Windows Server Virtualization

Editor's Notes

• #3: Infrastructure Planning and Design (IPD) is a series of planning and design guides created to clarify and streamline the planning and design process for Microsoft ® infrastructure technologies. Each guide in the series addresses a unique infrastructure technology or scenario. These guides include the following topics: Defining the technical decision flow (flow chart) through the planning process Describing the decisions to be made and the commonly available options to consider in making the decisions Relating the decisions and options for the business in terms of cost, complexity, and other characteristics Framing the decision in terms of additional questions for the business to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the appropriate business landscape The guides in this series are intended to complement and augment Microsoft product documentation.
• #4: This guide was created to enable infrastructure planners to design virtualization infrastructure solutions. This guide includes specific design information, including: Activities that encourage sound planning. Each activity includes: Prerequisites and background on the activity Tasks that will be performed to complete the activity Reference information regarding the activity’s impact on characteristics such as cost, complexity, and capacity of the solution Questions to ensure business needs are captured and reflected in the solution This guide is written for information technology (IT) infrastructure specialists who are responsible for planning and designing a virtualized server infrastructure.
• #5: <Use this slide to discuss broad justifications for choosing virtual server solutions.> Most organizations explore virtualization for one of the following reasons: Server consolidation – By consolidating multiple server instances on one set of hardware, efficiency is gained by more fully using the hardware. Application Migration – Some applications do not run on newer server operating systems, creating a need for the ability to host virtual instances of legacy operating systems to run these applications. Increase IT Agility – Provide the ability to rapidly add and move servers to respond to changing business needs. Software Development – By saving and restoring a set of template virtual hard drives (VHD), developers can rapidly cycle through test scenarios during software development processes.
• #6: The purpose of this guide is to focus on the considerations that organizations should take into account when designing a virtualization infrastructure. This will be accomplished by enabling planners to determine application requirements and, using those requirements, design a Microsoft ® Virtual Server infrastructure. Details about disaster recovery, server support, and server hosting are outside the scope of this guide.
• #7: <This slide shows the effect server virtualization has on infrastructure maturity as reflected on the Infrastructure Optimization Model> According to the Core Infrastructure Optimization Model (Core IO), organizations that are actively pursuing server consolidation for production workloads with virtualization are meeting one of the requirements to move to the Rationalized level. This guide will assist in planning and designing the infrastructure for virtual workloads using Windows Server ® 2008 Hyper-V™ and Virtual Server 2005 R2.
• #8: This slide depicts the entire planning and design flow for server virtualization. This sequence proceeds in a logical order to first determine requirements and then design an appropriate infrastructure. Where a step represents decisions the organization must make, this guide presents a corresponding list of common response options. Other steps in this list represent tasks the organization must complete; they appear in this guide because they are needed to complete the infrastructure design.
• #9: <Use this slide as an opportunity to share best practices for infrastructure planning.> Some tips: Ensure management stakeholders are made part of the planning process. This ensures that there is commitment to successful completion, that business needs are captured and reflected in the plan, and that budgets can be justified. A “Job Aid” spreadsheet or other data capture method is recommended, as most organizations will have many applications and scenarios for virtualization.
• #10: Part 1 focuses on details related to the applications that will reside on the virtual infrastructure. Emphasize that organizations must consider both business and technical requirements before designing the host infrastructure. By enumerating these requirements, it becomes possible to design infrastructure solutions for the proper scale and availability. At the end of Part 1, the complete requirements should be enumerated and documented.
• #11: Virtualization technology can apply to all areas of an organization. In this step, businesses should document their primary goals for virtualization. By the completion of this step, an approach to virtualization should be identified and validated with the business. Many organizations will have the need to deploy virtualization using all three options. Specific design decisions in subsequent steps should keep these decisions in mind. For the audience, define or explain: Option 1: Enterprise – The entire organization Option 2: Hub – Centralized location Option 3: Satellite – Smaller location, possibly with limited connectivity to central office resources
• #12: **ANIMATED SLIDE** <In this slide, we begin to inventory applications and determine whether they are candidates for virtualization.> Step 2 involves determining whether applications should run on a virtual server. Compatibility and availability requirements are documented for each application to be used later on when mapping guests to hosts and determining high-availability needs. The other tasks in this step involve the collection and documentation of business requirements, such as those related to security and performance.
