Before I start hunkering down for what's supposed to be a snowy weekend in Redmond, and without college football on TV, I wanted to pass along a couple videos that are worth a watch.
First, TechTarget interviewed Mark Russinovich, technical follow, about Windows 7, WS08 R2, virtualization and Vista. It's about 8 minutes long. You can watch Mark's interview here.
Second, this week Mike Neil, GM of virtualization, hosted a live meeting to discuss virtualization and cloud computing. Joining Mike was Dominic Foster, CTO of web hoster MaximumASP, and Deepak Patil, GM within Microsoft Global Foundation Services, which hosts the Windows Azure Services platform. You'll see slides and hear them talk and answer some Q&As in 45 minutes. You can access the playback here (log-in required).
And if online videos aren't of interest, I'll point out that Mike Neil recently submitted his 2009 predictions to David Marshall over at VMblog.com.
Patrick
Filed under: Cloud Computing, ESX, integrated virtualization, Management, Management tools, System Center, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, VDI, virtual machine, virtualization, virtualization management, Windows Server 2008, Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, VMM 2008, VMWare
Green, Sustainability, and Environment – what does this have to do with virtualization? Quite simply virtualization technologies can help you reduce your carbon footprint, reduce energy, reduce cooling, and of course save some money as well.
Today we're announcing the release of a set of tools available at www.hyper-green.com designed to help you and your organization quantify the environmental and cost savings benefits available through some of Microsoft's virtualization technologies. At the site you will be able to build a simple environmental savings report for server virtualization projects you are considering and access a set of tools, including a deeper scenario-based ROI analysis and infrastructure assessment that can help you get started on realizing that value.
Check it out now: http://www.hyper-green.com/
Many of our customers have already been able to translate their implementation of virtualization technologies into the reduction of their CO2 emissions by cutting down on energy and cooling usage. We are showcasing a number of case studies for customers that have done this such as Banque de Luxembourg and Kentucky Department of Education at www.hyper-green.com and we will continue to update this library with new examples from various industries.
If you’ve already used virtualization technologies to drive “green” benefits in IT, please visit www.hyper-green.com and share your own virtualization story. This is a great opportunity for you to help others understand "what is possible" and contribute to the benefits of virtualization in reducing environmental footprints.
Thank you
Adam Bogobowicz
Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft
Windows Server Group
Hi, I’m John Suit, CTO and principal founder of Fortisphere, which is a member of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Program.
In this tough economy, the cost savings of virtualization are driving faster adoption – and the introduction of Microsoft Hyper-V is exposing more companies, large and small, to the benefits of this deceptively simple technology.
In fact, from what we’ve seen, the scale of deployments has grown tremendously in the past year. When we did market research a year ago, people were calling their 90-VM environments “large.” Today, similar-sized deployments are “really, not very big.” Today, 300-400 VMs are commonplace, with a mix of Microsoft Hyper-V and others platforms running together.
So, the deployment of VMs has become nearly routine. But, with scale, another problem has emerged: management of the environments. Today, we mostly see folks provisioning VMs and mostly ignoring them until someone calls with a problem, at which point they scramble to prove that the virtual infrastructure is not to blame. Inventories of VM are either kept in Excel files or outsourced to teams of inventory-keepers. Change alerting, reclamation of idle VMs, and a whole bunch of other functions are untouched, as most folks are too busy with provisioning and troubleshooting.
A little automation can go a long way to changing reactive to proactive. Our customers have found that setting rules like a Time-to-Live for a VM can ease the reclamation process. Alerting – and even blocking – of certain configuration changes means fixing a change before it becomes a problem. Setting these rules by VM owner or functional group makes it intuitive and aligned with the way virtualized environments are built – to deliver infrastructure to the application owner.
Fortisphere provides the automation needed to operate a virtual environment. Fully cross-platform, the Fortisphere solution enables administrators to tag and track each VM, set rules to govern change management, alert on events, troubleshoot issues, and even remediate in real time. With full reporting capabilities, upcoming integration with Microsoft System Center VMM, and a focus on automating the daily challenges of operating a growing virtual environment, Fortisphere’s solutions have reduced the time, effort, and cost of virtualization for many customers.
John Suit
Listen to John’s podcast interview in DABCC Radio.
Filed under: cross-platform management, integrated virtualization, Management, Management tools, System Center, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, virtual machine, virtualization management, Windows Server 2008, Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, VMM 2008
There are 4 million .NET developers in the world, so I figure one or two might read this blog, or you might know someone.
