Virtualization

Holiday Lull

by

Lots to do this week, but for some reason there felt like a little holiday lull. I guess it is the short week. We had a release explode on us twice in the past week (the same release on two different nights). that was fun getting a call from Danny at 11PM Monday. I am also trying to get a deal finalized for a new network switch. Getting to the right price is always interesting.

Our new batch of servers finally arrived Wednesday with more on the way next week. We also got the licenses for our copies of Vmware’s ESX server so we can build those out.

I also had the electricians in the office to spec out adding another couple of circuits to the computer room. They think they can do what I want, but will have to play around with the power a bit to get as much juice as I need. With this power upgrade done we will max out the room. Any further expansion most likely will have to go somewhere else.

The rest of the week was taken up by paper work and project plans!

ESX Server?

by

I have praised VMWare’s products for some time on this blog. As things look now, I will continue to do so. I have used their workstation product for almost 2 years. I have used GSX server for about a year. Now comes ESX server. It looks awesome. I have a project that requires allot of new hardware to be built. ESX server looks like an good alternative to server sprawl. Instead of building dozens of servers, the same solution done virtually can be done with a few (not many) ESX servers. The cost benefit is real. I ran some figures over the weekend and it can save us a nice amount of money by going virtual. Then there are the saving space, and energy issues. And the flexibility we get by having a virtual setup. I am really excited about what we can do.

I have been trying out ESX on a test box we setup (reminds me I have a VM building right now that probably needs some click next help). The install was quick. I now have to read the dozen or so white papers spread across my desk (my computer desktop and physical desk). This software solves problems I didn’t even think about until I got to reading about the solutions. Multi vlan support is nice, as well as NIC teaming. I have allot of reading and testing to do in the short amount of time I have until we have to deploy the solution. I don’t think have been this excited about a technology since Call Manager. More info as I play (i mean test).

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Virtual vs Physical

by

At work I am deploying a growing number of servers for both production use and development & testing. One of the things we are doing is paying more attention to replicating our production environment at every step of the development and deployment environments. That means allot more servers. How much is allot? We added 25% more gear enterprise wide in the month of August. We have been busy, and we are not yet done. I have filled one computer room at a facility and we are bringing online another at that location sooner than originally planned. We also moved into a larger cage at our data center earlier this summer. Then we added cabinets to the new cage to accommodate the larger growth. In yet another office we added a cabinet, and are working on beefing up the power in the room to accommodate yet more gear. Then we need to look at more HVAC. I never had to deal with ancillary issues such as not having enough power to run gear. 5 years ago I would never have thought I would be in a situation like this. It is very interesting to me to look at how many rack U’s a server takes up when quoting them out and determining what to buy based on the cost of a 2 vs 4U server and how much it would cost to just add another cabinet if you got the bigger gear. As a plain old engineer I would just recommend buy this server because it did the job. In my current position I need to look at the entire picture.

The next few months will bring another burst of server sprawl. One of the things we are looking at is the cost of buying hardware for every server role we need to fill, or the cost to do the same amount of computing power in virtual machines. I must sound like a broken record talking about one of my favorite software companies, VMWare. Our GSX server has served us well, and is a great proof of concept to show how we can expand the use of VM’s. I don’t think we will deploy VM’s en-mass at our data center to do production work, but we have plenty of other uses for the technology elsewhere that makes looking into GSX or ESX server a viable alternative to buying more gear.

To me it boils down to 2 factors. 1 is of course cost. How much does it cost us to buy and deploy a dozen servers, power them, get KVM’s, and rack space for them, vs purchasing hardware for a VM server (or 2) that can handle the same amount of work load.

The 2nd factor is ease of use. How quickly can we get build a physical server for use? Restore it from a preset level of configuration for use in dev and qa? How fast can we buy and deploy hardware when a need comes up for a new server? The same questions apply for virtual machines.

I am a bit biased. I want to virtual machines. The flexibility they give you is amazing. I also know that I have SLA’s to keep, and costs to consider. So if the per server (or server instance) costs are too high we can’t do it. For now I spoke with my boss late this week to identify what applications need homes in what environments. The next step is to crunch the numbers to get all of our options. The VMware user groups have been helpful in figuring out realistically how many VM’s you can get per GSX and ESX server. More news as the project unfolds.

More VMWare Work

by

This week I actually am working on a technical project, not just managing them. I built a test environment to put up a windows 2003 terminal server. I used VMware’s GSX server to do it. I was testing what ports I would need to open up if I wanted to access a terminal server via the TSWeb client Microsoft gives you. Turns out even if the web server and the terminal server are the same machine you have to open up the RDP port on your firewall anyway. That wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear, so I am looking into Citrix to see if I can use their product and only open up port 80? Waiting to hear back from them.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Week Recap

by

Meetings took up a large part of the first half of the week. They are necessary but I never like them. I guess I like doing rather than discussing, but discussing (aka planning) is critical before you can do! So I am stuck:(

On thursday a few of us moved a bunch of gear into a new rack in the office. That was interesting. I almost messed my arm up by climbing down from a rack. I was on top trying to clean up some cables and didn’t realize how far the chair actually was. I am getting to old for stuff like that, or better put there are younger people around who could do it instead of me. Thankfully I am ok, and we got all the work done. It wasn’t needed to be an overnight affair so I was happy.

