Weblog of Mark Vaughn, and IT professional and vExpert specializing in Enterprise Architecture, virtualization, web architecture and general technology evangelism
Virtualizing tier-one applications has begun to catch on. If your virtualization strategies do not include business-critical workloads, you may want to reevaluate that decision.
Over the past three to five years, a major shift took place in server infrastructure. As budgets tightened, and virtualization technologies matured, server virtualization exploded into a perfect storm on the data center scene.
By the time most IT shops began exploring virtualization, their server environments were rife with low-end servers, which consumed rack space at an unprecedented pace, stressing data center infrastructures to their breaking points.
In many of these IT shops, the return on investment and other benefits of server virtualization, such as reduced power draw and greater resource efficiency, had an immediate effect. But many IT departments found themselves with a daunting list of servers to virtualize. Between migration lists and the constant stream of new servers, IT first attacked the “low hanging fruit,” or the easy-to-virtualize servers that presented little to no risk.
That was a good strategy, but now you are through the “low hanging fruit” and need to take a serious look at how to virtualize your tier one applications. For more on this topic, read my TechTarget article “Tier-one applications: Part of effective virtualization strategies“. Feel free to come back here and leave comments.
Too often, people are afraid to ask stupid questions. In my opinion, stupid questions may be the best and most valuable questions.
It is very easy to develop “group think”, where people within a group or organization adopt a common view of a situation. This is good for teamwork, but bad for vetting complicated designs or enacting long term strategies. About the only thing that can be guarantees in a long term strategy is that the decision criteria will change over the course of time. However, if you blindly stick with the strategy, even after the criteria used to develop the strategy have changed, you may no longer be going in the right direction for the organization.
3 years into a 5 year project, once everyone is fully educated on the goals and the project plan, you need someone that will stand up and ask the stupid question…”why are we doing this?”. Don’t let the question annoy you, and don’t let your pride keep you from truly considering the question. Every project and design needs a devil’s advocate, forcing you to revisit decisions and justify why they are (still) relevant.
IT pros still argue over horizontal vs. vertical scaling, but the evolution of virtualization hardware appears to have subtly shifted the data center design debate to horizontal scaling vs. converged infrastructure.
Virtualization is winning the battle over installing an operating system on bare metal, and I think most people will concede that point. Not everyone has adopted virtualization, but time will soften their defenses and allow for improved virtualization and options — until all are assimilated.
But what will happen to server hardware? Do people still care about the server? Even hypervisors need a physical home, and there are still plenty of discussions on how to best architect that foundation.
Well, I have been with INX for almost 18 months now, and it is time for a change…kind of. Actually, I am not going anywhere, but INX is changing. You may have noticed the press releases over the last few weeks about Presidio purchasing INX, and that transaction closed December 30. The final press release is located here. In fact, Presidio was purchased by American Securities mid-2011. With Presidio and INX together, American Securities has created an IT consulting and services force that will dominate the market in 2012.
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So what does this mean for Presidio and INX clients? Expect a lot more of the same high quality work, with some dramatic improvements. We now have a bigger footprint, a deeper pool of knowledge, even better vendor relationships and a roster full of rock stars in IT (http://www.presidio.com/about-presidio/technical-expertise.php – as impressive as it is, I know this list is not complete yet).
Presidio was roughly twice the size of INX in people and revenue. Together, we now have 1,800 IT professions, with over 800 of those being highly skilled consulting engineers. We also have over 45 offices across the United States. Where Presidio offices were heavily concentrated east of the Mississippi, INX was heavily concentrated west of the Mississippi. Both Presidio and INX have been dominant forces in their markets, with little crossover. This lends itself to a very easy transition that allows most INX offices to simply become regional offices within Presidio. More of those details will be made public in the future, but those are not the important details. Two highly effective and very successful service providers are merging, and a great deal of attention is being paid to leveraging the strengths of both organizations as we become the largest solution provider in the United States.
I have been involved in more mergers than I can count, and I can tell you that this one looks to be the smoothest transition that I have ever seen. I fully expect this new organization to be much greater than the sum of Presidio and INX put together. Just take a look at the impressive list of awards and recognitions that this new organization has racked up (http://www.presidio.com/about-presidio/awards-and-recognition.php). As you look at that list, realize that this was achieved by Presidio and INX working separately, then think of what we will achieve as the new Presidio. 1 + 2 is going to equal 5, and I am excited to be a part of it.
