With R2 Microsoft can Dynamically Handle Virtual Workloads

Unless you have been under a rock for the past 6 months, you have probably heard that Microsoft now has the ability to move a running Virtual Machine from one box to another without downtime. With the release of Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V, or the free version Windows Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, we now have Live Migration capabilities. This was a feature that was lacking with the previous version and a major blocker for adoption by some organizations.

Now, Live Migration is available, great, but do I still have to manually pick and choose which VMs to move from one location to another. Answer, No, you don’t.

This TechEd Online TechTalk details how Microsoft dynamically handles changes in workloads.

Even before Microsoft released Hyper-V R2 with Live Migration Capabilities, they released a capability within the System Center Suite of Tools called PRO Tips (or Performance and Resource Optimization Tips) that, through the use of Management Packs in Operations Manager, monitors aspects of the Physical Layer, Virtual Layer, or Application Layer, and when an alert is generated, can automatically (or manually) take action within the Virtual environment. This video explains how PRO works, and discusses the benefits of PRO to enable a dynamic infrastructure.

Beyond that, take a listen to the following TechNet Webcast on PRO that describes in detail what PRO is, how it works, talks some on the Partner Integrations we have.

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Microsoft Site Recovery Solutions Launch

An interesting Post today by Jim Schwartz, Director Virtualization Solutions, at Microsoft.

Basically, we are leveraging the openness of our Platform to allow partners to develop solutions that meet a customer’s particular need. In this case it is Site Recovery.

Despite tough times, an Enterprise Strategy Group study shows that 31% of businesses surveyed said DR will be their main driver for Virtualization in 2009.

These are some exciting solutions, and I can’t wait for the webcast to see what this will provide.

Take a look at the article, and let me know what you think of the webcast.

New Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for SCVMM 2008 R2 Released

To help an organization answer the age old question,”How do i get started?” Our Solutions Accelerator Team has created an IPD Guide for System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 as well as for Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V.

These IPD Guides have Step by step processes to help guide an organization down the path of virtualization.

For SCVMM 2008 R2 the flow looks like the following:

For Windows Server 2008 R2 the 9-Step process is below:

 

These Guides are great and really help people embark on the journey towards virtualization where they can achieve the benefits of virtualizing their infrastructure more quickly than doing it on their own.

Still Strong after almost 2 years - Hey Dad MS Licensing Video

Back around this time in 2007, while I was still a Staff Systems Engineer over at VMware, I had a lunchtime meeting with an enemy TSP, Michael Cooper, from Microsoft. There we discussed how MS licensing (of the OS) in a Virtual environment worked. When could you VMotion (Live Migrate) these VMs, and what were the repercussions of the 90 Day Rule.

We actually did this with sweetener packets on the table and it really cleared things up for me.

From there, a year ago last January (2008), I created a First in a short lived (1) series of Videos called “Hey Dad”, where I worked with my kids to produce a little documentary on how the MS Licensing policy works.

I thought it was a nice video, and everyone that saw it seemed to understand the MS licensing scheme better. One of the coolest things about it was when someone from MS Europe sent me a request asking if they could use the Video in one of their internal trainings. Internal Trainings. At the time, I though, wow, shouldn’t this be easier? I get it, it doesn’t seem that hard, but really most people don’t, and hopefully after watching the video, they will.

Nearly two years later, and it is still one of the definitive training videos for MS Licensing of OSs in the Virtual World as referenced by one of Rich from Bechtle’s latest Blog Microsoft & Virtual Licensing

It is nice to see it still working. Now to expand the series for Licensing MS Apps in a Virtual World…

VMworld 2009 Wrap-Up

Wow, how to sum it all up. Definitely, VMworld was fun, and VMware puts on a nice conference. I would have to say, however, that I was a little disappointed.

The keynotes didn’t show anything new? Everything I saw there was really everything I saw at VMworld Europe (in fact it was pretty much the same stuff I saw at last year’s VMworld), and to be honest, I think they presented it better at VMworld Europe. I wasn’t the only one to think so (Mike Laverick at rtfm-ed.co.uk):

And that was it. So nothing too radical or shocking - and more or less a restatement of the agenda in Canne…

If you happened to stay until the very end, you got a few seconds on SpringSource, but even that seemed not put together very well.

They did finish a big release cycle, and probably the next major release is a few years off, so they may not have the roadmap down right now, perhaps that is what it was.

There were a couple of sessions that I liked, but mostly, those were flat as well. The VMware Head to Head vs. Microsoft and Citrix was interesting, but obviously they are going to only show their good side there and put us in the most unfavorable light that they can.

The part I liked the best was the Solutions Exchange. Being the “little guy” at the conference, there was a definite feeling of excitement. It felt very similar to when I first started with VMware and was at the LinuxWorld conference. There was a feeling in the Microsoft Booth and with the customers and partners that I talked with where they wanted to work with us. As I was walking around the booths, or tweeting away, I was contacted by many different partners, and there was this energy about it. From DataCore and their help with my 3 Laptop Demo (which I didn’t show at the show), to Pano Logic to Citrix, to all of the partners at the show. They all seemed to want to work with us.

