Server virtualization saves power and hardware costs, but at the same time brings management problems. More and more software can help solve this problem.
carry benefits of virtualization in the data center is: As fast virtual machine standard hardware configuration than the speed of hundreds of virtual machines can be placed on more than a dozen physical servers running, while improving efficiency savings Energy and hardware spending. However, due to the large scale of company virtualization and the speed of development, management problems will quickly emerge. The biggest problem is that users are not aware of the conflict between hardware and storage resources between an application and other applications. This will affect the company's IT capabilities while affecting service levels.
To alleviate this problem, experts recommend that users use balance workloads and application service level management tools, such as Akorri's new BalancePoint. BalancePoint can show when and why a particular virtual machine is not up to standard; based on this data, users can redistribute workload to increase efficiency. This tool performs performance analysis from the perspective of VMware and Storage Area Network (SAN), which avoids problems with virtual machines due to resource imbalances.
IDC analyst Elliot said that almost all companies doing server virtualization will encounter management issues, including workload balancing and "virtual machine expansion" and disaster recovery plans. VMware tools and products from a growing number of third-party vendors can help solve this problem.
Maintaining a Balanced Workload
Workload balancing is a very complex issue. One of the main benefits of virtualization is the ability to easily move applications from one server to another. The problem is that it's hard to know that there are too many virtual machines on a particular server. We can only see this through the operation of the application software and other factors such as memory and attached memory. If in a virtual environment, several critical applications compete for the same server resource, it is difficult to identify the conflicting application software, which will affect the company's operation.
A variety of management tools are needed to solve this problem. A US company called Monster uses the BalancePoint tool to enhance its two main VMware management products: VMotion (a tool that improves hardware by moving virtual machines out of low-performance and downtime servers) Utilization) and the Distributed Resource Scheduler (this tool is used in conjunction with VMotion to assign resources to high-priority virtual machines based on pre-defined rules).
The most important thing is that Distributed Resource Scheduler and VMotion show which servers need to be workload balanced, but these two tools cannot analyze and display application resource conflicts other than VMware. Because BalancePoint is not tied to the operating system, it can show whether VMware's performance is affected by other applications in the same storage area network. The Distributed Resource Scheduler can only display the performance of related virtual machines through the host (CPU, memory and memory). However, during the operation of the storage area network, it is impossible to display which database server is using the same resource.
Knode, director of computing and communications infrastructure at San Diego, said that the more virtual machines you use, the more problems there are. Knode needs management tools to deal with problems in the current corporate virtualization environment (50 virtual machines running on three physical servers) and future problems as the company plans to add about 100 virtual units in the next fiscal year. machine. Knode is considering using Vizioncore's esxCharter management tool to get instant information on the performance level of VMware ESX servers. This tool
attention level of performance and run the program running inside the virtual machine. The ability to adjust CPU power and memory allocated to virtual machines is critical when you need to make downtime adjustments or process transitions in a virtual environment. It allows the user to understand the processing process. For example, if a particular virtual machine occupies processor resources of other virtual machines, the virtual machine can be transferred to another processor using Distributed Resource Scheduler and VMotion. But without the Vizioncore tool, you can't know which virtual machine needs to be transferred.
Bishop, the chief architect of Wachovia, the fourth-largest bank in the US, uses Scalent for workload balancing. The situation in the company's virtual environment is: hundreds of servers running 1000 virtual machines, which are used for configuration. , testing, and background processing. The Scalent tool -- which can be used alone or in conjunction with VMware -- can quickly redistribute servers. Bishop said: "The other management tools we consider are also available in various forms, but none of them can be processed like Scalent." When applications have resource conflicts, managers can handle them flexibly.
disaster management
Gartner data show that 70% to 75% of customers virtualization for the enterprise x86 servers using virtualization for disaster recovery. They rely on VMotion for server migration, which greatly reduces downtime.
Miller, CEO of Genesis Multimedia, a standalone hosting company, uses VMotion to increase uptime and increase the reliability of enterprise virtual machines. The virtual environment of the enterprise is: three physical servers running 55 virtual machines, and VMotion is used for virtual machine migration. However, managing these virtual machines is not an easy task. The initial transfer was to consolidate 12 servers for network host storage and two mainframes for running data systems. However, it is difficult to implement virtual machine migration, patching, and BIOS upgrades in operation. As a provider of infrastructure, Genesis must provide a high level of service. Therefore, timely upgrades are critical. It is simply impossible to carry out this work without Vmotion and DRS.
additional tools by the number and location of the virtual machine server monitoring, can help address the "virtual machine sprawl" problem. "This seems ironic: the advantage of a virtual machine is that it optimizes resources, but it leads to chaos." Almost all of his customers are plagued by this problem," said Haright, director of research at Gartner. .
SDDPC company Knode said Vizioncore tools to help him solve this problem. "By determining the baseline for the virtual environment, we made plans in advance. With VMware and Vizioncore, I can see how much resources are available on the ESX host and when we should move the virtual machine or buy a new server or storage." BR>
Users want virtualization management providers to take the next step: integrating existing management software. For example, HP's Mercury Business Availability Center software suite (for enterprise transactions and infrastructure monitoring) can be integrated with the BalancePoint tool.
Although virtualization tools can enhance the manageability of virtual environments, but the CIO who are looking forward to the introduction of the overall management tool.