A couple weeks ago at the Professional Developers Conference, we began discussing, and announced a CTP, of Visual Studio 10. One of the many features of VS10 is lab management, which leverages virtualization to enable software development and test teams to build higer quality apps. Lab management accelerates setup/tear down time and elimiates no-repro bugs by creating better integration across dev and test teams throughout the application lifecycle.
You (or the someone you know) may be asking yourself - why is this a good thing? Here's what the Visual Studio guys told me:
- 30% of testing time is spent in setting up machines and labs
- Under 30% utilization of test and dev assets
- “No Repro” bugs often slip into production impacting project success
The guys also told me:
Unlike other tools, Microsoft’s capabilities around lab management are fully integrated to Visual Studio Team System allowing teams to collaborate more effectively and not have to deal with disparate tools. Lab management is fully integrated with the testing capabilities allowing generalists testers to take quick checkpoints on failures & record rich bugs with links to the environment in the bug that the developer can then open. It is also integrated into the build process allowing customers to automatically trigger a virtual environment provisioning, build deployment & testing of the build.
Lab Management leverages virtualization and allows multiple checkpoints to be created across lab environments (consisting of multiple VMs). Since the checkpoints are part of the same image as opposed to having to clone at every state snapshot, that reduces the proliferation. In addition, lab management ties the environments to the notion of a project which allows the lab administrator to clean up the images as projects are completed.
Lab Management is built on top of System Center Virtual Machine Manager, and thanks to SCVMM managing VMs on multiple hypervisors, Lab Management supports both Hyper-V and VMware ESX out of the box.
Since it’s built on SCVMM, lab management allows developers to:
• Manage groups of VMs as single entity
• Allows rapidly clone VMs using network fencing and other technologies
• Integrates with ALM tools to create tighter interaction between development/test & operations
• Patch virtual machines that are stored in a library by deploying the VMs on a dedicated resource pool (hardware) patching them and moving them back to the library.
If you want to learn more about Visual Studio 10 lab management, check out the Channel 9 video interview here and the PDC 2008 Lab presentation video here.
Patrick
Filed under: .NET, Community, ESX, Management, Management tools, System Center, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, virtual machine, virtualization, virtualization management, Visual Studio, Hyper-V, VMM 2008, VMWare
A few items to call out.
First up is Manlio's post about the renaming of Terminal Services - it'll be known as Remote Desktop Services in Windows Server 2008 R2 -- and the new VDI features. Here's an excerpt:
The key here is that RDS in Windows Server 2008 R2 makes the new server OS the ideal platform for companies to implement a centralized desktop strategy and for partners to provide additional innovation. It introduces the new Remote Desktop Connection Broker – an expansion of the Session Broker in Windows Server 2008 – which provides the administrator with a unified experience for setting up user access to both virtualized desktops (running as a full Windows client OS on top of Microsoft’s virtualization infrastructure) and traditional session-based remote desktops. Together with Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager, the Remote Desktop Connection Broker enables a VDI solution for low-complexity, departmental environments, and a platform for partners who are delivering rich, extensible solutions where heterogeneous client support is a prerequisite, and when enhanced management and scalability is a requirement. The Remote Desktop Connection Broker it complements other, shared RDS infrastructure components in Windows Server 2008, such as Remote Desktop Web Access or Remote Desktop Gateway. With the Remote Desktop Connection Broker, partners will find an extensive set of APIs that will allow them to continue innovation and deliver added value to customers.
Second, over at the System Center team blog, Paul announced the beta of System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2. Check out the video with Barry Shilmover. Here's an excerpt:
The beta itself will include a number of enhancements including the cross platform capabilities that we originally released as separate beta at MMS earlier this year, some enhanced service level monitoring reports and dashboards, and a number of UI improvements that include a new version of the management pack authoring console. Combined these will provide a lot of opportunities for organizations to make their data center and server management activities more cost effective and efficient.
Last item is a recent CRN magazine interview with Microsoft GM Mike Neil (who's blogged here before). It's about 6 minutes long. See below or go here.
Patrick
Filed under: cross-platform management, Management, Management tools, System Center, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, VDI, Virtual Desktop Architecture, virtual machine, virtualization, virtualization management, Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V
Hi my name is Radhakrishna Hiremane, a senior product marketing engineer at Intel based in Portland, Oregon, and I’m responsible for marketing of virtualization technology on Intel servers and workstations.