• #13: Determining expected hardware resource utilization requirements is an important step. Organizations should plan to collect and analyze performance statistics based on available data. Details can be stored in a spreadsheet or database in order to provide easy analysis in future steps. Some example performance counters: Processor (CPU) Process (memory) Committed bytes (memory) Physical disk (disk) Network interface (network)
• #14: Discuss the implications of various backup methods for disaster recovery and business continuity. Backup requirements should be based on: Data loss limitations (risk tolerance) Recovery intervals (may be typified by Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with the business) Storage limitations (storage infrastructure costs) Organizations will likely use a combination of backup methods based on specific requirements for each application.
• #15: In this step, map the requirements you identified in Step 3 to specific options for implementing high-availability virtual systems. Option 1: Network Load Balancing Stateless applications such as Web servers can have high-availability support by establishing network load balancing. Option 2: Application-Specific Clustering Many enterprise applications that customers consider to be mission critical have fault-tolerance capabilities built into them through cluster awareness. Option 3: Host Clustering Good faith effort for high uptime. Does not offer fault tolerance beyond what applications may possess.
• #16: This step aggregates all of the recorded requirements. This information will be used in succeeding steps to map resources to workloads. By the end of this step, you should have a completed spreadsheet or database that summarizes all the requirements for the applications and operating systems that will move to the virtual infrastructure.
• #17: Part 2 focuses on using information collected in Part 1 to design the host infrastructure. Details include mapping business, technical, and resource requirements to host resources. Based on host infrastructure design considerations, it is likely that some decisions made in Part 1 will need to be revisited.
• #18: This is the first step in mapping guest application requirements to the host infrastructure. Decision points will be based largely on the organization’s current technology investments and future directions. Discussion: Using existing servers can be cheaper initially, but this can lead to higher maintenance costs and lack of uniformity.
• #19: Based on the scope of the virtualization project, organizations must determine where physical host servers should be placed. Most organizations will deploy some servers to remote locations with the majority of computers placed within centralized data center environments. Discussion: Centralized versus distributed infrastructures and the effects on cost, manageability, security, reliability, and availability.
• #20: Mapping guests to hosts can be a complicated process due to the number of variables involved. Organizations should plan to spend significant time and effort in determining the optimal mappings. It is likely that some business requirements will need to be revisited at this point. Discussion: If possible, discuss some examples of guests that should not be placed on the same host. (Examples: Guests participating in an MSCS cluster or guests that intensively use the same resources, such as CPU, disk, or memory.)
• #21: Host backup selections are often based on application backup requirements. Discuss requirements of specific applications for backup and restoration. Emphasize that point-in-time recovery usually requires special agents or snapshot services and is easier to achieve with Option 1. Specific goals, such as quick recovery or the maintenance of a disaster recovery site, will lead to Option 2.
• #22: For each application identified in Step 5 that requires network load balancing, determine how many additional VM instances of the application are needed, and then map them onto physical host systems. In Step 9, you mapped all the applications onto physical servers. Count the number of physical servers that have applications requiring an MSCS cluster or host cluster as defined in Step 5. This number represents the number of active cluster nodes required.
• #23: Storage design involves many considerations, including the organization’s current investments. Network-based storage can be accessed from host systems or from within virtual machines through the SMB or iSCSI protocols. VHD decisions will be based on functional requirements (for example, VM rollbacks), as well as storage space versus performance trade-offs.
• #24: Standard network design approaches can be leveraged in virtual environments. Specialized options, such as VM-only networks, can offer interesting options for communications between guest systems. Network security options for the physical network include: Virtual Local Area Networks (VLAN) Firewalls Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) Network Traffic Monitoring and Analysis Solutions Discussion: Discuss the process of mapping guest networking requirements. Will this change guest to host mapping?
• #25: This step will require input from all areas of the organization. Keeping track of changes to requirements definitions can be helpful in identifying areas that should be reviewed. If necessary, organizations should iterate over all of the primary guest and host decision points, based on new information that has been collected. Discussion: Review entire plan. Does it satisfy all stated business goals? Does it achieve required criteria for availability, capacity, and cost?
• #26: Repeat for other sections of your environment. Repeat as appropriate for: Option 2: Hub Option 3: Satellite
• #27: Stress the need for ensuring that a virtualized infrastructure serve the requirements of the business. It should not be virtualized for the sake of virtualization, but should solve some need for reducing cost, improving performance or reliability, or reducing complexity.