July, 2008

Hi, my name is Bert Van Pottelberghe, business unit manager at Hostbasket, which is the leading hosting company and SaaS-provider in Belgium with over 30,000 SMB customers.

In a recent survey of our datacenter with over 1,000 servers, we saw that the average CPU-usage was only 12%. On the other hand, investments in new server hardware, datacenter space and the cost of power and cooling – now at an all time high - keep prices for dedicated servers high. The hosting industry is a very competitive industry, so we needed to come up with an answer.

We have been investigating virtualization technologies such as Xen, VMWare and Virtuozzo, but always found problems (such as security-issues, complex and expensive licensing, stability or scalability) that kept us from creating a virtual machine-offer.

Our Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V offering has two components:

·         Flex Servers: Virtual servers on shared hardware platform. More info here.  

·         Hyper-V servers: dedicated hardware server with 2 virtual machines (application server and database server for example).

Both are positioned as dedicated servers, not as virtual servers.  With these two offers we address the needs of 2 customer groups: The Flex servers are for websites and applications that have outgrown shared hosting, while the Hyper-V servers are for larger applications that used to be deployed on two (or more) separate physical servers.

We opted not to use the term “Virtual servers” for our offer, because a “virtual server” implies less value for money than a dedicated server. Also, “Virtual servers” are often associated with cheap solutions based on Parallels Virtuozzo.

Our solutions based on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V provide more functionality (like snapshotting, easy installation, flexible upgrading), are more secure and stable and have a features that guarantee a higher uptime than dedicated servers.

All customers involved during the beta-stage decided to renew their subscription and gave positive comments on the stability and performance.

Bert Van Pottelberghe

Business Unit Manager

HostBasket

Hi, my name is Stephen Nichols, VP of sales and marketing for SoftCom Technology Consulting, which is the company behind myhosting.com, a leading global provider of affordable web, email and application hosting. We have been actively engaged with Microsoft technologies since we began in the hosting industry back in 1997. We are part of Gold Certified Partner program with competencies in Data Management Solutions, Information Worker Solutions, Mobility Solutions and Networking Infrastructure Solutions. Based on our strength and experience in shared hosting we see the greatest opportunity for growth is to build new solutions on this foundation. The development of these solutions will be customer requirement driven and need to be delivered cost effectively and on demand.

The best prospect for future profits is to move beyond commoditized hosting of simple websites sold on large amounts of storage, bandwidth and email addresses. To future proof our business we have begun to offer unique solutions backed by exceptional support. As part of our process to find and develop tools and strategies to differentiate our services in the market, our entire organization was keen to implement some form of Virtual Server Hosting.

In the words of our Operations Manager: “Modern computer systems are extremely powerful, 4 socket, quad core CPUs, these systems are able to support many gigabytes of memory and storage. Running one operating system and a single application on these type of machines would be inefficient. By using virtualization technology, we can consolidate multiple physical servers onto one physical machine.”

We have already implemented virtualization technology within our infrastructure for our internal server needs and saw that server consolidation allows us to have smaller footprint and a lower cost of ownership. Fewer physical servers reduce power consumption both by servers and by the cooling infrastructure, lowering costs and at the same time making our solution “greener.” The next step was to build hosting solution that could take advantage of virtualization technology to provide our customers the tools they need to run their businesses. As not all virtualization platforms are created equally we took our time to find the best fit.

At the end of the day the clear choice for us was to go with Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V platform. Some of the key factors we evaluated include the following.

Efficient Cost and licensing model: As a Gold Partner under the SPLA model, the licensing for the entire platform was included in one package which made things simple. There is no need to deal with multiple vendor systems for reporting.

Hardware support and flexibility: Within our data center we have several server configurations. Hyper-V support for a wide range of hardware makes it attractive for us. Once we install and configure Windows Server 2008 we enable Hyper-V and we are ready to go.

Server management tools: Hyper-V allows our Operations Team to use the same familiar Microsoft tools to manage both the physical and the virtual server environments in one place.

Reliability and Scalability: We need to be able to balance the needs of the few with the needs of the many. Hyper-V enables us to do this by providing each customer with an independent operating system that can be customized by the customer without affecting other customers.

We have been involved in Go Live Programs with Microsoft in the past so we were eager to participate this time around. The exciting part for myhosting.com is to have access to not only the code but to the team of knowledgeable people at Microsoft to collaborate with. The main benefit so far has been how straightforward it has been to implement an integrated hosted Virtual Server solution.  We are able to offer customers a transactional hosting experience and at the same time provide the latest platform of Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. Customers get the best of all worlds; a full operating system supported by Microsoft in a virtual environment, 24/7 live support, scalability that is cost effective, and best of all, a solution that just works.