Microsoft recently extended the processor core support for Hyper-V to 24-cores. A shift from the initially announced 16 core support in Hyper-V, this highlights the long standing collaboration between Intel and Microsoft in the area of innovation inclusive of the most valued technology in the datacenter today - virtualization. With the support of 24 cores, Hyper-V is able to support the performance increments of Intel Xeon 7400 processor-based servers. The performance of Intel Xeon 7400 processor-based servers with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V was demonstrated in a recent vConsolidate version 2.0 (profile 2) benchmark. The measurement of power and performance was done by Principled Technologies commissioned by Intel. The result showed that the Intel Xeon processor x7460-based server produced 52.1% better performance per watt than the Intel Xeon processor x7350-based server. In addition, the Intel Xeon processor x7460-based server delivered 40% more performance running vConsolidate with the optimum number of CSUs that the Intel Xeon processor x7350-based server. These results show great performance and scalability of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V running on Intel Xeon 7400 processor-based servers and for more information on these results, please visit here. Those who live and breathe virtualization understand the relevance of the virtualization and multi-core processors. But for those who may be wondering why this is so important, please read on.
Virtualization performance is coupled with native performance. As the native performance increases the virtualization performance increases. However, virtualization software adds some overhead over native environment as it is a layer of software that now has to manage the hardware resources and the guest OSes or VMs that need these resources. The overhead is typically dependent on the application being run in the guest OS and the extent to which the hypervisor emulates the resources in software to share the same with multiple VMs. This is where Intel’s hardware assist for virtualization helps to lower the overhead of virtualization software. Intel VT (introduced first in 2005) today represents a platform centric innovation in hardware assist encompassing Intel VT-x in the processor, Intel VT for Directed I/O (VT-d) for I/O virtualization in chipset and Intel VT for Connectivity (VT-c) in the networking devices, all of which help VMs reduce the virtualization software overhead across the platform and increase the performance.
Hyper-V leverages several key features of the hardware architecture. First and foremost is the Intel multi-core architecture and ability to leverage the performance and scalability of the Intel Xeon processor-based servers. Since 2006, Intel has delivered power efficient performance increases on a regular cadence. It began with Intel Core Micro-architecture that can execute more instruction per clock and includes fine grain power control in the processor. At a high level virtualization is about doing more with less, so being able to execute more instruction per clock means better performance and better performance per watt. This is evident from Intel’s leadership in industry standard power benchmark results - SPECpower. Further, Windows Server 2008 is able to exploit the per core power controls using Demand Based Switching capability for efficient power management.
Beyond the Core Micro-architecture, Intel delivered Quad Core processors in Q4 2006 that increased the virtualization performance up to 60% within the same power envelope as a dual core. On a predictive cadence Intel delivered further increase in performance with 45nm process technology in Q4 2007. With the new process technology, Intel is able to add more cache, faster transistors and hence more processing capability that resulted in up to 20% more virtualization performance and all within the same power envelope. All this means that IT managers are able to take advantage of these performance increments on a predictive cadence and deploy virtualization with confidence and gain better TCO of their infrastructure.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is built on hardware assists for virtualization. It requires VT-x and 64-bit capable processor. It utilizes hardware assist such as Intel VT FlexPriority (interrupt virtualization hardware assist) to reduce the interrupt overheads and increase performance (in particular legacy OSes such as Windows 32-bit OSes). Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V also supports Intel Dynamic Power Manager, which allows datacenter managers to monitor and cap the power utilization of the servers. Power management essentially is one of the most critical factors in datacenters today. Overall, with Hyper-V on Intel, customers can benefit in terms of TCO and power efficient performance for virtualization deployment.
Radhakrishna Hiremane
I’m Zane Adam, sr. director of virtualization strategy here in Redmond at Microsoft. I’m writing today to announce the exciting news that we’ve released to manufacturing (RTM’d) System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and to talk a bit about its critical role in the broad set of virtualization offerings from Microsoft.
