March, 2011

Virtualization Nation,

We just completed a great week at MMS 2011 in Las Vegas. To say it was a busy week would be a huge understatement. To everyone that attended, our sincere thanks.

I spoke to a lot of folks at the show and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Whether it was the announcements for:

• System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta
• System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Beta
• System Center Advisor Beta
• The final release of Windows Intune
• The sneak peek at System Center Codename “Concero”

…or the fact that every product in the System Center portfolio is being revved this year, everyone’s excited to see what the System Center 2012 releases have to offer. As usual, the hands-on labs and instructor-led labs continue to be some of the most popular offerings at MMS. MMS Labs offer folks the opportunity to kick the tires on all of the existing and newly released and Beta products. As usual the lines started early.

MMS 2010: Quick Refresher

For the second year in a row, all of the MMS Labs were 100% virtualized using Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and managed via System Center by our partners at XB Velocity and using HP servers and storage. MMS 2010 was the first year all of the labs were provided via virtualization. In previous years, the MMS Labs were all delivered using physical servers. To say moving from physical to virtual was a huge success would be an understatement. Here are a few apposite stats comparing MMS 2009 to MMS 2010 last year:

Power reduction of 13.9x on the servers:

• MMS 2009: 570 servers * 200 watts per server = 114,000 watts
• MMS 2010: 41 servers * 200 watts per server = 8,200 watts

Power reduction of 6.3x on the clients:

• MMS 2009: Rich clients: 650 clients * 120 watts per client = 78,000 watts
• MMS 2010: Thin clients: 650 clients * 19 watts per client = 12,350 watts

Finally, a total of 40,000 VMs were delivered over the course of MMS 2010 on 3 racks of servers. (Technically, it was 6 half racks, but since we used full racks this time, I’m calling it 3 racks so we’re making an apples to apples comparison…)

MMS 2010 Labs went so smoothly, that a similar setup was used for TechEd 2010, which performed just as well. After setting the bar so high, the team eagerly took on the challenge of improving on last year with MMS 2011. Specifically,

• Could we reduce the physical footprint further from 3 racks?
• Could we reduce power consumption further?
• Could we reduce the cabling?
• How would Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Dynamic Memory impact the labs?

MMS 2011: Servers

Last year, we used HP ProLiant DL380 G6 Rack Servers. This year we decided to use HP BL460c G7 Blades in a c7000 enclosure. Moving to HP’s BladeSystem allowed us to:

• Pack in more servers in less space with greater core counts and symmetric multi-threading
• Take advantage of HP Flex-Fabric and Virtual Connect for flexible networking and simplify cabling

From a memory standpoint, each blade was populated with 128 GB of memory the same as in each rack server last year. However, since we were using fewer servers this year (32 this year versus 41 last year) the total memory was reduced by over 1 Terabyte. At the same time, we delivered more labs running more virtual machines than ever.

 >>  By using Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Dynamic Memory, we were able to reduce the physical memory footprint by over 1 Terabyte and still deliver more labs running more virtual machines than ever. That’s a saving of ~$80,000.  <<

Hyper-V Dynamic Memory rocks!

By making these changes, the team reduced the number of racks from 3 to 2. Here’s the side-by-side comparison of MMS 2010 versus MMS 2011 from a server standpoint:

You can see that across the board and in every possible metric, the MMS 2011 servers are a significant improvement over last year. The systems are more powerful, offer greater scalability, improved performance, reduced power consumption, and fewer cables to manage; and they reduced the physical footprint by a third.

MMS 2011: Storage

Last year the team used local disks in every server. This year, they decided to change their storage strategy. Here’s what they did.

• Each blade was configured with two local disks (RAID1) for booting Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V.
• Each blade included a 320 GB HP I/O Accelerator Mezzanine Card. Differencing disks for all the running virtual machines resided on the I/O Accelerator Card. This provided a drastic improvement in IOPS.
  • Each card delivers over 145,000 IOPS
  • Read: 750 MB/s; Write: 550 MB/s
• Employed an EVA 4400 Fiber Channel SAN populated with 48, 15K RPM, 300 GB drives. The SAN housed the VHDs for all the labs.

