VM Install Blog: VMware for Beginners & Virtualization Basics

Is vMan the vSphere Super Hero Your Single Point of Failure?

Is too much of your vSphere Cloud success riding on the shoulders of one person?

We all love a good movie about the hero who rides into gunfire to save the day…

… but when it comes to managing infrastructure, Heroes are at the core of a companies IT department’s biggest risk.

Mitigating the Risk of a Single Point of Failure “Person”

Let’s get straight to the point on this vSphere DR Strategy topic – allowing a single person (vMan) to become irreplaceable puts the entire virtualization team and vSphere at risk of failure if the hero ever decides to move on (quit and take another job).

Mitigating Risk

Reducing risk is not just about getting rid of old legacy apps and hardware, it’s also about people risk, too.

This is why cross training and team collaboration are critical to a healthy vSphere cloud for long term success.

Its basic infrastructure management 101 to always have more than one person involved in architecture, design, and building of infrastructure to spreads the responsibly and ownership.

Mastermind for Better Solutions

This also cultivates a mastermind group for ideals to solve problems…

… And it keeps heroes from taking over.

Any team or manager that solely relies on a single person will risk failure, even though their environment may be flourishing without any flaws.

I’ve seen this over and over in my management career where only one person is called when there are problems because nobody… Continue reading →

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Virtual Server DR Strategy for Beginners: Failure Domain

By Joe

single failure domain (all your egg's in one basket)

Are all your egg’s in one basket?

Keeping all the business critical virtual servers in the same datastore, LUN, or storage volume is a common OVERSIGHT for many IT operation teams.

A key DR Strategy for beginners is to learn to separate out not only virtual servers onto separate storage aggregates…

…but also to separate out drives (vmdk) within a virtual storage so data and system state are not lost together in the event of a storage failure.

These separate DR environments are called failure domains and at least two failure domains should always exist within each technology stack.

4 Failure Domain Examples for Beginners that could Save you from Disaster:

1. Network Stack

Within the network stack, we normally have redundant routers and switches configured in a mesh topology in the event a router or switch fails.

Depending on the network architecture and size of the switches, routers and the amount and type of traffic, the network may suffer performance degradation but should continue flowing.

This is normally well architected by a network engineer or team – classic networking 101, stuff.

2. Storage Stack

Within the storage stack the same principal applies.

Dual filer or storage heads with redundant paths from the IP network or Fiber switches (sometimes on dedicated switch hardware).

Then dual paths from storage controllers to ESXi host via NIC, GBIC or HBA.

When configured properly with multi-pathing within the ESXi datastore configuratioons, storage traffic will continue flowing in the event… Continue reading →

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Service Management Guide: ITSM for Virtualization

By Joe

ITSM for Virtualization What’s the difference between deploying a service versus installing a software technology?

A lot!

For example think about what you expect from companies that provide you with water, electricity, and telephone services (now you’re getting close).

What’s ITSM for Virtualization?

As an infrastructure manager, over the years I’ve had virtualization admins and engineers tell me how quickly they can install a new technology such as VMware View…

… and for the most part they were telling the truth. Heck, even I can follow the instructions to set up VMware View.

But that’s not delivering a quality service, its installing software.

And the difference between service delivery and software installation is huge!

Here’s what I mean…

Using our example of VMware View, delivering a VDI service goes well beyond installing a couple of packages on a server and then deploying a few virtual desktops.

Moreover, it’s about assessing the scope and use cases that may require various tweaks and alterations for each business unit (or department).

It’s about matching the look and feel of the existing physical desktops so users are not confused.

And it’s about testing and validating the application stack to ensure all the applications will still work once they are running on a VDI instance verses physical hardware with dedicated memory, CPU, hard drive and a network adapter.

No! A service is much more than installing cool software.

Consider our VDI example again.

In a proper service delivery project, a network traffic… Continue reading →

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Virtualization Beginner’s Guide

By VM Install

About Virtualization, A Beginner’s Guide

I came across an interesting book today, Virtualization, A Beginner’s Guide, that seems like an interesting read for those new to the virtualization topic and are investigating which solution is best for their business or IT needs.