Recently, I returned from a trip abroad where I attended some of our international getVirtualnow launch events which initially kicked off with our September launch event in Bellevue. During this world tour I had the opportunity to visit with customers and partners from a variety of countries, having some great discussions with them. As I talked to representatives from large and small companies, I heard a consistent theme that all these groups are looking to aggressively manage costs and improve operational efficiency, and partners are also looking for ways of helping customers do so. The timing of these conversations couldn’t have come at a better time as I was able to share with them how the broad set of Microsoft virtualization software addresses these areas. First, I was able to talk to these customers about the fact that they can acquire our virtualization offerings for about 1/3 the cost of what a comparable VMware installation would cost, helping them realize immediate cost reduction benefits. The portfolio of technologies we offer spans the entire IT infrastructure from the desktop to the datacenter, while providing the tools for managing a customer’s infrastructure and apps regardless of whether it’s their physical or virtual assets. Additionally, because the solutions we’re delivering are based on Windows, customer and partners can take advantage of the skills and knowledge they already have when implementing, developing to, or managing our virtualization offerings helping to save them both money and time.
As I mentioned, our virtualization solutions span the desktop to the data center including the management tools required to ensure that virtualization remains an asset and doesn’t become an unwieldy burden. On the server we have Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and also Hyper-V Server, our standalone hypervisor, we recently released in September. We’re seeing rapid adoption of Microsoft server virtualization solutions and IDC recently released findings showing Microsoft's Hyper-V delivering a strong showing, and when combined with Virtual Server 2005, helped Microsoft to capture 23% of new license shipments in 2Q 2008. On the desktop we have application, desktop and presentation solutions enabling customers to choose the level of desktop virtualization. The recently released Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 helps IT support large-scale virtualization implementations across many sites with various delivery options including over the Internet. Last, but certainly not least, is System Center suite of management tools, which provide not only the tools for managing traditional physical IT infrastructure and apps but also virtualized environments. Whether it’s deploying and managing virtualized desktops and servers with Configuration Manager, monitoring apps and systems across the IT environment and into virtual machines with Operations Manager, or backing up and protecting both physical and virtualized data or apps with Data Protection Manager, System Center provides the broad set of tools to address these needs for IT. Of course today’s announcement of the RTM of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 extends the management benefits of System Center even further by enabling not only the management of Microsoft virtualized environments, but also VMware ESX as well.
We’re already hearing of great results from customers broadly implementing our virtualization solutions like some at Indiana University, who has been consolidating their physical servers onto virtual machines rapidly using these technologies, freeing up hardware, lessening space requirements and reducing electrical and cooling costs. Janssen Jones, Associate Director of Auxiliary IT Infrastructure at Indiana University has provided a guest blog post here with information on his group’s experience and the results they’re seeing where their workloads are now 75% virtualized on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V with plans to be 90% by the end of this year. Janssen talks about how they’re consolidating virtual machines at a ratio of about 10-1 and how they’ve been able to remove about 40 of their existing physical servers. There are already a slew of other customers, including names such as Costco, Land O’ Lakes, or Saxo Bank, that are already talking about the benefits they’re experiencing by deploying Microsoft virtualization solutions, which can be found in our case study library.
The response from our partners has been gratifying as well, including the participation in our September launch event where broad offerings and support were announced. To mention just a few, we’ve seen Citrix, Dell, HP, SAP and Symantec demonstrating their support for our virtualization offerings from the desktop through the data center as well for our management offerings. More directly related to today’s news of the RTM of SCVMM 2008, I’m excited to say that we are already are seeing support for SCVMM 2008 from our OEM partners. Fujitsu and Hitachi participated in our virtualization launch event in Japan last week and both publicly stated that they intend to make bundles of their hardware and SCVMM 2008 available in the coming months.
We’re excited to see the partner and customer adoption of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. We’ve already seen hundreds of our early deployment customers use either the beta or release candidate version of VMM to manage their Hyper-V deployments. They are seeing the many cost reduction and management simplification benefits of Hyper-V and the SCVMM 2008 integration with the rest of System Center. Now that RTM is official, I fully expect the rate of Hyper-V deployments to further accelerate. Through the SCVMM 2008 console, administrators can see the entirety of their data center infrastructure – physical or virtual. SCVMM 2008 facilitates key functions like P2V (physical to virtual) migration, Intelligent Placement (selecting the best virtual host for a VM), and managing Hyper-V host clusters, to name just a few. SCVMM 2008 works closely with its siblings – particularly SC Ops Mgr – in identifying consolidation candidates and in Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO), a new feature in which SCVMM 2008 can alert and recommend solutions to administrators about failing virtual machines or hardware. As I mentioned above, this comprehensive view extends throughout the data center as SCVMM 2008 is capable of seeing and managing VMware ESX infrastructure through Virtual Center. I hope you download SCVMM 2008 today and give it a try. Additional information, including a link to download an evaluation version is available here and it will be generally available for purchase as of November 1.
