Good Virtualization Requires Good Virtualization Management

As Tom Bittman of the Gartner Organization recently said, “Virtualization
without good management is more dangerous than not using virtualization in the
first place. Automation is the critical next step to help organizations stop
‘virtualization sprawl,’ which is not much better than server sprawl.”
Continental addressed this virtualization management issue with a software tool
from Microsoft — System Center Virtual Machine Manager. That’s a
mouthful, so I’ll refer to the tool by its acronym — SCVMM.

SCVMM allowed Continental to significantly reduce deployment time for replacement
servers. Prior to moving to virtualization and SCVMM, Continental spent, on
average, four weeks to provision a new server. This included a couple of days
to build the server and more than three weeks lead time for purchasing, acquisition
and installation. SCVMM has a number of tools to not only manage virtual machines,
but provision them as well. One of these tools converts a physical machine to
a virtual one. Using this tool, outdated aging hardware was quickly converted
to a virtual environment utilizing the resources of new host hardware. This
also cut the deployment time to about eight hours in Continental’s case.

The first version of SCVMM, dubbed 2007, took some time to get to market and
supports Microsoft’s application layer virtualization product, Virtual
Server 2005 R2. The first release also didn’t offer all of the functionality
originally planned. The second version, dubbed System Center Virtual Machine
Manager 2008, is currently in Beta and supports Microsoft’s hypervisor
technology, which is officially planned to be released in August 2008, a few
months before this issue will mail. This second version also adds the ability
to manage VMware virtual machines, with support for XenServer VMs to follow
a little later.

I have been testing SCVMM 2008 Beta with the release candidate version of
Microsoft’s Hyper-V. I did encounter an error when doing a physical to
virtual (P2V) conversion on one of our servers, but the other P2V conversions
I tried went without a hitch. In addition, SCVMM uses a technology called ‘checkpoints.’
This allows us, for example, to create an image just prior to deploying an application
we think might misbehave. If our worst fears are realized and the application
behaves badly, with the checkpoint we created prior to installing the application,
we can rewind or roll-back to the server state just prior to installing the
application. This saves significant time over the previous method, which was
to use Control Panel, Add-Remove programs to remove the misbehaving application
and hopefully not experience any other ill effects of installing the application.
Checkpoint technology is also beneficial for testing the latest service pack
or security update. In addition to P2V conversions and checkpoints, SCVMM allows
for the cloning (it’s not just for sheep) of virtual machines. This provides
an exact copy for backup or offsite storage purposes.

Accounting Firm Issues
Few accounting firms are the size of Continental Airlines; however, the issues
are similar. We all have to face the obsolescence of hardware and are concerned
about management of our group of servers. With the recent announcement of a
Microsoft product called Essential Business Server, more and more firms (even
smaller firms who have been using Small Business Server) will be evaluating
the benefits of separation of server roles. Essential Business Server is intended
to be Small Business Server’s big brother. As you may know, Small Business
Server has an application server, file and printer server, mail server, database
server and firewall all running on a single machine. Essential Business Server
is a licensing model that allows for up to four distinct machines, which serves
to separate all of these roles. This reduces the concern that if that single
Small Business Server machine stops functioning for any reason, all services
also stop functioning.

The Ideal Situation
An ideal situation would be to invest in two physical machines, one to host
four virtual servers utilizing the licensing discounts of Essential Business
Server and a second for redundancy. Should something unforeseen happen to the
primary virtual host machine, the images can be quickly started on the backup
host machine. You might be thinking this is overkill, but remember, the cost
of not being able to keep your staff working is measured in terms of the lost
billable hours for the period of time it takes to bring services back online.
And even if you never use that second machine, the peace of mind is worth its
cost. Think of it as insurance. I suspect most firms make other insurance investments
from errors and omissions to liability.

Microsoft vs. VMWare
It’s clear that Microsoft is serious about virtualization and determined
to take on market leader VMWare. In the Continental Airlines example, the airline
IT group evaluated several virtualization products, and the head-to-head came
down to Microsoft vs. VMWare. In this case, the Microsoft virtualization product
came out the winner. Whichever virtualization technology you consider, don’t
bury your head in the sand. Understand that you need a well designed management
tool to go along with your virtual environment.