The last 18 months have been a great ride, but I have a feeling it was just a warm up lap for the ride we have ahead of us. In fact, I think that 2012 will be so great that we will need 366 days to accommodate all of the awesomeness 😉
Disclaimer: I am an avid VMware user and I work from a VMware View 5 desktop on a regular basis.
With that being said, I am still disappointed in VMware’s lack of a View Client for the iPhone. They have created a client for the iPad, with full PCoIP support. In fact, this is a very impressive client with creative solutions to the “touchscreen to mouse” problems when using an OS like Windows XP or Windows 7 that was not created for use on a touchscreen device. Using gestures and even a virtual trackpad, navigating a Windows desktop in this client is pretty intuitive.
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VMware has also released a similar client for Android, working on both Android tablets and phones. However, the iPad client WILL NOT WORK ON THE IPHONE! This is very frustrating. As I ask around within VMware, I regularly hear that there is no interest in the end-user community for an iPhone client. On that point, I have to disagree. I am not only an end-user that would love to have this client, but I regularly work with customers that are also asking for this feature. Look at almost any blog post written on the topic, and the comments will be full of people asking for VMware to provide an iPhone client.
With as much discussion as I see and hear for this, it escapes me why VMware thinks there is no interest. Is the iPhone the ideal format for accessing a VDI desktop, no. However, if you want “anywhere, anytime” access to your desktop, your smartphone is the one device you always have with you. I currently have to leave RDP enabled on my VDI desktop, which prohibits me from using some advanced PCoIP features. However, I do this to support the WYSE Pocket Cloud app on my iPhone, as that is the only way to access my desktop in a pinch. On several occasions, I have had to resort to this method for fulfilling quick requests or fixing issues prior to performing a demo.
Even if I am an anomaly, and no one else would ever use this feature, I am still surprised that VMware has not placed a higher priority on it. If nothing else, I would have thought this would be a marketing priority. Even if no one will use it, this is an item that VMware needs on the menu.
If you agree, or disagree, let me know. Hopefully, VMware is listening and will make the iPhone View client an early 2012 gift.
Over the holidays, Santa was nice enough to bring me a new iMac for video editing. However, since I am not totally getting rid of my old XP workstation that was my former video editing platform, this was really pushing my limits on desktop real estate. On days like today, when I am also using my work laptop, the three computers and keyboards were simply too much. Time to setup Synergy2.
However, this time I ran into some real issues with using my iMac as the Synergy server. The mouse was working fine on other desktops, but the keyboard was sending all commands to the iMac, regardless of what screen the mouse was on. I finally ran the Synergy2 server as root and all worked fine. That was not acceptable, I did not want this to run as root. However, that did narrow down the issues and I finally found the answer in this thread on a similar issue (Post #102 – http://code.google.com/p/synergy-plus/issues/detail?id=47).
To save you the time, you need to go into OSX “System Preferences” and select “Universal Access” in the upper right corner:
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Once there, check the box for “Enable access for assistive devices”
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After that, I could run the Synergy2 server as a non-root user and all of the keyboard issues went away. If you are experiencing a similar issue, I hope that this helps.
I recently added two new Macs to my collection, with OSX Lion. As with all of my Macs, one of the first things that I did was to add NTFS read/write support. It was a little different with Lion, so I put together a quick post for anyone else looking to do this.
Next, open the “ntfs-3g-2010.8.8-macosx.dmg” file that you just downloaded
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Double-click “Install NTFS-3G”. Acknowledge the warning that comes up:
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Select “Continue”:
Select “Continue” to acknowledge the license:
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And then “Agree” to the license statement:
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Then click on “Install” to begin the installation:
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I always select “No Caching” here, as I use mostly USB devices for NTFS and occassionally forget to cleanly unmount them (oops):
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At the end of the installation, click on “Restart” to complete the install:
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Though it always worked well for me in Snow Leopard, NTFS-3G did not work in Lion…so there are a few more steps to complete this. For the time being, ignore these errors:
After the reboot, you will now need to download OSXFuse to replace MacFuse that came with NTFS-3G. To do that, go to http://osxfuse.github.com and click on the download link in the upper right hand corner to get the OSXFUSE-2.3.8.dmg file. Once complete, mount the dmg file:
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From here, click on “Install OSXFUSE 2.3”. The next several steps will look familiar from the NTFS-3G install. Click “Continue”:
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Click “Continue” again to acknowledge the license:
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Click “Agree” to accept the license:
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The first two install options should already be checked. Also check the “MacFUSE Compatibility Layer” box and click on “Continue”:
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Click “Install” one more time to begin the installation:
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OSXFUSE does not ask for a restart like NTFS-3G did, so you should be able to simply click “Close” at the end of the installation.
