Don’t just manage your virtualized IT infrastructure,master it

Introduction

Managing a virtualized environment to achieve agility, flexibility and availability, without losing control, requires solutions

designed specifically for dynamic virtualized and cloud environments. Virtualization and cloud management solutions

provide increased levels of automation and policy-based service assurance at every layer of a modern IT architecture. This

automated, intelligent, policy-driven management is an intrinsic part of introducing high service levels to the business, while

keeping costs and complexity under control. This eBook will help you better understand virtualization and service oriented IT

as business management tools that will help you develop a more manageable and dynamic data center.

Don’t just manage your virtualized IT infrastructure, master it1

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What are you faced with?

Moving to a virtualized infrastructure or cloud environment is about maximizing ROI in IT, providing business agility, and

achieving greater IT efficiency. The largest part of the cost savings from server virtualization is gained from running the

largest number of virtual machines you can on your physical host servers, without running out of resources. This last part,

“without running out of resources,” is what, without proper monitoring, can cause downtime and poor performance from

a virtual infrastructure that was originally envisioned to save the day. Virtualization admins love the power of virtualization,

but, along with it comes the challenge of optimizing resources and ensuring that there are not too many but never too few.

Admins must constantly predict and prevent the proverbial virtual machine that “breaks the camel’s back.”

In addition to capacity planning, admins are faced with ever-expanding virtualized infrastructure or cloud environments,

and the number of virtual servers and the complexity of the virtualized applications never decrease. As more people learn

that virtualized servers are cheaper to obtain and faster to deploy, more and more virtual machines are added to the virtual

infrastructure. For example, Tier-1 applications are being supported and perform better, causing increased adoption of the

virtual infrastructure. Desktop virtualization (or VDI) is gaining popularity and acceptance. And finally, cloud infrastructures

are making VM deployment a self-service task. All of these factors are increasing the number of VMs and every new VM

requires backup, licensing, reporting, and administration from the virtualization admin.

With the move to cloud computing, these challenges are even more evident. Performance and capacity management are

becoming inseparable due to the dynamic nature of converged infrastructure. Traditional tools and processes designed

for siloed, static physical infrastructures don’t provide the automation and control needed to effectively manage highly

virtualized and private cloud environments.

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What are you faced with?

As the ESG Research graph below shows, the majority of virtualization admins feel that the greatest management challenges

related to virtual infrastructures are troubleshooting, capacity monitoring, and performance management.

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Top 6 challenges facing virtualization admins

Data centers have been facing capacity challenges since their inception, prior to virtualization. However, the main goal of

virtualization, to maximize physical server utilization, can compound the problem.

Besides capacity challenges, what are the top challenges facing virtualization admins?

1. Understanding complex virtual infrastructures

Virtualized infrastructures are, initially, much more complex to understand than traditional physical server data centers.

Virtualization brings advanced features that, while highly beneficial and desirable, also require advanced knowledge to

administer and manage.

For example, the memory over commitment feature allows you to allocate more memory to running virtual machines

than the server has available. When virtual machines aren’t using all the memory allocated, this memory can be used

by another VM that needs it. This is a powerful feature that maximizes VM density on each server, but can also cause

performance issues if too much memory is active and physical server memory is exhausted. Another impressive, and

popular, feature is High Availability and Distributed Resource Scheduler (HA/DRS). Most companies running VMware’s

vSphere use these features to keep applications performing as well as hosting them on redundant hardware to ensure

they are available. However, resources associated with a HA/DRS-enabled cluster must be monitored so that they are

not unduly taxed resulting in performance degradation or downtime. Again, virtualization offers powerful features, but

employing them also requires a higher level of knowledge than those managing a traditional physical infrastructure. Just

as virtualization admins must have greater understanding of complex virtual infrastructure, they also need the appropriate

capacity and performance tools.

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Top 6 challenges facing virtualization admins (continued)

As the ESG Research graph shows, whether you are a server, network, or storage admin, virtualization requires more

expertise to be administered properly.

