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Building Virtual Environments for Mission Critical Applications

Building Virtual Environments for Mission Critical Applications. Presented by: Rick Scherer, VCP- vExpert. Today’s Agenda. Speaker Bio What’s New in VMware vSphere 4.0 Name Changes New Packages New Features and Enhancements Building a Robust Virtual Environment

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Building Virtual Environments for Mission Critical Applications

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  1. Building Virtual Environments for Mission Critical Applications Presented by: Rick Scherer, VCP-vExpert

  2. Today’s Agenda • Speaker Bio • What’s New in VMware vSphere4.0 • Name Changes • New Packages • New Features and Enhancements • Building a Robust Virtual Environment • Focusing on the Four Fundamentals • CPU – Memory – Disk – Network

  3. Speaker Bio • Worked in IT for 12 years • Systems Administrator for 10 years • UNIX Administration (Solaris, AIX, Linux) • Windows Administration (Windows NT - 2008) • Network Design and Admin. (Cisco Catalyst, Nexus and MDS) • Programming(Perl, Shell, PHP, HTML, PowerShell) • Worked with VMware products for Over 6 Years • Workstation 3.0, VMware GSX, ESX 2.0 • VMware VCP since 2006 • VMware vExpert in 2009 • Took VMware VCDX Design Exam April 2nd • Technical Editor of “Mastering VMware vSphere”Book • Founder of VMwareTips.com

  4. What’s new in vsphere 4.0

  5. VMware Name Changes

  6. VMware vSphere 4.0 Packaging STANDARD ($795 / CPU) Simple Consolidation ADVANCED ($2245 / CPU) Availability ENTERPRISE ($2875 / CPU) Automated Resource Management ENTERPRISE PLUS ($3495 / CPU) Simplified Operations ESSENTIALS PLUS Integrated availability solution for Small Businesses ($2995 All-in-One for 3 Servers) • Automated resource management for: • Production infrastructure • Mission critical applications • Basic management for: • Simple consolidation • Remote offices • Test labs • High availability for: • Production infrastructure • Mission critical applications • Large scale management and integration for: • Internal cloud • Tier 1 applications ESSENTIALS Basic management of free ESXi ($995 All-in-One for 3 Servers) Scale limited, Low initial price, Small office- oriented features Scale unlimited, Value price, Low TCO Full featured

  7. VMware vSphere 4.0 Packaging

  8. New Features in vSphere 4.0 • VMware VMDirectPath • Technology that enables Virtual Machines to directly access underlying hardware devices. • VMware vNetwork Distributed Switch • Abstracts the configuration of Virtual Networking from the Host Level to the Datacenter Level • VMware vNetwork Third Party Switch • APIs to allow Third Party network companies to create externally managed Virtual Switches, example: Cisco Nexus 1000V • VMware vStorage Thin Provisioning • Thin Provisioning Functionality for VMDKs

  9. More New Features in vSphere 4.0 • VMware Fault Tolerance • Zero Downtime, continuous availability of Virtual Machines, made possible by VMware vLockstep. • Hot Add & Hot Plug • The ability to hot add or remove CPU, Memory, Virtual Storage or Networking devices in a running Virtual Machine. • VMware Data Recovery • Disk-based backup and recovery of your Virtual Machines, file and image level full and incremental backups. Recover an entire VM image or recover individual files and directories. (Not an upgrade for VCB)

  10. More New Features in vSphere 4.0 • vShield Zones • Virtual Appliance that provides a dynamic firewall capability for applications as they move around a DRS cluster. • vApp • Functionality that enables the construction of a multi-VM entity and encapsulates information about the relationship between VMs and their service level requirements in OVF.

  11. More New Features in vSphere 4.0 • VMware vCenter Linked Mode • New capability in vCenter Server that allows multiple VCs to share roles, permissions and licensing information. The true gateway to Cloud Computing. • VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat • Provides Continuous Availability for vCenter Server. • VMware vCenter Chargeback (Late 2009) • Chargeback mechanism built into vSphere Client • VMware vCenterAppSpeed (Late 2009) • Formally B-Hive Conductor, end to end application monitoring to ensure application performance SLAs.