Thanks for your time and sharing in the excitement we’re seeing around Microsoft’s virtualization solutions.
-- Zane
Filed under: integrated virtualization, Management, Management tools, Microsoft Application Virtualization, System Center, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, virtual machine, Virtual PC, Virtual Server, virtualization, virtualization management, Windows Server 2008, Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, VMM 2008, VMWare
Hi, I’m Janssen Jones, and I’m the Associate Director of Auxiliary IT Infrastructure at Indiana University.
Since April, my team has been evaluating the beta of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (SCVMM) as part of the SCVMM Technology Adoption Program, and in the past six months, we’ve made great strides in virtualizing our IT Infrastructure on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V clusters and managing that infrastructure with System Center and PowerShell. We originally planned on easing into virtualization, as we weren’t sure if a virtual machine would be able to handle our workloads, and we didn’t believe that the technology had yet been proven.
Fast forward to today and we’ve now virtualized over 75% of our workloads on Hyper-V, and by year’s end, we’ll be at 90%. I’ve been truly amazed at how well this solution can work once everything is in place. As it stands, we have two 5-node Hyper-V clusters handling the majority of our workloads, along with a special-purpose 2-node cluster and a couple maintenance hosts. We manage all of these virtual machines and hosts through one interface: SCVMM 2008.
To be clear, SCVMM actually has *two* user interfaces: a PowerShell interface, and a traditional graphical interface. Though I do spend time in the graphical interface for looking at VM status, firing up remote console sessions, etc., I like to do all of the heavy lifting with PowerShell. Using SCVMM’s templates along with PowerShell scripts from my script library, I can use a PowerShell “one-liner” to spin up a new virtual machine on our cluster in less than 10 minutes. When comparing this to the old way (getting a requisition for a new server, putting the order through Purchasing, waiting a couple weeks, picking up the server from Receiving, taking the server to the machine room, racking the server, setting up the remote access controller, and installing the OS), I don’t think there’s any way we’ll ever go back.
There are still a few hold-outs from some of our vendors who have not yet certified their solutions on a virtual environment, but we’re trying to put pressure on them to come aboard. We’ve seen first-hand that we can virtualize everything from file, print, and web servers to database servers running SQL Server and Oracle, and actually have the virtual machine run *faster* than what it ran on our original physical box. Of course virtual machines won’t truly run faster than physical machines on identical hardware, but what we’ve found is that when it’s time to replace a 3-year old server, we can easily do a physical to virtual conversion (P2V) of that machine to a VM on a new blade server, and that the VM easily outperforms its old self even while sharing the new hardware with eight to 12 other virtual machines.
To date, we’ve been consolidating virtual machines at a ratio of about 10-to-1, and I think we could go much higher if we weren’t limited by the amount of RAM in our hosts. However, we found that when purchasing a new server, it was the same price to buy two blades with 32GB of RAM as it was to buy one blade with 64 GB of RAM, so we settled on 32GB of RAM per server, which allows us the 10-to-1 consolidation ratio. At 10 VMs per host, each of our Hyper-V hosts still average around 20-25% CPU utilization, so we haven’t come across any bottlenecks to date. Given that consolidation, we’ve removed about 40 existing physical servers, and have consolidated from five racks to three (two at the datacenter and one at a DR site).We also actively use other products within the System Center suite to manage our physical and virtual infrastructure. Most recently, we’ve begun testing Service Pack 1 for Data Protection Manager through the DPM Technical Adoption Program as well, and are excited to see that the same PowerShell interface we’ve grown accustomed to in SCVMM can now allow us to script Hyper-V backups as well.
I won’t say the deployment road has been free from bumps (no new technology is), but after six months, the effort our team has put into standardizing on Hyper-V and the System Center platform, and into immersing ourselves in Windows PowerShell, is now starting to have huge payoffs. Our infrastructure is much easier to manage, our servers are provisioned in minutes (instead of weeks), and our single-purpose servers which used to sit idling at 5% utilization are now sharing that CPU with other virtual workloads.