Stephen Nichols
VP, Sales and Marketing
SoftCom Technology Consulting

See our blog here.

Quick post here on two items.

Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool can be downloaded here. As blogged about at by the System Center team blog, Virtualization.info, and InfoWorld blog.

This product allows the update of large-scale deployments of virtual machines, leveraging PowerShell, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2007 and WSUS 3.0 (or Configuration Manager 2007). As Alessandro pointed out, "It just automates the VM power-on, updates deploying through virtual network access, and VM shutdown." You can use this Solution Accelerator to help you with business scenarios such as these:

• Your IT organization is converting physical servers to virtual machines to reduce costs, including administrative overhead. How can you regularly update offline virtual machines while minimizing administrative costs?
• Your IT organization has thousands of virtual machines stored for months at a time in a number of libraries. How do you keep the virtual machines reliably up to date?

Second, today Citrix issued an announcement about "Project Kensho", which is described as:

will deliver Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) tools that, for the first time, allow independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprise IT managers to easily create hypervisor-independent, portable enterprise application workloads.  These tools will allow application workloads to be imported and run across Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX virtual environments 

 While you can read ComputerWorld's article or Alessandro's blog on the announcement, I think the most interesting perspective comes from Simon Crosby's June 27 post. Here's an excerpt from his post:

Kensho showcases our commitment to open standards based virtual infrastructure management using DMTF CIM based interfaces, and will in the not too distant future allow Microsoft System Center VMM to manage XenServer.   It also allows users to quickly and easily export their virtualized workloads to and import them from the new industry standard portable virtual machine format, OVF.   You'll be hearing much more about Kensho and its features in the near future.

The OVF standard, which I was fortunate to be able to help to develop  offers ISVs and enterprise IT staff a hypervisor-independent portable virtual machine format that packages a complete application workload with its  resource requirements, configuration and customization parameters, licebnsand signatures to facilitate appliance integrity and security checking, as an open standard. Virtualized data center workloads captured in OVF format can be installed and run on any DMTF compliant virtualization platform. OVF also supports software license checking for the enclosed VMs, and allows an installed VM to localize the applications it contains and optimize its performance for a given virtualization environment.At the DMTF interoperability event, we used Project Kensho to create VMs from VMware, Hyper-V & XenServer in the OVF format.  We also used Kensho to import and run OVF virtual appliances on XenServer and Hyper-V.  Kensho will  allow application vendors and IT users to produce virtual appliances once as "golden application templates", independent of the virtualization platform used to deploy them - and is a clear demonstration of how Citrix will add value to Hyper-V. 

The Citrix news release says Kensho will be available as a download in September.

As for Microsoft, we support the OVF standards work, which isn't complete yet. There's no public schedule for when OVF will be supported in our products, such as Hyper-V or SCVMM, but it's on the board. It's great to see partners like Citrix doing converts for interop based on our DMTF standard interface. And we'll continue to work with Citrix, Novell and Sun on interoperability, in addition to making technology (like VHD image, Hypercall API) available via Open Specification Promise.

Patrick O'Rourke

 Greetings! Chris Steffen here again from Kroll Factual Data. I want to share some thoughts on what I have heard about Microsoft virtualization in the enterprise data center. I will also be the first to admit that I am not the average user of Microsoft’s virtualization technologies and that I probably have a bit of a bias toward the Microsoft solution. But the bias did not come without some pretty compelling reasons.

There are several requirements we each consider when evaluating a server virtualization product. Maybe the primary requirement is cost. Maybe the primary requirement is flexibility. Maybe it is manageability or ease of use or compatibility or reliability. Each of these requirements is a valid reason to choose a certain virtualization product. And in my evaluation, each of these requirements is answered by the Microsoft virtualization solution. I am not going to deep dive into a sales pitch here on the benefits of Virtual Server over any of the other solutions, but I did want to address a specific concern that I have heard while attending conferences and while industry analysts have talked to me: that Microsoft’s virtualization products are not ready for enterprise production environments.

For some background, Kroll Factual Data has been using Microsoft Virtual Server in our production environment for nearly five years (since Virtual Server 2003). We have tested and implemented every subsequent version ever since and currently have a more than 1,600 virtual machine environment consisting of Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Hyper-V. We are able to run 300,000 business transactions per day in this environment, and the flexibility afforded to us by having an 85% virtualized data center allows us to deploy additional capacity on demand nearly instantly.

When we started down the virtualization path, I will be the first to admit that some of the other virtualization solutions had an advantage over Microsoft, specifically in their management tools. Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) took care of that, and the improvements coming in VMM 2008 makes the Microsoft virtualization management solution the best in class.