  12. Performance Enhancements in VMware ESX 4.0

  13. Building a robustvirtual environment

  14. Building a Robust Virtual Environment • Plan like you would for a physical implementation. • Build redundancy into your servers, storage infrastructure and network infrastructure • Separate your Capture and Retention Data • Capture Data (DB, Exchange Mailboxes, etc.) should be on faster SAS/FC Disks • Retention Data (O/S, Backups, Applications) can be loaded to slower SATA Disks

  15. Building a Robust Virtual Environment • Get State of the Art • Multi-Core CPU Architecture is Everywhere! • Enable Hardware Assisted Virtualization (Intel-VT & AMD-V) • Maximize your Memory Investment – Memory is Cheap! • FC, iSCSI or NFS Storage – It Doesn’t Matter • Basic VMDK Traffic requires low latency, not high bandwidth • For Large Deployments you can utilize NFS and iSCSI • If your worried about throughput for large data loads,10GbE is becoming more cost effective • Verify your Service Console Settings • Allocate Maximum RAM to the Service Console (ESX only) – 800MB • Enable NTP and make sure its in sync • Make sure DNS is functioning (forward and reverse lookups) • Make Your Service Console network is redundant • vCenter Services and HA rely on your SC being connected

  16. Building a Robust Virtual Environment • VMware Tools • For all the great vCPU Co-Scheduling and Memory Sharing Capabilities built into ESX, VMware Tools on your Virtual Machines MUST always be Up To Date!

  17. Common CPUPerformance Issue • Caused by vCPUOver-Subscription • When a vCPU needs to be scheduled, the VMkernel maps a vCPU to a “hardware execution context.” • A hardware execution context is a processor’s capability to schedule one thread of execution. • A core or a hyperthread • VMkernel load balances • All the vCPUs in a VM must be simultaneously scheduled. • Check CPU %RDY on your VM to see if it is waiting for a physical core or hyperthread. H.E.C. H.E.C. H.E.C. H.E.C. H.E.C. H.E.C. H.E.C.

  18. Resolving CPU Performance Issues • Caused by vCPU Under-Utilization • Virtual Machines assigned 2 or 4 vCPUs but are not actually using them. • In this scenario you’re basically wasting potential CPU cycles for other Virtual Machines that may need them. • Check CPU %WAIT to see if your Virtual Machines vCPUs are just sitting there doing nothing. • High CPU %WAIT with Low CPU Used means you’ve assigned too many vCPUs. Reduce to relieve possible contention. • Add additional cores

  19. Common Memory Performance Issues • Caused by Memory Over-Commit • The VMkernel and balloon driver (vmmemctl) do a great job delivering and controlling memory to Virtual Machines • Check Swap Used for your Virtual Machine in vCenter or ESXTOP • Lower Limits & Reservations on non-criticalVirtual Machines • Increase Physical RAM • Caused by Low VM Memory Assignment • Check your Guest O/S Swap to make sure it has low utilization. • Check Memory Consumed in vCenter and ESXTOP • Increase Virtual RAM • Raise Limits and Reservation on Virtual Machine

  20. Disk • Resolving I/O Performance Issues • Separate VMDKs based on performance needs • High I/O Virtual Machines with Low IOps HDD do not mix • More Spindles equals better performance • iSCSI and NFS Based Datastores • Utilize Jumbo Frames, LACP 802.11ad Link Aggregationwith multiple Targets (iSCSI) or Exports (NFS) • Watch Network Throughput on ESX servers and also Storage Array • FCP • Watch Latency Counters in vCenter

  21. Network • Virtual Network Design – Best Practices • Build Redundancy into your vSwitches • VMware HA is dependant on your Service Consoleand it’s network gateway • Segment VMotion Traffic • To optimize available NIC ports, utilize the standby NIC port on the vSwitch containing your Service Console • Verify all physical ports, their associated VLANs and utilize host profiles • Utilize 802.1q VLAN tagging to maximize utilization of your available physical NICs • VMware Fault Tolerance will require its own independent network port for vLockstep traffic. • Monitor Network Throughput in vCenter or ESXTOP

  22. VMware VMDK Hint • I/O Intense Virtual Machines will benefit when their Starting Partition is divisible by 4096. • Misalignment can result in degraded performance. The recommended starting value is 32768, typical VMs default setting is 32256. • The best option is to fix your template: • Prior to O/S installation boot with a WinPE CD • Run diskpart • Select Disk 0 • Create Partition Primary Align=32 • Reboot and Install your O/S as normal • Vizioncore Has a Utility called vOptimizer Pro to automate This with no downtime!!! – Even if an O/S is already installed!

  23. Thank you – QUESTIONS?

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