Virtualization on IBM Blade Center

©2008 LANexpert SA www.lanexpert.ch Slide 1
Virtualization on IBM
Blade Center (N°14)
Michael GOMEZ
Senior Storage Business Development Manager
September 2nd, 2008
Erik BUSSINK
Senior Virtualization & Security Consultant

AGENDA
CONSOLIDATION VS VIRTUALIZATION
x86 TECHNOLOGY DIRECTIONS
IBM BLADECENTER - MULTIPLE CHOICE
IBM BLADES – VIRTUALIZATION MADE EASY
STORAGE CONSIDERATIONS
CPU TECHNOLOGY FOR VIRTUALIZATION
MANAGEMENT
IBM BLADECENTER & HYPERVISORS
EVOLUTION OF VIRTUALIZATION
VMWARE CATALOG UPDATE
VMWARE VI3.5 ON IBM BLADES
CASE STUDY
Q & A
Agenda

WHAT IS CONSOLIDATION ?
“[Consolidation is] an approach to the
efficient usage of server resources in
order to reduce the total number of
servers, increase datacenter density,
optimize connectivity, reduce energy and
TCO”
IBM BladeCenters are the most efficient
way to server consolidation
 Higher density and server count per U
 Integrated network backplane
 Green technology at best TCO
 Reduce Server Count
 Increase Datacenter
density
 Optimize connectivity
 Reduce TCO
 Green savings

WHAT IS VIRTUALIZATION ?
“[Virtualization is] a technique for hiding
the physical characteristics of computing
resources from the way in which other
systems, applications, or end users
interact with those resources”
In other words: Simplify Complexity
For computing, virtualization can be grouped in
two types:
• Resource virtualization (Storage, Network, etc.)
• Platform virtualization (Hypervisor)
 Virtualization started
in 1960s by IBM…
 Virtual Memory
 VLAN, trunk, VPN
 RAID, volume
manager
 Storage virtualization
 Emulation
 Native virtualization
 Paravirtualization
 Application
virtualization

CONSOLIDATION ? VIRTUALIZATION ?
Consolidation
• Higher Density
• Better connectivity
• Green savings
• Management flexibility
Virtualization
• Simplified complexity
• Resource pooling
• Faster deployments
• Skyrocket system utilization
• Easy high availability
Consolidation & Virtualization
• Higher Density
• Better connectivity
• Green savings
• Management flexibility
• Simplified complexity
• Resource Poolings
• Faster Deployments
• Skyrocket system utilization
• Easy high availability
• Simple Management
• And even more….

x86 Technology Directions
Current
• Virtualization Growing
• 2/4-Core Processors
• Powerful Blades & X4
• SAS/Solid State Disk
• Blade Boot from SAN/iSCSI 50%
• iSCSI deployed
• Storage Virtualization
• 1Gb/10Gb Ethernet
• 4GB SAN
• Virtual I/O – Testing
• 4x DDR InfiniBand
2008-2010
• Virtualization Widespread
• 4/6/8/16-Core Processors
• Powerful Blades & eX4
• Solid State Disk
• Blade Boot from SAN/iSCSI 80%
• iSCSI over 10G
• Storage Virtualization
• 10Gb Ethernet
• 8/12GB SAN
• Virtual I/O – Production
• 4x QDR InfiniBand

IBM BladeCenter – Multiple choice

IBM Blade – Virtualization made Easy

LS22/42 – New Quad-Core AMD Blade

Blade Storage Evolution & Best Practice

Solid State – Reliable and Robust Local Storage

MANAGEMENT
IBM Virtualization Manager (IBM Director)
• Management of both physical and virtual environment
from one single console
• Discover and visualize resources and relationships
• Show health and tasks from all resources and
relationships
• Define and monitor health, drill down on problems
quickly to find root cause
• Increase virtual server’s memory, storage, processing,
networking capabilities
• Support of VMware, Xen, Microsoft, and others
 Easy Management
 Heterogeneous
environment
 One stop monitoring

TO BLADE OR NOT TO BLADE ?
No easy answer: be smart !
To Blade
• Total infrastructure consolidation
• Best when concerned about
aggregation
• Choose when OS image requires
< 8Gb RAM per system
• Choose when low power heat is a
priority
Not To Blade (3850M2 / 3950M2)
• High-end virtualization
• Best when hosting multiple high
performance VMs
• Choose when OS image requires
> 8Gb RAM per system
• Truly scalable perfectly balanced
memory cores and I/O
Success of virtualization is all about sizing

IBM BladeCenter & Hypervisors
• VMware ESX
• Xen Family
• Citrix XenServer
• SUN xVM
• Virtual Iron
• Oracle VM
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Novell SuSE
• Microsoft Hyper-V
• Solaris Containers & Virtual Box
• KVM
 Hypervisors
 BareMetal
 Operating System
 Paravirtualization

Evolution of Virtualization

Evolution of the Virtual Datacenter

VMware Catalog

VMware ESXi
Server boot to running virtual machines in
minutes
Simplified management
Increased security and reliability
Compact, 32MB footprint
Only architecture with no reliance on a
general purpose OS
Integration in hardware eliminates
installation
Intuitive wizard driven start up experience
dramatically reduces deployment time
Standards-based management of the
underlying hardware

VMotion
• Hot Migration (VMotion)
– Moving a VM that is powered on from one
host to another
– Does not move virtual disk(s)
– Requires VMotion license
Datastore1
Virtual disk is not moved
Hosts must have compatible CPUs and be
on the same network subnet
Hot VM migrations are confined
to hosts within the same
datacenter

Storage VMotion
• Storage independent
migration of virtual
machine disks
– Zero downtime to virtual
machines
– LUN independent
– Supported for Fibre channel
SANs
Minimizes planned downtime due
to storage
Complete planned downtime
management solution across
servers and storage with VMotion
and Storage VMotion

DRS
• VMware Distributed Resource
Scheduler (DRS), continuously
monitors utilization across resource
pools and intelligently aligns resources
with business needs.

