Turbo Talk

This post is the first in a series of posts about identifying and solving VMware related performance problems.  In this post, we’ll briefly describe a couple of common VMware CPU performance problems and their solutions.  These are problems and solutions we’ve heard repeatedly from customers and end users.

Please let us know if you have your own problems, solutions, and best practices to add.

After spending most of the last 6 years working in the virtualization space as a vendor (now VMTurbo and previously VMware), it’s funny to see how much things change as well as how much they stay the same.

One thing that has definitely not changed is that it is still very hard to move from what I like to call the ‘1st wave’ of virtualization (test & dev systems or low criticality production systems) to the ‘next wave’ (e.g. business critical production systems, heavily utilized databases).

On that note, I wanted to share a few practical tips that I’ve picked up along the way that have helped customers and partners keep the virtualization momentum going – and can help keep your virtualization momentum going in 2010!

1.  Use a disaster recovery or business continuity project to spur additional virtualization and consolidation.

Most companies have challenges around meeting disaster recovery and business continuity goals.  DR in the physical server world is tedious, error-prone, and in my experience mostly ineffective.  If there is a DR initiative at your company, it is a good bet that some of the problems you are trying to solve could be addressed by virtualizing those systems which  don’t have DR capability today or that have been problematic to recover using traditional physical server techniques.  Another tactic that I really like and have seen a few times is using your test and dev environment for DR.  Most virtual server environments I see still have plenty of capacity with which to handle a burst in the event a DR scenario occurred, so having a hybrid test/dev/DR environment is a great way to leverage an investment you’ve already made.

2.  Use a hardware refresh as an opportunity to virtualize.

Most IT shops refresh their server hardware every few years.  Why not use the refresh as an opportunity to remove hardware from your datacenter while adding flexibility to your operation?  Some of these systems may represent some of the more challenging applications to virtualize, and you may receive some resistance from application owners who are new to virtualization, but the CAPEX (and potentially OPEX) savings will be hard to ignore.

3.  Educate your peers.

Many companies do ‘lunch and learns’ or other informal gatherings where the virtualization team leads will discuss how server virtualization works.  These gatherings are a great way to get your network, storage, and applications guys up to speed with your specific initiatives and virtualization technology, and get them talking and asking questions.  This education and relationship building will pay dividends when you start to move more critical applications into virtual machines and need to work closely with other groups within IT on capacity planning and troubleshooting.  Just ask the network guys, they’ve been getting blamed for years for problems that aren’t theirs!  Fortunately for them (and sadly for the virtualization administrator), the new whipping boy is the virtualization environment, and educating your peers can help mitigate this challenge.

4.   Connect with others in your city or industry who have successfully made it to the ‘next wave’ and gather best practices.

Certainly the web and social networking give us a great way to connect with virtualization experts, but there is still no substitute for face-to-face discussions or phone calls where you can ask questions directly to someone who has done it before.  If you know of another company in your industry or city who have already made it to the next wave of virtualization, and have learned the lessons (good and bad) along the way, reach out to them and see if they’d be open to a discussion.  I’d also recommend including when possible any key peers or managers in these calls and meetings.  This way, they have the opportunity to ask questions as well as internalize the information.

5. Measure and then publicize your success.

Don’t be afraid to let people in your organization know that you’ve saved money, increased responsiveness of IT to the business, and built a strategic, virtualized platform!  Keep an eye on your ‘before’ and ‘after’ metrics, and share them with management as well as folks on the business side.  Your results help build the confidence within your organization that you have a good handle on building and operating a virtualized environment, and are fully capable of onboarding additional applications and business units.

What did I miss?  Are there other techniques that have worked for you?  Please share them in the comments.

I recently read a blog post by venture capitalist and blogger Fred Wilson, where he coined the term “blog stars.”

Inspired by that post, I wanted to share a few “blog stars” from the virtualization space.  These stars are folks whose blogs I read and who provide detailed and practical tips and tricks for virtualization administrators and architects.

• Carlo Costanzo – I worked with Carlo while I was at VMware and he was (and still is) working with IPM, a VMware and Citrix consulting services company.  Carlo is extremely technical and very sharp with the ecosystem of virtual desktop technologies, and he shares many of his insights via his VMwareInfo blog and on Twitter.

• Luc Dekens – Luc is a Powershell and VMware scripting guru based in Europe.  If you are trying to automate your virtual infrastructure, you owe it to yourself to visit his blog and pick up some of his many scripting tips.

• Cody Bunch – Cody writes the ProfessionalVMware blog, and covers a broad range of practical VMware system administration topics.  Recently, he’s been posting quite a bit about storage configuration and best practices.  You can also find him on Twitter.

• Scott Lowe – Scott’s blog is a wealth of information for virtualization administrators and architects, as well as for those interested in the virtualization industry and market sector.  Recently he’s been busy configuring some new Cisco Nexus gear and obtaining his VCDX certification.  How does he find time to blog?

• Steve Kaplan – Steve (or the ROIdude, as he calls himself on Twitter) blogs at ‘By The Bell‘ from the perspective of an experienced VMware reseller and partner.  He’s also co-written a book about Deploying the VMware Infrastructure.  If you want to dive into the business case for a virtualization solution, Steve is your man.

• Steve Chambers – This Steve is ex-VMware, and now on the Cisco UCS professional services team.  Besides having a great sense of humor (and sharing it with us on Twitter), he is passionate about optimizing and improving how his clients leverage virtualization in their IT organizations.  Check out his blog if you’re serious about creating a world class virtualized IT operation.

Who are your virtualization blog stars?  Please share your favorites in the comments section of this post.

Here are a few items that caught my eye this morning:

• For those of you interested in learning about Hyper-V, take a look at this post from @virtualizethis which discusses some of the key features in the product and tries to dispel some of the FUD that surrounds it.

• Amazon Web Services recently started offering multi-factor authentication.  Between MFA and the new Virtual Private Cloud capabilities, it is clear that Amazon would like to make bigger inroads into the enterprise by allaying some of the security concerns that are inherent to cloud deployments.  Also, Amazon partner Rightscale also posted some interesting statistics about cloud growth over the past year, which were derived from their internal and customer usage.

• Although we at VMTurbo are living in the virtual world, we certainly appreciate the importance of the physical infrastructure as well.   The folks at Datacenter Journal posted a detailed article about best practices for physical datacenter design.  Lots of tips about how to think about design of power, cooling, and other environmental factors into your datacenter specification.