SeanClark.us

Another version of

Just finished (but is it ever finished?) my 2-day reload of my laptop to prep for a new project and study in eating my own dogfood.  I’m planning to embark into a VMware View installation and test with our NFR licenses at work.  So, in reloading my laptop I’m wanted to prepare for providing the utmost in security and performance for my guest VMs that are copied down from the VMware VIew hosted desktops.  Another focus of mine is to prepare the day in which my company supports BYOC policies where my company “computer” is just a VM running on my laptop (hopefully a laptop with a client hypervisor).

Rather than working in a vacuum on this effort.  I will look to report back the best practices I’ve found, created or learned the hard way.  Thanks in advance for all that help me in this endeavor!  Stay tuned….

December 21st, 2008 | Category: Virtualization | Leave a comment

There’s a good discussion over at vmetc.com concerning putting high performance Exchange/SQL VMs on VMFS backends or RDMs.  I posted a comment that I’m using VMFS for all SQL/Exchange VMs now, except in instances where we would like to take advantage of application aware SAN utilities for backups and/or SAN snapshots.  I neglected to make the comment on performance for VMFS being nearly identical to that of RDM. Well, a quick Google turned up this VMware white paper: Performance Characterization of VMFS and RDM Using a SAN. I remember sitting in a breakout session at VMware Partner Exchange earlier this year and seeing this study quoted.

To me, this is good enough reason as any to go whole hog with VMFS for simplicity and for the features of VMFS.  As long as the performance is there, and you don’t need app aware SAN snapshots, why not?  K.I.S.S (keep it simple Sean).  RDM’s add complexity to a VMware storage design.  Whenever possible, I look to avoid complexity and cost.

The Winner?  VMFS!

December 10th, 2008 | Category: Virtualization | Comments (1)

I’m on the road this week assisting a customer getting started with VMware.  We’ll be starting with VI3 Foundation Accelerator kit, local storage and Vizioncore vRanger for backup.  Nothing terribly complex, but it will be a big change for the business I’m working with.  They are obviously starting in level 1 of the Virtual Maturity Model (VMM):

Level 1 - Initial Level - The IT service delivery process is characterized as ad hoc, and occasionally even chaotic. Few processes are defined, and success depends on individual effort and staff resource utilization.

Well, you have to start somewhere.  So tomorrow, i will be guiding the customer through the install and configuration of a basic VMware infrastructure.  I will be educating more than administering tomorrow, but the number one goal will be to have a solid first foundation and level 1 of virtualization maturity achieved.  As time allows we will proceed with a few efforts to move directly to the next level of maturity

Level 2 - Repeatable - The IT service delivery process is characterized as ad hoc, and occasionally even chaotic. Few processes are defined, and success depends on individual effort and staff resource utilization.

Basic service management processes are established. The necessary discipline is in place to repeat earlier successes on similar services with similar service levels.

If I can get to parts of Level 2 within the first day I will have considered our first day relatively successful.  It will have meant that I have imparted enough knowledge to the customer that they can achieve virtualization management tasks on their own (although with much chaos and without too many defined processes).  I will hopefully be to the point that we have repeatable deployment of Virtual Machines with server templates, centrally managed ESX hosts and that VMware Update Manager has began its downloads for future application.  Level 2 VMM would be great, but I think we’ll most be happy with a good solid base of knowledge and a better jointly developed plan for moving forward the remainder of the week.

I’m mapping VMM levels to the different phases of my project, but there is still a lot of risk that the VMM could be easily lost as I leave the picture in the week, and customer gets too busy to continue education and further development of VMware admin skills.  Risk is also generated if customer admin/support structure isn’t adequately trained ensure mature management of the environment.  So how can we protect this knowledge and make knowledge is retained and leverage?  Documentation.

Throughout day 1, I will be working diligently to update documentation and/or create new virtualization specific documents that is helpful making sure processes remain repeatable and to help provide the framework from which we can strive for the higher levels of VMM 3-5. This way both I and customer can prepare for “bus factor” and help those that follow us to hit ground running just in case.  Also, have this all documetneted.

Getting too sleepy to finish thoughts, but will clean this up tomorrow and take us on trip to understanding VMM level 3, 4, and 5.  Will try to focus on my real-world techniques for moving customers up through the VMM1 levels.  See you soon!

November 18th, 2008 | Tags: vmm | Category: Virtualization | Leave a comment

Hello, I’m back from blogging sabatical.  Too much Tweeting lately.  Anyhoo, Micheal Keen asked me to prepare a blog article for IowaBiz.com, so I thought I would write a couple blog posts of my own in preparation or the article.  The topic for the blog post came to me almost instantly.  I would like to do a post on VMware Virtual Maturity Model (VMM) and how important it is to for businesses to understand the concept when implementing virtualizatoin or taking their virtual infrastructure to the next level.

I’m no pointy headed ITIL intellectual when it comes to describing maturity models.  I think the best way to understand the purpose is to make a parallel to the movie Contact, (or Carl Sagan’s book, if you’d rather) where us Earthlings make contact with an advanced alien race that radioed us schematics for how to build a time/space travel device.  After billions of dollars of investment, months of political rangling, and a costly failure later, they finally succeed in sending Jody Foster’s character to this foreign galaxy and planet where she meets with the alien race.  She has many questions and wants to learn so much more about the technology and science of what happened, but alien being explains that this is just the first step.  That there will be many more to follow when they are ready for them. The alien explains to Jody Foster that they have done it this way for thousands of years, and is the safest way to advance a civilization.  Embarking on a whole new virtualization strategy should be undertaken with similar phased, careful steps.

A Virtual Maturity Model, is a similar framework that can be used to guide the advancement of a virtualization strategy at a company.  You don’t just go from 12 physical servers to 20 Virtual Machines, 3 ESX servers, a SAN, a DR SAN, SRM, VDI, and partridge-in-a-pear-tree in a single project!! It’s too much, too soon and you will fail.  A better approach is to adopt virtualization in phases and at the end of each phase to chart your progress against a VMM.  Then you’ll be able to judge whether you need to slow down, invest in education, improve processes, or hopefully, charge full speed ahead to the next level of maturity.

I’m hoping to develop this thought a little better in the next couple of posts, but my main goal is help as many IT Directores, IT managers or SMB execs get a better handle on how to properly implement virtualization within their business to achieve the most value from their investement.

Stay tuned……

November 16th, 2008 | Category: Virtualization | Leave a comment