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You should now see “FUSE for OS X” and “NTFS-3G” in your System Preferences for OSX (on my MacBook Pro, OSXFUSE removed MacFUSE, but it did not on my iMac…odd)
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From here, I was able to mount NTFS volumes as read/write. To be safe, you may want to perform one more restart.
Now, this method worked and I have moved a LOT of data to and from USB mounted NTFS volumes, I do still get this error on occassion:
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However, in each case, the volume actually was mounted. If I have time, I will look into this further and post an update with anything that I find. Until then, I will just continue to ignore the message as it is not accurate.
This was definitely easier to setup in Snow Leopard than in Lion, though both reportedly have full NTFS support present but disabled. Hopefully Apple will enable this support in the native OS soon.
Over the last few years, Cisco has made significant in-roads into the server market with their Unified Computing Environment (UCS) servers. One key differentiator with the UCS platform, and a frequent marketing point, was in their ability to use memory expansion technology to achieve higher memory densities than Intel architectures natively allow. Not only could you reach higher memory densities, but you can do it without the reduction in memory speed that other architectures incur when stretching into higher memory configurations.
With all of the focus on UCS providing server resources with large memory footprints, and VMware’s recent licensing adjustments to limit the amount of used RAM per license, does this impact the value of UCS? Not at all.
Cisco UCS has a number of game-changing features. To be honest, memory expansion is further down on my list of UCS’s top features. To me, the CapEx savings in networking and storage switch infrastructure is huge. That aspect, by itself, can yield significant financial savings. At the same time, reducing infrastructure has OpEx savings that stretch out far into the future. An when you speak OpEx, you cannot pass over the management aspects of UCS. Through the UCS Manager, you manage all aspects of your environment from one interface. Furthermore, with profiles, you abstract a server’s identity from it’s physical hardware and enable a level of flexibility within the physical infrastructure that was previously only available with virtualization. To me, these are the pillars of the UCS value proposition, and their value is independent of the memory configuration or any underlying licensing.
In fact, I would argue that the value of UCS is even stronger in VMware’s new licensing model. If you are designing an ESX host with 192GB of RAM, it will require two Enterprise Plus licenses, regardless of the hardware vendor. With your licensing being what it is, and possibly (though not likely) more expensive than it was before, why not select a hardware platform that will carry a lower CapEx and OpEx burden? The new licensing model may encourage some users to cap their memory sizes at 192GB and scale horizontally from there. That potentially leads to more servers. Outside of UCS, that would likely equate to a significant increase in port count on your networking and SAN infrastructure.
Regardless of server platform, high memory densities and VM density are just now reaching critical mass and driving people to consider higher memory configurations. Likely, if you are building a 2 CPU server with 256GB RAM or higher, you are using it to replace two servers that were 2 CPU and 96GB RAM or lower. You were 4 licenses before (driven by CPU count), and you will be 3-4 licenses after (driven by memory utilization). In fact, if using less than 288GB RAM in this scenario, you would go from 4 licenses to 3 and still have a net savings in licenses. Remember, every Enterprise Plus license adds 96GB vRAM entitlements to your overall pool. So three licenses would entitle you to allocate up to 3 CPU (unlimited cores) and up to 288GB vRAM. This is also a pool consisting of all licenses in your environment and used by all servers in your environment, so memory does not have to be consumed by the same ESX host that the CPU from that license is allocated to. (For more information on vRAM pooling and VMware vSphere 5 licensing, see the links at the end of this post.)