Socially nothing went on thursday. I didn’t get home till after 11. After work was done we went to dinner at this nice diner near the office and then I hopped the train home. It is never fun coming home, changing and going right to bed.

Friday I spent time working on some virtual machines. I needed to get rid of some old test box’s that we had lying around, but we still needed the apps running on them. When I say old I mean like 5 year old desktops hiding under tables in our computer room. I migrated the app’s into a virtual machine running on our GSX server. I feel much better now that things are tidy!

Virtual PC For The Mac

by

I have tried Virtual PC for the Mac before. I think it was version 5.x or 6.x. I don’t remember. It is hard to imagine that I have been using a Mac long enough to have lived through 3 revisions of software but you never know.

I was on MSDN today to download Beta 1 of Windows Vista for a developer (all 2.4gig or so of it that will take 2+ hours on a 4+ megabit link) when I saw MSDN had Virtual PC for the Mac 7.01 online. I decided to try it again. I am still a skeptic, but I figured I would look at it and see if it was of value. Right now I am installing Windows XP into a new Virtual PC 7.02 install. The concept of XP on a Mac is nice, but the slow speed may not be worth it. I may just have to wait for x86 Macs.

Man this install is taking forever…

All Consuming Project

by

The move downstairs is taking up allot more of my time than I would have liked. I am on my way home now. Kai and Co. will make sure the cubes are finished and the cable work is done right.

Now that the contracts are back, our data center wants to schedule the move of our gear to our new cage. I need to call them tomorrow. Hopefully we can do everything and have ourselves up in the new cage by mid June. Then all we have to worry about is IPCC.

On other notes I am working on getting a DC into VMware, still. I got side tracked since I had to goto Kingston. I will demote one of our DC’s tomorrow and bring it online as a virtual machine.

Still waiting to run the active directory upgrade at our data center. this will enable us to have 2003 domain controllers. This will be helpful for Biztalk 2004.

Yet More Vmware Stories

by

I have spent 2 days working on fixing my active directory test virtual machines. I upgraded to vmware workstation 5.0 hoping to solve some cloning issues. if that doesn’t (didn’t) fix my issue I will use Microsoft sysprep on the virtual machines to resolve the SID problems.

I am also building myself a stable Suse 9.1 VM. The process of upgrading all the VM’s I have to work with workstation 5.0 will also take some time. The Kingston guys finally saw how I can connect to our GSX server today when I was up there. now they want one.

After some initial issues with the Suse 9.1 VM I am on my way to getting this to work. I keep hitting roadblocks with my configuration. it just shows how much I have to learn when it comes to linux.

Still Loving VMware

by

It is rare for a week to go by that I don’t at some point think that VMware is not the best thing since sliced bread. We finally finished rolling out our first GSX server. It was barely up for a week when one of our developers needed another server for something that we never budgeted hardware for. Actually they specifically said we don’t need new hardware for this project. Instead of having to go looking for approval for a new database server, I just looked at our used resources on the virtual machine and allocated another VM. they were up and running in a day.

Restores are also fantastic. I have restored several dev VM’s since we brought this system online. I am already seeing where the box we built will be over loaded soon and we will need to get another one. I am also pushing the practical applications of another virtual machine in our production environment. it would save a ton of cash in the long term.

On the development and testing side next week I am going to setup a 3 server domain (totally virtual) to test the upgrade path from windows 2000 active directory to 2003. I have done this before, but it was almost 2 years ago. I want all the quirks fresh in my head. to do this with real hardware would have taken ages, and would have required me to put up a bunch of old desktops to do the job. this way I have one desktop at my desk that I just configure the way I want, run the test and then blow away the virtual machines when I am done.

Busy and Sick

by

Got one of the 2 circuits we were going to cancel taken care of. our provider is working on canceling the other line. The new bigger circuit for my office is on order now.

Jayson is working on finishing up the hardware for our VMware GSX server. We had issues with the poweredge we bought so we won’t have 4 gigs of ram. We will settle for 3. That means less VM’s we can run. I need to cofigure GSX when I am in the office Friday.

Jay is off next week to goto sell his house. he is going to fix it up and put it back on the market.

I am working to get hardware for our Biztalk 2004 deployment. I need to buy a server for QA and 2 for production. Working out pricing issues now. Hope to have them by next week.