High Availability (HA)
• VMware HA allows organizations to minimize
downtime and service disruption while eliminating the
need for dedicated, stand-by hardware/software.
VMware HA also allows organizations to eliminate
the need for a devoted administrator to bring back
the machines online.

VMware Update Manager
• Automates patch
management for ESX Server
hosts and select Microsoft
and RHEL virtual machines
• Scans and remedies online as well as
offline virtual machines* and online
ESX Server hosts
• Snapshots virtual machines prior to
patching and allows rollback to
snapshot
Update
Manager
Eliminates manual tracking of patch
levels of ESX Server hosts and
virtual machines
Automates enforcement of patch
standards
Reduces risk through snapshots and
offline virtual machine patching
OFFLINE

ESX Server Patching with Update Manager and DRS
• Update Manager
patches entire DRS
clusters
– Each host in the cluster enters
DRS maintenance mode, one at
a time
– VMs are migrated off, host is
patched & rebooted if required
– VMs are migrated back on
– Next host is selected
VMotionVMotion
Update Manager server
Automates patching of large
number of hosts with zero
downtime to virtual machines

Distributed Power Management (DPM)
Resource Pool
Business Demand
Power Off
Consolidates workloads onto
fewer servers when the
cluster needs fewer resources
Places unneeded servers in
standby mode
Brings servers back online as
workload needs increase
Minimizes power consumption
while guaranteeing service
levels
No disruption or downtime to
virtual machines

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
Enterprise-class, scalable connection
broker
Central administration and policy
enforcement
Automatic desktop provisioning with
optional “smart pooling”
Desktop persistence and secure
tunneling options
Microsoft AD integration and optional
2-factor authentication via RSA
SecurID®
End-to-end enterprise-class desktop control and manageability
Familiar end user experience
Tightly integrated with VMware’s proven virtualization platform (VI3)
Scalability, security and availability suitable for organizations of all sizes
Centralized Virtual
Desktops
VMware
VDM
Clients

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM)
• Simplifies and automates disaster
recovery workflows:
– Setup, testing, failover, failback
• Provides central management of
recovery plans from VirtualCenter
• Turns manual recovery processes
into automated recovery plans
• Simplifies integration with 3rd-
party storage replication
Makes disaster recovery rapid,
reliable, manageable, affordable

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM)
Storage
Servers
VMware Infrastructure
Virtual Machines
VirtualCenter
Site
Recovery
Manager
Storage
Servers
VMware Infrastructure
VirtualCenter
Site
Recovery
Manager
Storage Replication
Site Recovery
Manager
Protected virtual
machines
Virtual Machines
Production Disaster Recovery

VMware VI3.5 on IBM BladeCenter
Architecture Design
 Schema
 Blade Type
 BladeCenter Connectivity
 Network Configuration
 SAN Connectivity
 Boot on SAN
 Best practices
 Gotcha’s

VMware ESX 3.5.0 on Blade HS21XM

VMware ESXi 3.5.0 on Blade HS21XM

Virtual Center 2.5

Virtual Center 2.5 & DPM

Case Study – Large scale VI 3.5 Deployment
• Two Datacenter configuration
• Support for Redundant Core Network
• VM High-Availability
• Leverage existing SAN Storage
• Boot from SAN for VMware ESX servers
• Support for DMZ Network

BladeCenter Configuration
• 2x BladeCenter H
• 12x HS21XM Blade

BladeCenter I/O Connectivity
• BladeCenter H
• 2x AMM
• 5x Cisco Gigabit
Switches
• 2x Brocade 4Gb
Fiber Switches

Blade Interconnect used in HS21 XM

• Blade HS21XM
• 2x Xeon Processor
• 32Gb Memory
• 2x Onboard GbE
• CFF-V Expansion Card
 2x GbE
• CFF-H Expansion Card
 2x 4GB FC
 2x GbE

• Network
Configuration

VMmware VirtualCenter
• 2x BladeCenter H
• 12x HS21XM Blade
• 10x Cisco Gigabit
Switches
• 4x Brocade 4Gb
Fiber Switches
• 48 Cores / 24 CPU
• 128 GHz CPU
• 384 GB Memory

VMware VI 3.5 on IBM BladeCenter
Network considerations
 Réseau de management
 Gestion de la DMZ
 Intégration au LAN
 Connectique SAN (FC, IP)

VMware VI 3.5 on IBM BladeCenter
High Availability
 Blade Sparing (IBM Director & Open Fabric)
 Redundant platform and architecture
 VMware Clustering among Blades &
Chassis
 VMware Site Recovery Manager

Q & A

CFF Expansion Card Placement in Blade Servers

Blade Interconnect (Example 1)

Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT)

Technology : I/O Scaling Challenges

Constructors Addressing I/O Scalability

Virtualization on IBM Blade Center

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