Janssen
Filed under: Management, Management tools, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, virtual machine, Virtual Server, virtualization, virtualization management, Windows Server 2008, Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, VMM 2008
My name is Todd Muirhead and I’m one of the engineers behind Dell’s online community for IT professionals – DellTechCenter. This means that I get to work with all of the latest Dell servers and storage and provide technical guidance and assistance to customers. The goal is to help people understand how they can use our products to create solutions. From my techno-geek perspective the cool part is getting to test out all kinds of new stuff.
The most recent example was getting one of our PowerEdge R900 (4-socket, 4U) servers with Intel’s new 6-core E7450 Xeon (aka Dunnington) processors. That totals up to 24-cores in a single server. I got them about 3 weeks before launch and did some performance testing with Windows Server 08 Hyper-V. The design of the tests was to see how much additional performance could be gained with the 6-core processors when moving from 4-core processors. I also measured the power consumption as well to be able to report the results in terms of efficiency with performance per watt. The complete details are in the whitepaper that was published, but a quick summary is that Hyper-V was able to take advantage of the additional processing cores. The R900 with 16 cores was able to support 30 VMs while the R900 with 24 cores was able to support 40 VMs with an increase in performance of 18%. Perhaps most interesting is that power consumption of the R900 actually decreased by 11% when using the 6-core processors, which resulted in a 33% improvement in performance per watt.
The details of the testing methodology and the complete results are in the paper. Please feel free to leave comments with any questions that you have. We also have other resources on delltechcenter for Hyper-V, including video demos of SCVMM and Hyper-V Server.
Todd Muirhead
Filed under: Dell, Management tools, System Center, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, virtual machine, virtualization, virtualization management, Windows Server 2008, Windows Virtualization, Hyper-V, VMM 2008
Hi, I’m Doug de Werd, technical marketing manager for Windows Virtualization at Hewlett-Packard.
In the past few weeks following the Microsoft virtualization launch event in Bellevue the virtualization buzz keeps growing louder and louder. We keep hearing more and more from customers that virtualization is a key component of their IT infrastructure strategy. IT organizations fall across a wide spectrum of virtualization implementation and sophistication. Some have been doing it for quite some time, while others are just starting or even just starting to think about it.
One thing that keeps coming up over and over, however, is the notion of using virtualization as an enabling technology, rather than an end in itself. This means aligning your IT strategies to your business strategies. Ultimately it’s not about how many virtual guests you can run on a physical host, or how cool your underlying infrastructure is – it’s about using these technologies to achieve better business outcomes. Whether the specific goal is to use virtualization to save money, reduce data center footprint, gain competitive edge, drive business continuity and availability, or go green by reducing power and cooling, it all comes down to using virtualization as a means to reach these goals.
OK, so that makes sense – so how do I do that? One of the key things that HP and Microsoft recognize is that it is the management tools that really enable you to take advantage of the underlying virtualization technologies. Microsoft System Center, especially with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, will provide easy to use tools that will allow you to manage your physical and virtual environments from a single pane of glass. This means customers won’t have to use one set of tools to manage their physical infrastructure and another set to manage their virtual environment.
HP has also recognized that management of virtual environments is quickly becoming a customer top priority, and is working to integrate HP management tools to both extend and complement the functionality of System Center.
HP is taking a two-fold approach to this. First, our HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers are management enabled for System Center. HP provides Management Packs that integrate with System Center Operations Manager and Configuration Manager, as well as an upcoming HP PRO Pack for Virtual Machine Manager. These HP Management Packs enhance the customer experience by providing detailed HP-specific information to System Center. The PRO Pack will enable dynamic allocation of virtualized compute resources based on predefined set of rules and policies. This means that predictive hardware alerts can be used to migrate virtual machines to alternate hosts before a failure causes downtime.
The second is that HP Insight Software complements Microsoft System Center to provide comprehensive physical and virtual systems management. HP management tools such as Systems Insight Manager and Insight Control Environment will comprehend virtualized environments using Hyper-V in the same manner and console as non-virtualized physical host environments. HP Insight Dynamics – VSE enables administrators to manage physical and virtual resources in the same way and includes a foundation for management of virtual machines, capacity planning, virtual machine migration, and remote control.
Microsoft and HP are also working closely with Citrix in the area of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. VDI is a flexible desktop replacement solution that increases security, decreases cost and delivers higher availability for the desktop while continuing to provide end-users with the functionality of a standalone desktop. The VDI stack incorporates Microsoft components such as Vista and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, along with Citrix XenDesktop, all running on Hyper-V and managed by System Center. HP Consulting and Integration Services provides the end-to-end solution, including servers, storage, access devices, networking devices and printers as well as the software and services to bring it all together.