Everyone was really upbeat about Microsoft’s advances, and when we talked with customers, more and more “light bulbs” went off. I can really do all of that? It costs only that much? WOW!

It was really good seeing all of my old friends from VMware (and some from other companies), and though there were some awkward silences (when conversation switched to business), it was the best part of the whole show.

It is a two horse race now, and we are coming in strong. This year is going to be exciting, and I can’t wait.

Self Paced Rave

Awesome!!!

Such a fantastic time! Props to the VMware Lab Team! Who actually did a lab last night?

It was great seeing all my friends at the SPR last night (next year I need to get the VIP Pass). Music was great, drinks were flowing, people were talking, and I am sure EVERYONE had a great time.

Best part of the show.

Day 2 Wrap-Up

Today was an interesting day. I sat and watched the Day 2 Keynote, looking at what VMware shows as the vision for the future.

I then went to watch a session on Virtualizing Exchange EA2631

I learned some things there:

Exchange has made itself (over time) better suited for Virtualization from Exchange 2003 –> Exchange 2007 –> Exchange 2010 due to less IO, and better design. Also, ESX has improved and the computers have evolved, so they have all joined together.

But on the MS Front, we have updated out sites with some new information from our Exchange and Virtualization Team on Virtualizing this Tier 1 application. Check out Zane’s Blog Post for more information.

After lunch I went to the VMware Head to Head comparison of VMware vSphere and ESX and Hyper-V with some SCVMM, and Citrix. It would have been a better conversation if it would actually have been more than one side. Their big comments on Architecture differences and memory overcommitment were old and tired. They were biased and based on conjecture. They commented that our “integrated” solution is a bunch of applications which we do need to work on, but when they showed them all, they showed many twice, and and some that you wouldn’t use except in some cases, but not when loading other apps that they showed.

They said we don’t have a Host Profile equivalent, when if you look at what System Center Configuration Manager does, it does a lot of what Host Profiles does. Of course they didn’t mention that to get Host Profiles, customers would have to buy the Enterprise Plus SKU.

They failed to mention that if you are comparing vSphere with Microsoft Solutions, you have to include all of the SMSD products, NOT just VMM and a little OM.

They failed to mention that you have to pay 3 times more to get a VMware Solution than you would have to pay to get the comparable solution from Microsoft, I wonder why?

Are we Enterprise Class? Yes, we are.

Do we have some work to do? Yes, we do.

Is VMware scared? Yes, they are.

Dr. Stephen Herrod’s Keynote

I always enjoy Day 2 Keynotes at VMworld. You always get to see something new. Dr. Stephen Herrod started the keynote today by sliding VMware View over to the left emphasizing that it is the biggest focus for VMware right now. He says managing the desktops will be the same as managing the servers. I don’t think that is the right way to look at it. Yeah, I believe it resonates to Server guys, but there are many, MANY differences between how you have to manage the desktop and the datacenter. It seems to VMware, that (like one of our TSPs told me at a conference earlier):

When all you have is a Hammer, everything looks like a nail

Key agreement with rto Virtual Profiles coupled with the ThinApp “bubble”. Create a master image of the OS, plop it down and keep each app out there encapsulated on its own.

Best User Experience to All Endpoints – From a WAN to a LAN environment to Local so you can run it on the net, and on the local machine to leverage the “Media” devices (Graphics, etc). PCoIP releasing later this year.

Employee-Owned IT – rebrand, revamp of ACE – VM on a DVD, or running directly on the laptop No host OS, Client Hypervisor (Client Virtualization Platform (CVP)) with Intel vPro. They have Win7 x64 running in a VM with the CVP underneath.

VMware Mobile Strategy – VCMA – a mobile app to manage your vCenter and now VMware View environment

Mobile Phone to Mobile Personal Computer - “Device Freedom” Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP), and “Application Freedom”

All of this client stuff, still makes me think that they are trying to adapt and fit VDI as the solution for everything. Really now, shouldn’t it be that the customer should use the whole toolbox and not just the hammer. VDI works for some cases, but Terminal Services is better for other, and App-V solves other solutions. If you have a local user that needs to run a policy encapsulated VM, MedV will give you this. Microsoft has the Desktop solution that you can use for the challenges you face.

VMotion the Foundation of the Giant Computer – First VMotion, then Storage VMotion, then Network VMotion (Distributed Virtual Switch), now Long Distance VMotion

New workload – HPC

DRS – Shuffling VMs around for best performance. Squeezing more out of your systems, extending soon to include IO not just CPU and Memory. Tiering the needs and the applications with the Resources around you.

This could be interesting if they DRS the VMs, and also the Storage as your storage IO patterns change.

AppSpeed – Nothing new

vApp – IT Service Policy Descriptor SLA as metadata to the group of VMs using OVF.

