastructure.
Attendees of this webcast will see:
- Proven industry practices for effectively monitoring, managing and automating all aspects of capacity management, including compute, memory, storage and network I/O, and storage capacity.
- Strategies for documenting service level assurance in the virtual infrastructure.
- Configuration management best practices and available tools for getting the job done.
Recent Comments