We have had Hyper-V in our production environment now for months and are migrating our existing Virtual Server 2005R2 VMs to Hyper-V hosts as fast as our IT team can work. It has been stable, the support has been outstanding (through the Microsoft TAP program), and we are seeing about a 20% increase in resource utilization over Virtual Server 2005 R2.

Based on  Factual Data ’s use of the products, Microsoft’s virtualization suite is ready for the big leagues. I mentioned earlier that I have a bias toward the Microsoft virtualization solution, and I have this bias because Virtual Server, Hyper-V and VMM have proven to me that they work as promised. They have provided the cost-effective, reliable and easy-to-manage solution that we needed, and that we will continue to use.

Some may say that they came a bit late to the party, but I would contend that the party is just beginning.

-Chris

The update will be classified as a "recommended update", which means it will flow down automatically according to the settings you’ve selected for your Windows Server 2008 OS.  It’s also being released to Windows Server Update Services.

Taylor has a nice screen capture here. Let the fun times begin!

Patrick

Daniel asked about the Linux integration components for Hyper-V. They've now reached RC2 status, according to Mike Sterling, and are available from http://connect.microsoft.com/

Hang on – did you say RC2?

Due to customer feedback from the beta version, we added a couple of additional features.

·         Mouse Support: Support for the synthetic mouse device has been added in beta. This new mouse support allows the mouse to move in and out of the window without having to use the CTRL-ALT-LEFTARROW key command to break out.

·         Fastpath Boot Support: Support for faster single disk configurations has been added to the RC2 release. Boot devices now take advantage of the storage VSC to provide enhanced performance.

We’ve reached RTM on the hypercall adapter, Linux implementation of VMBus, and the network and storage VSC.

Patrick

UPDATE (July 8, 2008) - Vacations slowed my response to the comments. The Linux ICs were taken down so that folks could review the licensing one more time. Licensing is tricky when open source and proprietary software are packaged. I'm trying to get an ETA and will update this post when I know a date.

As many of you know, the much-anticipated Hyper-V hypervisor feature was just released last week.  Many of the IT professionals like you have now began to use Hyper-V server virtualization technology to take back the control of your datacenter.  With energy costs going sky high and the demand for IT services increasing, no wonder many of you are now looking to consolidate the physical servers using virtualization.

With server consolidation being the direction to go, we are pleased to announce the RTM of Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 for Hyper-V.

What is the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1?

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1 (or MAP) is a network-wide agent-less tool that can help you quickly find out where your desktops and servers are as well as auto-generate upgrade recommendations for multiple products and technologies including server, desktop and virtualization migration scenarios covering:

·         Hyper-V virtualization candidates assessment (New in MAP 3.1)

·         SQL server discovery and assessment (New in MAP 3.1)

·         Desktop Security Center assessment (New in MAP 3.1)

·         Windows Server 2008 hardware and device compatibility assessment including server discovery

·         Windows Vista hardware and device compatibility assessment including PC discovery

·         Office 2007 hardware compatibility assessment

·         Microsoft Application Virtualization hardware compatibility assessment

·         SNMP inventory reporting

How can I use the MAP Toolkit to plan for my server consolidation project?

The MAP Toolkit can help you determine which subset of your currently physical servers are good candidates for Hyper-V virtualization.  By capturing the workloads and utilization of each of your server over a defined period of time, this tool can recommend a set of consolidated hosts for your existing servers.  It looks at many factors such as CPU utilization, memory utilization, Network IO and Disk IO rates and auto-generate a set of proposal documents and detailed spreadsheets for your virtualization planning process.

How does remote inventory work?  Is it agent-based or agent-less?

Leveraging the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) protocol, all you need to do is a machine that has the MAP Toolkit 3.1 installed, the right set of administrative credentials to the “target machines” (i.e. the machines you want the MAP Toolkit to inventory and assess), as well as other WMI requirements here.  The MAP Toolkit will then remotely ping each machine across your network securely all without installing any software agents on the individual target machines.  Therefore, the MAP Toolkit is completely agent-less with zero foot-print!

Where do I go to get the MAP Toolkit 3.1 and learn more about it?

·         Download the MAP Toolkit 3.1:                                 http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=111000

·         Learn more on TechNet:                                               http://www.microsoft.com/MAP  

·         Read tips and tricks:                                                        http://blogs.technet.com/MAPBLOG

What else should I leverage to accelerate the planning, deployment, and operation of Hyper-V?