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Top 6 challenges facing virtualization admins (continued)

2. Traditional tools don’t work

Most traditional physical server administration tools just don’t understand the virtual infrastructure. They can recognize

that the virtual machines are servers but they don’t understand the relationship between the virtual guest machines and

physical host servers. Because of that, their performance data isn’t accurate and they don’t see the whole picture. You

need performance and capacity tools that understand the virtual infrastructure and the complex relationships between the

virtual machine, host server, virtual devices, resource pooling, and the effects of advanced features like vMotion.

3. Lack of smart analytics and recommendations

Even if you do use performance tools that understand the virtual infrastructure, you need more than just pretty charts

– you need actionable intelligence. For example, you don’t want to get an alert that “CPU Ready on Host #1 is > 10%”.

You need a tool that will tell you that “host 1 is running low on CPU capacity and you need to consider moving a virtual

machine to another host that has available CPU resources, such as host 2 or 3.” Or, you don’t want to just know that “disk

latency is > 25ms.” You need to know that “SAN #1 has too many active virtual machine disks located on it. Suggest

using Storage vMotion to move VM A and B virtual machine disks to SAN #2 to alleviate contention.”

4. Lack of smart alarms

In addition to having a tool that understands the analytics of the virtual infrastructure well enough to make smart

recommendations, you also want a tool that sends you an alarm or alert only when necessary. You don’t need an alert

for every virtual machine on a host when the host fails. You just need one alert that tells you “a host failed, that 9 of

the 10 VMs were brought up on other hosts, and that 1 VM needs your attention.” You also need a tool that understands

the difference between normal usage and a real anomaly. A payroll server may get hit heavily twice a month, but that’s

normal. You don’t need a false alert when everything is performing as planned.

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Top 6 challenges facing virtualization admins (continued)

5. Lack of proactive tools

There are many tools that tell you when you have a problem in the virtual infrastructure, but very few can actually predict

a problem before it happens. For example, you would be better off with an alert that says “you will run out of memory

on host 3 in 5 days” than one that informs you that “host 3 just ran out of memory so get ready to listen to end users

complaining”. This way, you have time to take action to solve the problem before end users are affected.

6. Lack of regulatory and SLA compliance data

Few tools have the ability to understand the regulatory requirements for the virtual infrastructure. Also, most tools don’t

offer the ability to understand your service level agreements (SLA). This is critical because you don’t just need to know

that the virtual infrastructure is okay, you need to know if the response from the virtual machines is in compliance with

your promises to your customers in terms of performance and security.

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The solution: Move from managing to mastering

The solution to these virtualization challenges is to move from managing the virtual infrastructure to mastering it. You need

to be proactive rather than reactive, and to move from being in firefighting mode to fire prevention. This isn’t going to

happen by managing your virtual infrastructure with Post-It notes and spreadsheets. Complex virtual infrastructure and cloud

management require smart tools that are designed to solve the real-world challenges you face every day.

As the ESG Research graph below shows, the greatest needs of virtualization admins are related to capacity and performance

management. At Softchoice, we are confident that your real-world experience will confirm the same thing.

Don’t just manage your virtualized IT infrastructure, master it8

The three key capabilities you need to move from managing

your virtual infrastructure to mastering it are:

1. The ability to proactively ensure that the performance of

business applications running in your virtual/cloud infrastructure

is sufficient to meet SLAs and/or make the business owner happy

2. The ability to ensure continuous compliance with operational and

regulatory requirements through reports generated by a tool that

knows the virtual infrastructure and your applications

3. Optimization of resource utilization and cost across the entire

virtual infrastructure

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VMware vCenter Operations Manager Suite 5.0

One of the newest and most powerful virtualization capacity and performance management tools is vCenter Operations

Manager Suite 5.0. provides you with proactive insight into virtualized and physical environments. Closely integrated with

vSphere and vCenter, vCOPS collects data from multiple sources within your environment and presents it within a highly

intuitive interface under a single pane of glass.

Going well beyond simple alerting, vCOPS provides current status on the health, risk, and efficiency representing their

status with red, yellow and green badges. Badges can be drilled down from the cluster and host level to the VM level. This

allows administrators to quickly determine the root cause of a problem and greatly reduces the time and effort required to

remediate issues.

