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Virtual Infrastructure 3 Deployment. A VI3 deployment in a Mid-size Company. About Christie Digital. A leader in visual solutions for business, entertainment and industry Head office for Manufacturing & Operations in Kitchener, ON Head office for Sales & Field Operations in Cypress, CA - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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Virtual Infrastructure 3 Deployment
A VI3 deployment in a Mid-size Company
About Christie Digital• A leader in visual solutions for business, entertainment and
industry
• Head office for Manufacturing & Operations in Kitchener, ON
• Head office for Sales & Field Operations in Cypress, CA
• Numerous AV Industry Awards; won 2 Oscars for technical achievement
CDS: A good problem to have
• Explosive growth: doubled in size in less than 2 years
• Global Information Services (GIS) had to quickly adapt to increasing business needs
• GIS faced the usual suspects:– Provisioning takes too long– Too many “one application, one box” requests – Proliferation of hardware surpassed server room cooling
capacity– Legacy Applications were on older and dying hardware– No time to manage all the requests
GIS Responses to the Business needs
• Next IT investment: IBM BladeCenter + SAN– One blade center – 14 blades – for long term growth– 6 months, had to purchase an additional blade center– 6 months, require yet another blade center
• Have outgrown our initial blade center architecture and required some additional changes, especially for the SAN
• Still had legacy apps on older hardware
Just wasn’t enough
VI3: Stop the Madness
• Virtual Center – recycled older rack mount hardware
• ESX Servers – 2 x IBM Blades, 16 GB RAM, Dual Proc, 4 Core– With shared Storage; created an ESX DRS/HA Cluster
• VM Converter – Migrate physical to virtual
• ESX Patch Repository – IIS Server
• VCB Proxy – Leverage our existing utility Server
Virtual Center SQL 2005 Database
VCB Proxy
VM Converter
ESX Patch Repository
Setting up the Hardware
• Burn in process for 72 hours using IBM diagnostic tools
• Installed ESX manually (only two servers) onto local disk as per:/boot 1000 MB (ext3)
swap 544
/ 5000 (ext3)
/home 5000 (ext3)
/tmp 3000 (ext3)
/var 3000 (ext3)
/vmkcore 110
/vmimages rest of disk
Shared Storage
IBM DS 4800 SAN, Created 3 LUNs
• 1 LUN ~ 100 GB for Templates & ISO’s on SATA
• 2 LUNs ~ 400 GB for VM’s on FC
– Each FC LUN has a “primary” ESX server, but both can see the other LUNs for DRS & HA
– Left 60-70 GB per LUN for snapshots/backups/etc
Authentication
• Set up NTP• Modifying the “wheel” local group using visudo• Added local users to the wheel account• Connected with VI Client and gave wheel group admin access
Active Directory
Domain/admin1
ESX Server
admin1
esxcfg-auth
Patching
patchESX.pl
IIS ServerpatchList.txt
esxupdate -n -r http://IIS/patch#
• Over 20 ESX 3.01 patches have been released– Created IIS repository as per:
http://virtrix.blogspot.com/2007/03/vmware-autopatching-your-esx-host.html
ESX Server
Networking
Each machine had 4 NICs
• 1 NIC for service console– Debated about putting into a management VLAN
• 1 NIC for vmkernel (for Vmotion)
• 2 NICS, load balanced for VM
Network configured from within Virtual Center
“Instant” Provisioning
Current Method
• Un-box, rack and cable
• Configure hardware– If blade, configure SAN
• Walk through vender Server Config Guide
• Install Operating System
• Install Patches
• Configure server for GIS “standards”
Using VMware
• Right-click template, select “create new virtual machine”
• Wait for file copy
• Adjust machine settings as appropriate
Assuming hardware is available, deployment takes approximately 1
business day
Assuming capacity is available, deployment takes approximately
10-20 minutes
VM Provisioning Process
• Created optimized template; excess services uninstalled – http://download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/mdc9700.pdf
• 5 GB Template file, used vmkfstools –X to expand– When VM boots, use ISO “gparted”:– http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&
package_id=173828
• Have syprep installed on the Windows image; use “sys-unconfig” for Red Hat (ish) installs
Convincing the Powers that be
• Three pronged approach to getting approval
– Get influential techies on your side
– Leverage any publicly announced environment policies
– Play dirty; talk about money
VMware Server – A solution to Dev Machines
“Virtual Lab in a box”• Semi-powerful desktop
– 4 GB of RAM, Dual-Core CPU, RAID Controller, extra NIC
• Use Linux OS (Red Hat, CentOS, etc) as it has a smaller footprint than Windows; use NoMachine for remote admin
• Install VMware Server (free!),
• VM Converter to move templates and VM’s back and forth
Reducing the Carbon Footprint
• CDS ISO 14001 Certified “Environmental Management System Policy”
• VI3 has considerable impact on GIS’s positive contribution to the Policy
VI3 can:
• Reduce the amount of physical hardware (and thus raw materials)
• Reduce energy consumption to power servers
• Reduce cooling requirements, and thus energy consumption
“We are fully committed to environmental solutions …and to meet or exceed applicable environmental laws, regulations and organizational objectives.”
Return on Investment
• In the 2 quarters, 11 known projects that require a server
High-Tier @ $5000 Mid-Tier @ $3000 Low Tier @ $1500
• Still have to add in cost for a blade chassis @ $30 K
$85 K $63 K $46.5 K
Options:
• VMware Infrastructure 3 Investment = $51 K– Plus still have the capacity for 11 more virtual machines!
$55 K $33 K $16.5 K
Lesson’s Learned
– Leverage your VMware Rep!
– Read the fine print…
– VCB is a “backup framework”, not a backup solution
A Windows VMware Admin (free) Tool set
• Putty – required for ssh access to the service console OS
• WinSCP – A GUI scp client to move files (mainly ISO) to and from ESX servers
• Veeam FastSCP – another GUI scp client, but infinitely faster than WinSCP– http://www.veeam.com/veeam_fast_scp.asp
• No Machine – a “RDP” client that easily allow X-windows access to Linux boxes through ssh– http://www.nomachine.com/
Recommended Reading
• RapidApp's Quick Start guide to ESX 3.0http://www.lulu.com/content/712361
• VI3 book; includes free Advance Design 2.5 Guide downloadhttp://www.vi3book.com/
• Mega-link post in user forums
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=81191&start=0&tstart=0