This new storage strategy resulted in massive improvements. Using the HP I/O Accelerator Cards, total IOPS performance improved by ~23,600% (no, that’s not a typo) and using the SAN allowed the team to centrally manage and share master virtual machines; every blade was a target for every lab from every seat at MMS. This strategy provided an unprecedented amount of flexibility. If we needed an extra 20 Configuration Manager labs from 1:00-2:00 and then needed to switch those to Virtual Machine Manager labs from 2:00-3:00 or Operations Manager labs from 3:00-4:00 we could. That is the flexibility of private cloud.

Here’s the side-by-side comparison of MMS 2010 versus MMS 2011 from a storage standpoint:

The results were simply jaw-dropping.

 >>  On two racks of servers, we were able to provision 1600 VMs in three minutes or about 530 VMs per minute.  <<

MMS 2011: Time for the Diagrams and Pictures

Here’s a picture of the two racks powering all of the MMS 2011 Labs. You can see them behind the Plexiglas. What you don’t see are the crowds gathered around pointing, snapping pictures, and gazing longingly…

Here’s a diagram of the rack with the front of the rack on the left and the back of the rack on the right. The blue lines are network cables and orange lines are fiber channel. Remember, last year we had 82 network cables; this year a total of 12 cables, 8 for Ethernet and 4 for Fiber Channel.

MMS 2011: Management with System Center. Naturally, the MMS team used System Center to manage all the labs, specifically Operations Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Configuration Manager, and Service Manager.

Operations Manager 2012 Pre-Release was used to monitor the health and performance of all the Hyper-V labs running Windows and Linux. To monitor health proactively, we used the ProLiant and BladeSystem Management Packs for System Center Operations Manager. The HP Management Packs expose the native management capabilities through Operations Manager such as:

• Monitor, view, and get alerts for HP servers and blade enclosures
• Directly launch iLO Advanced or SMH for remote management
• Graphical View

It looks like this:

• Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 was used to provision and manage the entire virtualized lab delivery infrastructure and monitor and report on all the virtual machines in the system. It should go without saying that to support a lab of this scale and with only a few minutes between the end of one lab and the beginning of the next, automation is a key precept. (In case you’re wondering, there wasn’t enough time to use the VMM 2012 Beta…)
• Configuration Manager 2007 R2 was to ensure that all of the host systems were configured in a uniform, consistent manner via Desired Configuration Management (DCM)

In terms of hardware, System Center had its own dedicated hardware. System Center was deployed in virtual machines on a Hyper-V three-node cluster for HA and Live Migration if needed. (It wasn’t.) Networking was 1 Gb/E and teamed for redundancy. For storage, iSCSI over 1 Gb/E was used with multi-path I/O and the SAN was provided by the HP Virtual SAN Appliance (VSA) running within a Hyper-V virtual machine.

MMS 2011: More Data

Here’s more data…

• Over the course of the week, ~40,000 virtual machines were provisioned. This is the same as last year. However, it was done using 9 fewer servers (21%) and over 1 Terabyte less RAM.
• Average CPU Utilization across the entire pool of servers during labs hovered around 15%. Peaks were recorded a few times at ~20%. In short, even with thousands of Hyper-V VMs running, we were barely taxing this well architected and balanced system.
• While each blade was populated with 128 GB, they weren’t maxed. Each blade can take up to 384 GB.
• Disk queues for each of the hosts largely remained at 1.0. When 1600 VMs were deployed simultaneously, the disk queue peaked at 1.7. (No, that’s not a typo.)
• The HP I/O Accelerator used was the 320 GB version. We didn’t use the 640 GB version.
• All I/O was configured for HA and redundancy. Network adapters were teamed and Fiber Channel was configured with Active-Active multi-path I/O. None of it was needed, but it was all configured, tested and working perfectly.
• In terms of storage capacity, the SAN had 29 TB of raw capacity; only 64% was used.
• In terms of client access, we used the same 650 thin clients that were used last year. No change there.
• The EVA 4400 has an embedded switch so additional FC switches weren’t needed.

Hyper-V Mosaic

One cool application that the Lab team wrote is called Hyper-V Mosaic. Hyper-V Mosaic is a simple application that displays thumbnails of all running virtual machines. The screenshot below was taken at 2 PM Wed March 23. At the time, 1154 VMs were running on the 32 Hyper-V servers. The mosaic display is intended to provide the attendees with a sense of scaling of the Private Cloud solution. All of the thumbnails are live and updating. (More on Hyper-V Mosaic below…)

 Here’s a screenshot:

MMS 2011: Let’s Take this to 11

After a few days of running thousands of VMs in hundreds labs without issue and seeing that the hardware wasn’t being taxed, the team was very curious to see how just how many virtual machines they could provision. So, one night after the labs were closed the team decided to see how many VMs they could run…

• 7,200 VMs running across 32 blade servers
• 225 VMs running per Hyper-V host where each host has 128 GB of physical memory. Here’s an example of where Hyper-V Dynamic Memory improved density by over 100%.