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VMware vCenter Operations Manager Suite 5.0 (continued)

By using collected historical data, vCOPS models the future performance of VMs, hosts and clusters. This data is then

provided as a risk score along with a notification of how much time remains until an application will be impacted by a

resource issue. With this view, administrators are able to solve the anticipated problem before end users are impacted.

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VMware vCenter Operations Manager Suite 5.0

vCOPS also helps admins optimize resources associated with VMs. Many highly virtualized environments make inefficient use

of resources because the VMs are allocated more processor, memory and disk capacity than they actually require. Through

the efficiency badge, administrators can determine which VMs are over provisioned and divert that capacity to utilize for

other VMs. This capability is also highly valuable in demonstrating ROI and justifying the requirement for additional

hardware capacity.

Components included in vCenter Operations Management Suite:

• vCenter Operations Manager

• vCenter Configuration Manager

• vCenter Chargeback Manager

• vCenter Infrastructure Navigator

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Third party connectors

Allows the capabilities of vCenter Operations Manager to be

extended to non virtualized physical hosts.

vCenter Operations Manager 5.0 is available in Standard, Advanced,

Enterprise, and Enterprise Plus editions allowing you to match your

level of requirement for monitoring and management.

vCenter Operations Manager 5.0 is also available through download

as a free 60-day trial at www.softchoice.com/vmware.

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Case study – LeasePlan There is no better proof of a tool’s value than to put it to a real-world test. Numerous companies have done just that (see

vCOPS Case Studies) and have seen first hand the visibility and performance management power that vCOPS brings to a

virtualization admin.

One of the most impressive examples of vCOPS usefulness and value comes from LeasePlan. At LeasePlan, they

implemented VMware vSphere and vCenter Operations Manager. By doing so, they were able to:

• Virtualize its Tier-1 business critical applications

• Consolidate 800 physical servers into the virtual infrastructure

• Manage performance and capacity effectively, preventing downtime caused by capacity bottlenecks before they happen

To see LeasePlan’s case study click here.

To see more case studies of vCOPS in action, visit VMware’s customer case study site.

Don’t just manage your virtualized IT infrastructure, master it12

Don’t just manage your virtualized IT infrastructure, master it13

Common challenges of virtualization

• Understanding complex virtualization infrastructures requires

in-depth knowledge & experience

• Traditional physical server administration tools just don’t

understand the virtual infrastructure

• Lack of regulatory & compliance data

Learn more about how Softchoice partners with customers so

they can make informed decisions that reduce risks and gain

a competitive edge.

Together we can develop solutions that drive a better

business for you: » Contact Softchoice today for more

information.

Connect with us today. 1.800.268.7638 | www.softchoice.com/optimizedatacenter

A Better Business

Softchoice believes in helping build better businesses for our

customers. Our goal is to help your organization become more

successful, more productive and more competitive.

Softchoice Services drives results by combining deep expertise

and proven processes that correlate to your unique situation.

Softchoice’s experienced team of certified experts is dedicated

to helping you manage your technology challenges today.

From design and planning to implementation, integration

and migration, Softchoice’s data center experts can help

streamline your operations, improve availability, reliability and

performance.

How can you define a roadmap to success?

At Softchoice, we believe that any IT project must start with

a good plan. Whatever the project, the only way to really

understand the scope and breadth is by uncovering the current

state, identifying potential roadblocks and mapping out the

future in logical phases.

Over 800 Softchoice assessment and advisory services

completed in 2011

Sometimes the benefits of virtualization are not realized

because the implementation is limited to staging areas or

non-critical areas of the business. The result is a fragmented

IT operational strategy for business throughout the entire

lifecycle of application delivery services, increasing time-to-

market.

The Softchoice Assessment and Advisory teams specialize in

identifying, analyzing and helping you evaluate technology

opportunities so you have a clear picture of the implications

for your business and can develop a comprehensive strategy

that optimizes your data center investment.

Softchoice’s Data Center Advisory Services – connecting

your business to technology opportunities by:

• Assessing your organization’s existing physical environment

• Collecting and analyzing utilization metrics and modeling

the physical infrastructure in a projected virtual environment

• Analyzing and interpreting financial payback metrics to

determine the benefits of investing in virtualization