To help you accelerate the entire lifecycle of your virtualization project, the Microsoft Solution Accelerators team has developed tools and guidance including Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit 3.1, Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides for Virtualization (including guides for Hyper-V, App-V, Terminal Services, and SCVMM 2008), Windows Server 2008 Security Guide, Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, and Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool.

Check out the latest Virtualization Solution Accelerators at:         http://www.microsoft.com/VSA

My name is Ronald Beekelaar. I'm a Microsoft MVP of Virtual Machine Technology, based in Amsterdam. I have my own consultancy firm, and since 2002 I focus on virtualization. At first, this was strictly VMware-oriented, but a few years later this included Microsoft's virtualization products as well.

Since the first public beta of Hyper-V more than a year ago, I have done many presentations about Hyper-V at various events, and talked to a lot of customers about transitioning to Hyper-V. The people I talk to can be divided into two groups: they either have experience with Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server, or they only know the VMware products and are just now looking into Hyper-V. However, for both groups, and despite very different opinions, there are five topics that always come up in discussions. Below is my list of the top-5 things you should know and understand about Hyper-V.

5) Understand the hypervisor model and performance consequences.

This is especially a big one for people that know Virtual PC and Virtual Server. The virtualization model that Hyper-V uses is very different from the model that Virtual PC and Virtual Server use. The Hyper-V model allows for much better I/O performance of virtual machines. This is mainly due to the new 64-bit hypervisor layer underneath everything - including the host operating system even, and the new high-speed VMBus "synthetic" drivers that run in the virtual machines.

Particularly- the use of optimized synthetic disk and network drivers talking to the VMBus, instead of using normal "hardware-oriented" drivers, make for a much faster I/O path from applications inside the Hyper-V virtual machines to the physical hardware. To make use of these synthetic drivers, make sure you use an operating system inside the virtual machines for which Microsoft provides so-called Integration Components. When you install the Integration Components, the synthetic drivers are installed as well.

Please see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 954958 for the list of operating systems in which you can install Integration Components.

4) Understand the use of snapshots

Snapshots in Hyper-V are very different from those found in Virtual PC and Virtual Server. Snapshots in Hyper-V allow you to save the current point-in-time state of your running or non-running virtual machine, and later come back to that particular state. Great for testing, troubleshooting and roll-back of virtual machine state.

This comes in the place of undo-disks, save-state, and to some extend even differencing disks with Virtual PC and Virtual Server.

Make sure you understand the power of snapshots and the scenarios where you should not roll-back the state of your virtual machine. Any scenario with a distributed database (such as domain controllers) is not a good candidate for snapshotting.

3) How to use Quick Migration

No discussion on virtualization can be complete without addressing fail-over support and virtual machine management. That is topic 3 and 2 in the list.

It doesn't take long to realize that any time you run multiple virtual machines on the same physical Hyper-V server, you have to think about how to handle the scenario where you have to do maintenance on the physical server (planned), or worse what happens when the physical server suddenly stops working due to loss of power or similar (unplanned).

For both the planned and unplanned scenarios, Hyper-V has support of host clustering. Windows Server 2008 clustering treats virtual machines as fully-managed clustered resources. For fail-over, clustering moves the

virtual machine from one node to another node. In Hyper-V terminology this is called Quick Migration. Due to the use of shared storage, only the content of the memory of the running virtual machine is copied to the other node.

2) Consider System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Virtual machines created with Hyper-V need to be managed as well. Enter System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. With Virtual Machine Manager you can simplify lots of tasks related to virtual machine management. This includes easier virtual host cluster support, automatically provisioning new virtual machines based on templates (including taking care of the "sysprep" part to make multiple virtual machines from the same template unique on the network), and an straightforward physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion

process to move existing physical computers on to Hyper-V as virtual machines.

Interestingly enough, SCVMM 2008 can manage Hyper-V servers, Virtual Server, and even VMware ESX virtualized infrastructure, and even comes with a nifty virtual-to-virtual (V2V) option to move existing VMware virtual machines to Hyper-V.

As you would expect of a new server product from Microsoft, SCVMM 2008 fully supports automation with PowerShell.

1) Hyper-V can run on Server Core Installation

The number one thing to know about Hyper-V is the fact that it can run perfectly well on a Server Core Installation of Windows Server 2008. This means that on the physical server, you only need to install the absolute minimum "host OS,", and still have the full Hyper-V functionality. Having less moving parts and services running on the Hyper-V computer is, naturally, very beneficial to reduce the number of times you need to patch the server, and reduces the possible attack surface exposed to the network.

For any serious production installation of Hyper-V, and for any serious comparison with VMware ESX, being able to run Hyper-V on a Windows Server 2008 Core Installation is essential.

Ronald