Here’s a screen shot from PerfMon:

MMS: Physical Footprint Over the Years…

In terms of physical footprint, the team was allocated 500 sq. feet for MMS 2011 Labs and needed only 17 sq. feet. Here’s how the footprint has dropped in the last three years:

MMS 2011: Success!

As you can see that across the board and in every possible metric, the MMS 2011 system was a significant improvement over last year. It’s more powerful, offers greater scalability, improved performance, reduced power consumption, fewer cables to manage and used a third less physical footprint. 

From a Windows Server Hyper-V standpoint, Hyper-V has been in the market three years and this is just another example of how rock-solid, robust and scalable it performs. Hyper-V Dynamic Memory was a huge win for a variety of reasons:

• Greatly improved density
• Saved ~$80,000 by using 1 Terabyte less memory
• Consistent performance and scaling without any performance cliffs making it easy to manage

From a management perspective, System Center was the heart of the system providing health monitoring, ensuring consistent hardware configuration and providing the automation that makes a lab this complex successful. At its busiest, over 2600 virtual machines had to be provisioned in less than 10 minutes. You simply can’t work at this scale without automation.

From a hardware standpoint, the HP BladeSystem Matrix is simply exceptional. We didn’t fully max out the system in terms of logical processors, memory, I/O Acceleration and even at peak load running 2000+ virtual machines, we weren’t taxing the system. Not even close. Furthermore, the fact that HP integrates with Operations Manager, Configuration Manager and Virtual Machine Manager provides incredible cohesion between systems management and hardware. If you’re looking for a private cloud solution, be sure to give the HP Cloud Foundation for Hyper-V a serious look.  Watch the video where Scott Farrand, VP of Platform Software for HP, talks about how real HP and Microsoft are making private cloud computing.

Finally, I’d like to thank our MMS 2010 Platinum sponsor, HP, for their exceptional hardware and support. The HP team was extremely helpful and busy answering questions from onlookers at the lab all week. I have no idea how we’re going to top this.

Jeff Woolsey
Group Program Manager, Virtualization
Windows Server & Cloud

 P.S. More pictures below…

 Here’s a close up of one of the racks:

HP knew there was going to be a lot of interest, so they created full size cardboard replicas diagraming the hardware in use. Here’s the front:

…and here’s the back…

During the show, there was a huge display (made up of a 3x3 grid of LCDs). This display was located at the top of the elevator going from the first to the second floor at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. Throughout the week it was used for messaging and hot items of the day. On the last day, the event switched the big display screen at the top of the elevator over to show the Hyper-V Mosaic display. This turned out to be a huge hit. People came up the elevator, stopped, stared and took pictures of the display screen. The only problem is that we inadvertently created a traffic jam at the top of the elevators. Here’s the picture:

At MMS 2011 this week, Brad Anderson, Corporate Vice President, Management and Security Division, talked about how, with private cloud computing, it is all about application. One of the associated product announcements was the release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta. One of the features of this beta release is Microsoft Server Application Virtualization. Server Application Virtualization (or Server App-V for short) allows you to separate the application configuration and state from the underlying operating system.

Server App-V packages server applications into “XCopyable” images, which can then be easily and efficiently deployed and started using Virtual Machine Manager without an installation process. This can all be accomplished without requiring changes to the application code, thus mitigating the need for you to rewrite or re-architect the application. This virtualization process separates the application and its associated state from the operating system thereby offering a simplified approach to application deployment and servicing.

By virtualizing your on-premises applications with Server App-V, you will be able to decrease the complexity of application and OS updates and deployment.  This capability is delivered through System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta enabling private cloud computing. By abstracting the application from the operating system, an organization will have fewer application and OS images to maintain, thereby reducing the associated administrative effort and expense. On deployment, we will dynamically compose the application using the Server App-V package, the OS and hardware profiles, and the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD). You will no longer need to maintain VM Templates for every application you will deploy.