HP and Microsoft have been closely collaborating for over 20 years as part of the HP-Microsoft Frontline Partnership. The strength of this work is evident in the strong management tool integration that both extends and complements Microsoft System Center. Working together, HP and Microsoft can help customers realize the tangible benefits of virtualization today.
Doug de Werd
Oct. 16, 2008 update: Here's Doug's response to JRedmond's comment/queston.
There's really 2 parts to the HP integration with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. The first is that HP will be providing support for Hyper-V in the HP management tools that address virtualization. So things like Insight Dynamics - VSE, HP Insight Control Environment, HP Server Migration Pack, and HP Virtual Machine Manager will all support Hyper-V hosts and guests. For example, in HP Systems Insight Manager, you will be able to see physical Hyper-V hosts as well as the virtual machines running on them.
From the System Center side, HP already provides management packs that integrate with SC Operations Manager and SC Configuration Manager. These management packs push HP ProLiant and BladeSystem specific information into SCOM and SCCM to provide more detail about what is being managed. To further extend the functionality of System Center Virtual Machine Manager, HP will provide a PRO Pack. This works in conjunction with the HP management packs to send HP server management agent information to SCOM. The PRO Pack provides additional HP information and suggestions, allowing SCOM to make recommendations via SCVMM. As an example, a server could experience a high rate of correctable memory errors. Once a threshold has been reached, an alert is sent through the HP management pack to SCOM. OM then works with the HP PRO Pack and SCVMM to make a recommendation as to where to proactively move the virtual machines from the affected system. Using SCVMM and Quick Migration, you can then quickly move the affected VMs to other servers and diagnose and fix the original server, preventing downtime.
Filed under: HP, integrated virtualization, Management, Management tools, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, VDI, virtual machine, virtualization, virtualization management, Windows Virtualization, Citrix, Hyper-V, VMM 2008
The title of this post will make sense in a moment. It's a quote from a customer in Australia ... and pretty funny one, too. But before that, a few items crossed my inbox that I thought I'd share:
- Software vendor AspenTech has a process engineering/manufacturing application called aspenONE. Today they announced that their customer BASF deployed aspenONE using Microsoft App-V. I found this interesting for a few reasons. One, I've participated in conversations about whether enterprise customers would deploy 3rd-party apps running on App-V/SoftGrid without some sort of application certification program/logo for App-V. Second, BASF runs large, complex chemical process simulations - and now they're doing so as a network service. I know these sorts of computer-aided engineering apps often times get computed on HPC clusters; but never did I think they'd then get streamed at sufficient speed to the desktop using application virtualization. I'll be interested to see/read about more ISVs packaging their apps this way for enterprise customer deployments.
- Along the lines of App-V, J.C. over at the App-V blog noted some new downloads:
- Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 security configuration wizard. Download here.
- Microsoft Application Virtualization best practices anayzer. Download here.
- J.C. wrote last week that App-V 4.5 for Terminal Services license will be available Nov. 1. Read more here.
- Adam over at TechNet Edge just posted a video interview with the authors of "Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Unleashed." I mentioned Rand's and Jeff's book a couple weeks ago. I had the opportunity to meet Rand/Jeff last week while they were up here in Redmond. Rand spoke to a bunch of us about Convergent's business, and set us straight that applications (Exchange, Sharepoint) and solutions such as disaster recovery and compliance are driving his customers' infrastructure purchases (e.g., Windows Server, Hyper-V, System Center) ... not the other way around. Here's a link to Jeff's blog.
Finally, the headline to this Australian article caught my eye over the weekend: "PacLib performs VMware analysis but chooses Microsoft." The money quote, which I already alluded to, comes from IT manager David Furey when discussing VMware's proposal:
“They came back with a proposal of about $25,000 in installation costs and another $25,000 in software costs,” Furey told iTnews. “You’ve got to question whether it’s worth paying $50,000 for that. I know the VMware camp go on about features like VMotion, but for $50,000 I could pay someone to move my virtual machines for me.”
Hmm, sounds eerily similar to something I read at VMworld 2008. ;-)
In a couple weeks I'll be attending Gartner's Data Centre conference in Amsterdam and plan to blog about some of the sessions. Let me know if you'll be there so we can compare notes and share an adult beverage.
Patrick