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What is Virtualization, exactly?

Traditionally, when an office needed to upgrade their server, they would order additional hardware or a new machine.  This would mean a new operating system, new software, and spending several hundred (or thousand) dollars to make the new machine play nice with an existing system.  This process would repeat, when the need for expansion arose again.

As the server room grows, more and more machines would require more electricity, and as a result more cooling.  In addition, a diverse array of hardware would likely mean disparate storage across different file systems, such as FAT, NTFS, EXT3, and so on.  Complicated backup jobs would require consolidating the data to a single tape, or multiple storage devices to prepare for the worst.  In many cases, the backup task can be so time consuming that many fail to complete, or even start successfully.

One of the common misconceptions is to specify new hardware beyond the current business needs to ensure longevity.  Upgrading server hardware was such a daunting task, it often meant a complete re-do of server software.  Often upgrades were avoided until a major revision in the software was released.  I’ve been a follower of this practice for years, until I was exposed to the concept of virtualization.

With the large variety of hardware vendors on the market today, no two offerings are alike.  When an operating system is installed, it assumes an identity based on the sum of hardware that is supporting it.  If you change a scsi controller, a motherboard, a video card, or a network card, that identity or Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) may change beyond the point of system stability.  Drivers can be changed, but there are chances of corruption and compromised performance.

In the face of the task of upgrading hardware on production servers without considerable downtime, the answer is to separate the hardware layer from the operating system, and allow one to change without affecting the other.  In addition, by separating the hardware and operating system with a hypervisor layer, the machine can now run multiple operating systems at once through sharing.  A generic virtual representation of hardware provides a CPU, RAM, Networking, and Storage in a virtual machine that provides the operating system with a common HAL that can be run on any real hardware that supports the hypervisor environment.  In the case of host hardware failure, this allows the virtual machine to be restored in an exact replica on new or coexisting hardware.  In addition, one can plan for a server upgrade by testing new software in a separate environment, without having to obtain budgeting for new hardware. Suddenly, server room management seems a lot less complicated, once you get past all the new buzzwords and abstract concepts.

Stay tuned for the next posting, where I will review and discuss the free virtualization offerings from VMware, VMware Server and ESXi.

Rupert Goodwins of ZDNet.co.uk’s Virtualization Toolkit, has put together a smug 10-point list of commandments that shatter the traditional concepts and thinking that revolved around enterprise IT management with virtualization.  It’s a good quick read, and I suggest you take a look here.

Hi Everyone,

Recently, the work I’ve been doing has focused around reducing environmental impact as a result of computing.  Virtualization, cloud computing,  high efficiency servers, and service consolidation seem to be the buzzwords that are floating around the office these days.  Over the next few weeks I’m going to start writing about some tips and general best practices that should help to reduce your power bill, simplify management of multiple servers, and feel better about that machine room grinding away in the closet.  In the process, I will share some of my findings and experiences.

Stay tuned…  my first topic will be covering small business virtualization using the FREE VMware Server and ESXi vSphere embedded hypervisor.

Fulfilling a customer’s need for a low-cost (GPL) HTTP proxy solution, I had the pleasure of finding a pre-built virtual appliance this weekend. Installation was a snap, only requiring a minor level of configuration before being able to use Dalmatech’s prebuilt VMware Appliance.  The VM features Ubuntu  (JeOS), Webmin, Squid, and Dansguardian preinstalled and configured with a virtual disk sized for caching.

Installation on an ESX host requires using VMware Convertor as the machine is supplied in VMX format instead of the common OVF appliance format.  Depending on your location in regards to your Vi3 environment, this may be a time consuming process.  Once converted, the machine will use approximately 50GB of your VMFS datastore.  You will need to configure a static IP, and I strongly recommend changing the user password.

Once installed, you can configure your clients to use http://your-proxys-ip:8080 and traffic will be routed through Dansguardian.

For more information on installation and how to download the Virtual Appliance, head to http://www.dalmatech.com/squid.html

VMware has announced a cost-effective option to centrally manage ESXi servers from a single Virtual Center Server installation, without the cost of upgrading to full ESX Service Console licenses (Normally starting around $1500 USD for 2 CPU sockets).

As taken from vmware.com, the $995USD Management Kit includes:

• vCenter Server Foundation
• vCenter Agents for 3 hosts (no CPU socket limit)
• 1 year software subscription
• Limited for use with 3 ESXi hosts

vCenter Server Foundation enables one to centrally manage their ESXi hosts, patch management, host control and plan for further deployment through VM template creation and migration.  As all product versions of vCenter are the same at their core, one can upgrade to Standard or Enterprise licenses in the future and unlock further features such as VMware High Availability, VMotion, DRS, and DPM.

More information regarding vCenter Server can be found here:  http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/vc/

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