There has been a lot of discussion around VMware’s new licensing, and some great resources out there to address that in more detail (see links below). But rest assured, this new model does not impact the value of UCS. Independent of software licensing models, it always makes sense to reduce management overhead, increase flexibility and improve availability, while reducing costly networking and SAN infrastructure. The value propositions of UCS are above the level of licensing discussions. And if you are going to build vSphere hosts that span into the higher memory densities, then do it on a platform that does not force you to sacrifice memory speed for memory density.
Disclosure: I work for a leading Cisco partner. In fact, I chose my current employer largely based on their relationship with Cisco and their success built around virtualization and UCS.
I have often commented on how the iPad has changed the way I consume technology over the last 18 months. It has gone back and forth as my primary device, for a number of reasons. Battery life, size and functionality simply make it easy to use for extended periods of time. I have over 100 documents and technical books on my iPad, along with training/reference videos and other technical resources. I even use VMware’s View client for the iPad to access a Win7 desktop back in the office when I need to.
However, there has been one drawback. When I need to take a lot of notes in a short amount of time, the iPad keyboard is not very well suited for that. For a long time, I carried a ThinkOutside folding bluetooth keyboard that I had purchased years ago for an old Windows Mobile device. It worked, but it was a hassle to keep track of and I was constantly having to fix minor cracks and other battle damage from travels.
I was preparing to buy a case with keyboard built in, looking at one of the leather portfolio versions. Just as I was about to make that purchase, a friend of mine introduced me to the Clamcase case for iPad. It transforms the iPad into a small laptop, without limiting the overall functionality. I can use my iPad like a laptop, fold it half way back to use the case as a display stand, or fold the case all of the way back to simply use it as a tablet. The real test came last week, as I used it in all three roles while attending VMware’s VMWorld 2011 conference in Las Vegas.
As a VMware partner, I was entertaining clients at various event, speaking in sessions and attending partner briefings. As a blogger/writer, I was attending press conferences, documenting the many announcements, and judging in the Best of Show awards. I did not want to carry a big bag with my laptop and adapter cables all day, so I opted to carry only my iPad in a small messenger bag. It was great! I was able to sit and use my iPad like a laptop to take notes in sessions and press events. I could quickly review presentations prior to speaking events, and event use my iPad as a traditional tablet when walking the expo floor to review products for judging. If I need to, the iPad can easily be removed from the Clamcase for independent use, but I never found that to be necessary.
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This is the second incarnation of the Clamcase, adjusted slightly for the iPad 2. My only complaint is that it does not always sleep my iPad when I close the case. I think the foam pads, meant to protect the screen, are actually keeping the magnets from making the proper contact with edges of the iPad screen. It worked, but was hit or miss on making proper contact. This was not a big deal, I simply turned my sleep timer back on and all is well.
The Clamcase has finally made it possible for me to truly use my iPad as my primary device. I now take it to all of my meetings with clients and rarely bring the laptop. If you are looking for a case/keyboard for your iPad, I strongly recommend taking a look at the Clamcase. Check out their site for more information on these great cases.
VMware added over 130 new features to the next version of their flagship hypervisor, vSphere 5. Due to be released in Q3 of 2011, vSphere 5 will see the next step in the evolution of virtualization, enabling a number of new technologies and providing a solid infrastructure for cloud computing. Along with improved features, VMware is also introducing a new licensing model meant to prepare vSphere for the future.
Processors are changing. VMware has acknowledged that the current emphasis on licensing by processor, with restrictions on the number of cores, will not match up to where CPU capabilities are going. With vSphere 4, CPU licenses had core limitations that varied between either 6 cores or 12 cores, based on edition.
Processors with 8 and 12 cores are becoming more common, and will soon be the standard. To accomodate this, VMware has removed all limitations based on processor cores from its vSphere 5 licensing model. However, as new servers with two twelve core processors and high memory capacities become more common, VMware has placed a new emphasis on memory in its licensing model. To be specific, virtual memory is allocated to a running virtual machine.