By now, it should be easy to see why Microsoft believes Server App-V is a core technology for the next generation of our datacenter and cloud management capabilities, and is central to the “service centric” approach to management that will be enabled with the System Center 2012 releases.

Back in December 2010, we also announced a private CTP (Community Technology Preview) of Server Application Virtualization targeted at delivering application virtualization capabilities on Windows Azure.  This (along with the Windows Azure VM role) offers an opportunity to move some existing applications to Windows Azure.  Specifically for Server App-V this means packaging an existing application and running it directly on the Windows Azure worker role. This capability is not part of the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta and to reiterate is available today only in a private CTP.

Which applications can Server Application Virtualization virtualize as part of System Center 2012?

Microsoft is prioritizing business applications such as ERP applications. As with Microsoft Application Virtualization for the desktop there is not a list of applications that Server Application Virtualization will support.  However, there are a number of architectural attributes that the initial release of this technology has been optimized for. These attributes include:

• State persisted to local disk
• Windows Services
• IIS Applications
• Registry
• COM+/DCOM
• Text-based Configuration Files
• WMI Providers
• SQL Server Reporting Services
• Local users and groups
• Java

Applications that do not have these attributes may be supported in later versions. The following applications or architectural attributes will not be supported in V1:

• Virtualization of Windows core component (IIS, DHCP, DNS, etc).
• J2EE Application Servers
• SQL Server
• Exchange Server

So, today, we encourage you to download the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta and give Server Application Virtualization a try against your existing applications!  We look forward to your feedback.

Virtualization Nation,

We’re having a great week at a sold-out MMS 2011 in Las Vegas! To say it’s a busy week would be a huge understatement. Honestly, there’s so much happening, I can’t blog about all these topics and begin to do any of them justice. So I’m going to provide a high level description with links to the details. Trust me--you’re going to want to check this out in depth. I’ll cover Target Corporations’ virtualization success, System Center 2012—including System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012 beta, System Center Advisor beta, System Center Configuration Manager 2012 beta—and the release of Windows Intune.

Target Corporation
First let’s start off with our great multi-year partnership with our valued customers at Target Corporation. Target has been a long-time Microsoft virtualization customer and partner. We’ve worked together to drive greater efficiencies and flexibility while reducing risk, improving agility, and lowering costs. To that end, Target has deployed Windows Server and System Center to manage and support over 15,000 virtual machines running mission critical applications in their stores and datacenter. Here’s a snippet from the case study:

With its attractive stores offering trendy merchandise at affordable prices, Target changed how consumers think about discount shopping. To help Target deliver on its “Expect More. Pay Less.” brand promise, Target chooses reliable, scalable, and cost-effective technology. That’s why the company is deploying Windows Server 2008 Datacenter and its Hyper-V virtualization technology to retire 8,650 servers and implement a two-servers-per-store policy. By 2012, Target’s entire store server infrastructure will be running on Hyper-V, which will support a total of 15,000 virtual machines running mission-critical applications. Target also deployed Microsoft System Center data center solutions to manage more than 300,000 endpoints across its retail network. With its Microsoft Virtualization solution, the company will save millions of dollars in hardware, electrical, and maintenance costs.

Want to know more? :) Then check out the detailed case study.

…and this blog post

System Center 2012 Releases
Now, let’s move to the System Center 2012 releases. To put it succinctly, in the next year, we’re developing 2012 releases for the entire System Center suite including Operations Manager (SCOM), SCCM, Data Protection Manager (DPM), Service Manager, Orchestrator (formerly Opalis), and VMM. We’re also adding two new products to the System Center family, System Center Advisor and Project Codenamed “Concero.”

You may want to read that last paragraph again. That’s a lot of cool stuff, and if you’re not using System Center already, there isn’t a better time to start. Let’s dive into the details.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 Beta
VMM 2012 has moved VMM beyond just being a centralized management product for managing virtual machines. VMM 2012 enables you to:

• Deliver flexible and cost-effective Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). You can pool and dynamically allocate virtualized datacenter resources (compute, network, and storage). This new capability enables self-service infrastructure experience for your business, with flexible role-based delegation and access control.
• Apply cloud principles to provisioning and servicing your datacenter applications, with techniques such as service modeling, service configuration, and image-based management. You can also state-separate your applications and services from the underlying infrastructure by using server application virtualization. This results in a service-centric approach to management, where you manage the application or service lifecycle and not just datacenter infrastructure or virtual machines.
• And much more…

To learn more about VMM 2012, check out Rakesh Malhotra’s blog.

