Red Riders and Pink Nightmares: A Journey into Virtualization.

Darren SchoenDirector of Technology Infrastructure,

Broward Center for the Performing Arts

First Things First….

Did you say Virtualization????

Red Ryders=Awesome

Pink Nightmare =Not so Awesome

Business Need

•Employees at Remote Location•On Separate Network that had stringent

security.•Able to get to Internet•Cheap•Needed BCPA internal network access

Solution(s)!

•Remote Access Solved (GoToMyPC)

•Buy each employee PC and set up in vacant Cube (not cost effective)

•VIRTUALIZATION!

What about this Virtualization?

•Density, Density, Density•Ease of Administration•Cost Effectiveness•Best use of hardware

Amount of Bacon

Tasti

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Density of VMs in Environment

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f Sav

ings

Vendors We Looked At

•XenServer (Citrix)•VMWare ESX 3.5•Microsoft (Not Hyper-V at that time)•Virtual Iron (Xen Based)

Basis of Comparison

•Ease of Implementation•Support Structure (Online and by Company)•Price•Scalability•Product Maturity

ResultsVMWare Citrix (Xen

Based) Microsoft Virtual Iron (Xen Based)

Ease of Implementation Red Ryder Red Ryder Pink Nightmare Red Ryder

Support Red Ryder Pink Nightmare Red Ryder Pink Nightmare

Price Pink Nightmare Red Ryder Red Ryder Red Ryder

Scalability Red Ryder Red Ryder Pink Nightmare Red Ryder

Maturity of Product Red Ryder Red Ryder Pink Nightmare Red Ryder

Conclusion

Bacon

Why?•Online Support Community•Maturity of Product (It’s bulletproof!)•Scalability•Transparent Page Sharing•Memory Overcommit•Memory Overcommit•Memory Overcommit!!

Density of VMs in Environment

Amou

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ings

My Roadmap

Build Server

Install Free VMWare Server Product (at the time, this ran on top of Windows)

Rock and Roll with VMs!

Establish Proof of Concept and start scaling up VMWare environment!

The Joys of ESX Implementation

•Red Ryders:• Ease of Installation• Stability• Migration of current VM objects

•Pink Nightmares:• Hardware, Hardware, Hardware• Licensing, Licensing, Licensing

The Story, Just After Implementation

•1 Stand-Alone ESXi 3.5 VMWare Box w/2TB+ storage.• 16GB RAM, Dual Quad-Core Procs.• Total of 10 VMs (not close to being maxed out)• Managed as a stand-alone box, no cloning or migration.

•All Windows XP OS VMs•All used as ‘desktops’ for remote users connecting by GoToMyPC•No Backup scheme implemented•Total Spent: ~$3500…approximately $350 per VM.•Total Savings up to this point: $3000.

The Story, 2yrs later….•4 Stand-Alone ESXi Boxes, each with 2TB+ internal storage• Total of 63 VMs (not maxed out by a longshot)• Minimum of 42 VMs on at any given time• Managed by Vcenter• Scheduled tasks to clone mission critical VMs to different

VM host on separate partition.• Backup SW on each server VM

•VM objects include:• Exchange Servers• SQL Servers• Application/Web Servers• Workstations

•Total Spent: ~$30,000..about $476.70 per VM•Approximate Savings: ~$75,000

What about Hyper-V?

•Overhead• From our experience, more than VMWare• Even ‘bare-metal’ install uses most of Server 2008 install files

•Performance• No Transparent Page Sharing• No Simultaneous Live Migration• No Memory Overcommit!

Final Thoughts

•Bottom Line (based on my first hand experience):• You don’t need to spend $50,000 to get a

robust Virtual Environment, you can start with 10% of that.• For any Mission Critical Application, VMWare

is the only solution that I would feel comfortable implementing

Questions?