Here’s what authors Daniel Ruest & Nelson Ruest have to say about their book:

Transform your IT infrastructure into a leaner, greener datacenter with expert guidance from a pair of industry professionals.

5 Step Deployment Plan

Through clear explanations, examples, and a five-step deployment plan, Virtualization: A Beginner’s Guide shows you how to maximize the latest technologies from Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware.

Consolidate your servers, set up virtual machines and applications, and manage virtual desktop environments.

You’ll also learn how to implement reliable security, monitoring, and backup procedures.

Migrate to a dynamic, on-demand data delivery platform!

“If you’re looking to hit the ground running with any virtualization project, large or small, this book is going to give you the start you need, and along the way will offer you some cautionary tales that will even take some seasoned virtualization veterans by surprise.” –From the foreword by Chris Wolf, Senior Analyst, Burton Group

Key Takeaways:

Select a virtualization platform and develop roll out plans
Perform pre-deployment network and workstation tests
Configure virtual machines, storage devices, and workloads
Set up and secure a fully virtualized and highly available server environment
Manage a centralized, on-demand application delivery framework
Handle volatile and… Continue reading →

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vSphere Monitoring for Health & Performance

By Joe

vsphere daily monitoring checks Managing and supporting various vSphere environments over the years has given me a binoculars view of what vSphere monitoring checks are best for keeping ESXi hosts healthy and VMs at peak performance.

And, now that most IT departments have realized that cramming as many VMs as possible onto a host is not a good or best practice, it’s easier to justify health and performance over virtual machine density relative to return on investment.

Think of your vSphere as a STACK

From the bottom up, you have (physical stack):

network switches, VLANs, interfaces and connections
storage units, LUNs, and spindles
server hardware, memory, CPUs, hard drives
ESXi
vCenter & client
databases
monitoring tools

Then there’s virtual resources such as (virtual stack):

vSwitches
datastore
clusters
virtual hardware
resource pools
vCloud Director

And finally on top of that are (platform stack):

VMs
OS
Middleware
vApps and Apps.

Most health and performance problems normally originate at the physical stack (in networking, storage, or server hardware) and affect the virtual stack.

For example:

Poor network performance on all the VMs sharing a vSwitch that is connected via a NIC to an oversubscribed network switch.

Poor performance on all the VMs that share the same oversubscribed storage LUN.

Poor performance on all the VMs that share the same oversubscribed server hardware.

7 vSphere Monitoring Recommendations

Monitoring networking to ensure there are no switches or ports that are oversubscribed due to too many… Continue reading →

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Virtualization Basics: Part 2 for VMware Beginners

By Joe

As a part 2 follow up for my recent blog post VMware for Beginners, this post is a collection of tips (and views) I’ve written for the broader virtualization audience.

What’s the difference you might ask?

The difference is virtualization basics focuses on the big picture (design, tools, management, etc).

In this collection, I share what’s important for infrastructure managers as well as give advice on related topics that might come into play as a vSphere virtual environment grows in size, functionality and complexity.

There’s also a list of useful tools I’ve reviewed.

Let’s dig in….

Virtualization Basics is NOT for Dummies!

why virtualization fails - virtualization basics 1. Why Virtualization Fails: 3 Non-Technical Culprits – In this article I’ve shared 3 non-technical problems that contribute to the difficulties faced in managing virtualization. These culprits are: Cowboys, Free-for-Alls (chaos), and Unrealistic Expectations.

2. vSphere Operations Management Tasks: What to Expect – Operations Management doesn’t get any clearer than this. I’ve listed 20 duties related to supporting and maintaining a health vSphere environment.

3. Server Consolidation: Biting Off Too Much Is Risky – In this post I offer 11 tips for project managers leading server consolation projects. A must read if you are just kicking off a server consolidation project.

4. Busting Virtualization Myths: Saves Money, Hardware, Resources, Time, Its Free and Easy – All joking aside, I think this was one of my best articles. It’s definitely a must read for beginners who haven’t already made the… Continue reading →

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