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– Focusing on the Four Fundamentals• CPU – Memory – Disk – Network

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

WHAT’S NEW IN VSPHERE 4.0

VMware Name ChangesOld Name New Name

VMware Infrastructure VMware vSphereVMFS VMware vStorage VMFS

VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection

VMware VirtualCenter VMware vCenterVMware Update Manager VMware vCenter Update Manager

VMware Capacity Manager Vmware vCenter CapacityIQVMware Converter VMware vCenter Converter (integrated)

VMware vCenter Converter StandaloneVMware Lifecycle Manager VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager

VMware Lab Manager VMware vCenter Lab ManagerVMware Stage Manager VMware vCenter Stage Manager

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) VMware vCenter Site Recovery ManagerVMware VI Toolkit VMware vSphere PowerCLI

VADK VMware Studio

VMware vSphere 4.0 Packaging

STANDARD($795 / CPU)

Simple Consolidation

ENTERPRISE PLUS($3495 / CPU)

Simplified Operations

ADVANCED($2245 / CPU)

Availability

ESSENTIALS PLUSIntegrated availability

solution for Small Businesses

($2995 All-in-One for 3 Servers)

ESSENTIALSBasic 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

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

ENTERPRISE($2875 / CPU)

Automated Resource

Management

Automated resource management for:•Production infrastructure•Mission critical applications

VMware vSphere 4.0 Packaging

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

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)

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.

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 vCenter AppSpeed (Late 2009)– Formally B-Hive Conductor, end to end application

monitoring to ensure application performance SLAs.

Performance Enhancements in VMware ESX 4.0

VMware ESX 3.5 VMware ESX 4.0

vCPU per Virtual Machine 4 8

RAM per Virtual Machine 64GB 255GB

NICs per Virtual Machine 4 10

Physical CPUs per Host 32 64

Physical RAM per Host 256GB 512GB

Virtual Machines per Host 128 256

Max Network Throughput 9Gb/s 40Gb/s

IOps per Host 100,000 400,000+

Physical CPUs per Cluster 1024 2048

Physical RAM per Cluster 8TB 16TB

BUILDING A ROBUSTVIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT

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

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

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!

• Common CPUPerformance Issue– Caused by vCPU

Over-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.

• 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

• 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-critical

Virtual 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

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 Aggregation

with multiple Targets (iSCSI) or Exports (NFS)• Watch Network Throughput on ESX servers and also

Storage Array– FCP• Watch Latency Counters in vCenter

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

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!

THANK YOU – QUESTIONS?