Let’s first break down the licensing models for vSphere 4 and vSphere 5, then review a few possible scenarios:
vSphere 4
Edition
Price
Standard
$795
Advanced
$2,245
Enterprise
$2,875
Enterprise Plus
$3,495
vSphere 5
Edition
Price
Standard
$995
Enterprise
$2,875
Enterprise Plus
$3,495
Scenario One – 4 Moderate Servers:
CPU Per Server = 2 x 6-Core CPU
RAM Per Server = 96GB
CPU in Pool = 8
RAM in Pool = 384GB
vRAM Licensed in Pool = 384GB
In this scenario, nothing will change. The only potential impact would be if you heavily oversubscribed memory and actually had more than 384GB of vRAM assigned to running VMs simultaneously. Though not recommend, this could be done. In that case, one additional license would be added to the pool; the additional CPU would not be assigned to a server, but the additional vRAM would be consumed from the pool.
Scenario Two – 4 Larger Servers:
CPU Per Server = 2 x 6-core CPU
RAM Per Server = 128GB
CPU in Pool = 8
RAM in Pool = 512GB
vRAM Licensed in Pool = 384GB
In this scenario, migrating to the vSphere 5 licensing model would likely not have an immediate impact unless more than 75% of physical RAM was currently committed to running VMs. Once 384GB of vRAM is allocated, an additional license will be required. The CPU of the new license will not be used, but the licensed vRAM pool will grow to 432GB. If the environment grows beyond 432GB of allocated vRAM, then add another license and grow the vRAM pool to 480GB.
Scenario Three – 4 Very Large Servers:
CPU Per Server = 2 x 8-Core
RAM Per Server = 192GB
CPU in Pool = 8
RAM in Pool = 768GB
vRAM Licensed in Pool = 384GB
This scenario is most likely going to impacted. Historically, this is a rare configuration that is general only used in a few special cases. Often, the CPU in this scenario will max out long before the RAM is consumed. In this scenario, additional licenses will have to be purchased for the purpose of adding additional RAM to the vRAM pool. The amount of additional licenses will be driven by overall consumption, and not tied directly to any one server.
Scenario Four – 2 Very Large Servers (migrating from 4 large servers)
CPU Per Server = 2 x 12-Core
RAM Per Server = 192GB
CPU in Pool = 4
RAM in Pool = 384GB
vRAM Licensed in Pool = 192GB
This is a hardware refresh scenario resulting from migrating from the 4 Moderate Servers shown in Scenario one in order to leverage higher CPU core densities and higher RAM capacities of the newer servers. Though there are only 4 CPUs in this configuration, you already owned 8 CPU licenses from scenario one. Those additional licenses would bring the vRAM pool up to 384GB, matching the physical RAM in the pool. You would be going from scenario one with 48 CPU cores and 384GB RAM, to scenario four with 48 CPU cores and 384GB RAM. This scenario cuts 4 physical servers down to 2 and 8 CPU sockets down to 4, but does not change overall CPU or memory capacities. Likewise, licensing requirements would be unchanged.
Scenario Five – 4 Moderate Servers:
CPU Per Server = 2 x 6-Core CPU
RAM Per Server = 96GB
CPU in Pool = 8
RAM in Pool = 384GB
vRAM Licensed in Pool = 384GB
In this scenario, the servers are dedicated for a disaster recovery role. Their resources are generally unused. By connecting the vCenter server in this environment to your production vCenter server (as linked vCenter servers), you not only gain better visibility for administration but you will also bring an additional 384GB of vRAM into your production pool for allocation. In a linked configuration, all vCenter servers will pool their licenses into one aggregate pool.
Summary:
There are now two factors to consider in determining license needs. First, determine licensing needs based on physical CPU count. Then assess the total vRAM allocation across all VMs within your environment (which may span multiple locations if using linked vCenter servers). Your license count will need to be sized to cover both of those numbers.
One option to consider is leveraging unused vRAM capacity from environments that may traditionally not consume high levels of vRAM. These could include environments hosting Unified Communications deployments or even disaster recovery environments. Simply use the linked vCenter feature to combine all of these licenses into a common pool. I have always recommended organizations link all of their vCenter servers together, for the many administrative advantages this configuration provides. However, with the new licensing model, such a configuration can also provide for better license utilization.
In terms of availability and agility, it is also important to note that vRAM limits are “soft” limits that are monitored and alerted on, but will not actually prevent a virtual machine from being powered on. You are bound by your End User License Agreement to comply with these license limits, but VMware has chosen to monitor based on this metric and not actually impose hard limits that may negatively impact your ability to respond to business demands.