VMsafe – Always on Security and Compliance via APIs. Aware of the application running in the VM, not the VM, so it can be smart in what it protects and secures.

Choice – Lab Manager to allow for self service portals.

Long Distance vMotion – Proactively move the DC when certain events will occur. Cisco with it Data Center Interconnect up to 200 km. F5 uses BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager to move different iSessions around.

VMware vCloud API – Programmatic Access to resources, Self Service Portals, vSphere Client Plugin (one vCenter to view local and Cloud resources).

After moving View to the left, they now added vApps to the right as a fourth pillar. vSphere provides IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). Software is Middleware and Tools that is combined and hooked underneath termed PaaS (Platform as a Service). The middle yellow bar is the Automated, Policy enforcement, scalability. Developers only need to know the application interface, they don’t need to be bothered with anything else, and then there is SaaS (Software as a Service).

PaaS – Open set of interfaces for Ruby on Rails, Python, .Net, PHP, Rod says we want the developers happy, we want them to know about this as little as possible but enough to be productive. Can be deployed internally and externally, wherever.

How popular are these different interfaces? Azure provides this to our Developer community.

SpringSource -

Take advantage of the revolution…

I don’t see a revolution here, but I think some of the new capabilities are nice, and looking forward to see how we respond.

TA3438 – Performance Improvements of vSphere…

Or something like that. Was Top 10 blah blah blah in the syllabus, doesn’t matter, it was good. Richard McDougall was really good at showing the performance improvements of vSPhere 4 (actually of ESX Server 4).

He broke them down into a few different categories and the major improvements there:

Category	Improvement
CPU	Relaxed CoScheduling Extended Fairness Support
Monitor	2nd Generation Hardware Assist Large Page Support
Disk	350,000 IOPS up from 100,000 IOPS Reduced IO Overhead by 50% Asynchronous IO forks offload IO to a different core Paravirtualized SCSI driver

He also talked about DRS improvements.

He made a comment that not all hypervisors are the same, and that just leveraging the hardware improvements of the processors isn’t enough. There is more to virtualization, and the vmkernel provides much in terms of access, scheduling, and IO access.

I agree that all hypervisors aren’t the same, BUT all hypervisors now give you quality performance near native, for most things, isn’t that enough?

BW4740 – Evangelizing the Value Proposition

We all know Virtualization is great, and it saves customers money. As Todd said in the keynote, Virtualization saves Financial Energy, Human Energy, and Earth’s Energy.

But, how do you demonstrate this savings to your upper management. How can you translate these IT Benefits into Business Value your Exec’s can understand.

IT Benefit	Solve Business Needs
Consolidate Resources	Lower Capital Costs
Reduce Complexity	Lower Operational Costs
Automated Management	Increased Agility
Availability and Disaster Recovery	Reduce Downtime
improved security	Reduce Business Risk and Increased Governance

From there, you can show them output from an ROI calculator. VMware’s ROI Calculator was created by Alinean, our ROI Calculator was created by Alinean as well. Take either of these reports and look at the results. YOU WILL SAVE MONEY WITH VIRTUALIZATION.

Now look at them, and remove the cost for VMware, that is what you will save with Microsoft.

If you are running Microsoft Operating Systems in the Guests, you buy the Windows Server Datacenter Edition and apply it to the host. Once applied, you can run unlimited Server VMs on that box (regardless of Virtualization Solution), but, with Hyper-V that license also includes the Virtualization Layer. With VMware you would have to buy a vSphere Bundle with that cost added ON TOP of the cost you are already paying for the Guest OS license where you get a Virtualization solution included.

If you are managing these Guests with System Center Configuration Manager, and System Center Operations Manager, then get the Server Management Suite Datacenter bundle to save money, and once you bundle with SMSD, you get SCOM, SCCM, SCDPM, and SCVMM. So you have the management pieces, and you don’t need to buy the vSphere Bundle.

You need to understand how Virtualization will save you money versus physical. What you really need to do is justify your Virtualization Solution of choice. As all of them will save you money, why not save the most and go with the Microsoft Solution?

EA3605 – Virtualizing Tier 1 Apps

VMware shows some graphs on good performance with Tier 1 Apps (Exchange, SQL, etc). Trying to give the customers ammo they can take back to get these apps virtualized.

Performance can’t be the issue now. It has to be “server huggers” or people afraid of change as the platform whether Hyper-V or ESX can run the workload.

They were talking about VMware products like vApps, FT, AppSpeed for monitoring, but the story isn’t all there today.

AppSpeed seems nice, but if you are running the SMSD suite of products, you can EASILY monitor your SQL servers and Exchange, and the apps you are using. System Center gives you insight into what is going on with your apps as well as your Guest OS, your Physical Systems, and the Virtualization Infrastructure.

FT only works for UP VMs, so doesn’t work for a Tier 1 app, but it will be nice when it does.