System Center Advisor Beta
System Center Advisor (formerly Microsoft codename “Atlanta”) is a cloud service that enables IT professionals to assess their server configuration and proactively avoid problems. With System Center Advisor, support staff are able to resolve issues faster by accessing current and historical configuration data, all with the security features that meet their needs. Additionally, System Center Advisor helps reduce downtime by providing suggestions for improvement, and notifying customers of key updates specific to their configuration.

Think of it this way: At Microsoft, we spend a lot of time developing best practices, whitepapers, and Knowledge Base articles (KBs) to ensure you know how we test and validate configurations and how you can achieve the best performance and efficiency from your deployments. We want to take that knowledge and make it easier for IT to access. With System Center Advisor, we’ve created a Windows Azure service so you can log into System Center Advisor from anywhere (no need to install anything on premise, except the Operations Manager Agent on the server) and manage your service. From there, System Center Advisor can examine your system and determine if you’re running your service optimally. It will recommend KBs, point out missing updates, and make QFE recommendations. Furthermore, the knowledge in Advisor is coming directly from the Microsoft product teams and will be updated regularly.

Finally, because System Center Advisor is a Cloud Service you get true anywhere access and will automatically scale to the size of your business. This is what the cloud is all about.

System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Beta
SCCM enables a powerful user-centric approach to client management. This approach addresses the growing reality: People want to move fluidly between multiple devices and networks. To help manage this, SCCM makes it easier for IT to support users with configurations tied to their identity instead of to individual systems or devices. As a result, IT can help people work the way they want, practically wherever they want—with a familiar experience across different devices and contexts.

In this release Configuration Manager has also significantly raised the bar for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). Today, Configuration Manager is used in two out of three enterprises to manage enterprise desktops worldwide. We want to provide an intelligent way to improve the ability to manage VDI deployments (e.g., deploy App-V packages, manage patches, and more) with better granularity based on whether the VDI deployment uses pooled or personalized VMs, for example. Finally, we’re very pleased to announce improved integration with Citrix XenApp!

Windows Intune is now released!
The Windows Intune cloud service delivers management and security capabilities through a single Web-based console so you can keep your computers and users operating at peak performance from anywhere. Give your users the best Windows experience with Windows 7 Enterprise, or standardize your PCs on the Windows version of your choice. Windows Intune fits your business by giving you big tech results with a small tech investment. The result? Less hassle; and you get peace of mind knowing that your employees' PCs are well managed and highly secure. Windows Intune enables you to:

• Manage updates
• Protect PCs from malware
• Proactively monitor PCs
• Provide remote assistance
• Track hardware and software inventory
• Set security policies

Because Windows Intune is a cloud service, you get true anywhere access. Windows Intune will automatically scale to the size of your business. This is what the cloud is all about. (Hmm, anyone seeing a trend here… :))

As you can see, there’s a lot happening at MMS 2011, and this blog really is just scratching the surface. Please take the time to review the links above. If you haven’t invested in System Center, now is the time! More on MMS soon!

Cheers,

Jeff Woolsey
Group Program Manager, Virtualization
Windows Server & Cloud

Today Microsoft announces new IT solutions to streamline PC and device management, empower productivity and enable the modern enterprise, highlighting the release of Windows Intune, System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Beta 2 and the next version of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP).

See the full press release here - and download System Center Configuration Manager 2012 Beta 2 today!

From the sold-out Microsoft Management Summit in Las Vegas, Brad Anderson posts about empowering our customers with Private Cloud computing.  This post comes directly from the Official Microsoft Blog.  View the related press release here.

Private Cloud Computing: It’s all About the Apps

This is a big week for Microsoft and many of our enterprise IT customers. We’re hosting the Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in Las Vegas, a sold-out IT conference where I have the honor of delivering two keynote addresses to approximately 4,000 attendees.

The theme of MMS is “You. Empowered,” which is particularly relevant to cloud computing – especially private cloud computing. In this new computing paradigm, we see the ability for IT organizations to empower their companies to more effectively deliver the business applications they need to compete and succeed.

We have just undergone a period in IT where cost pressure drove an intense focus on server consolidation and virtualization. It is important, however, that our industry recognizes that the promise of cloud computing is different from virtualization. While virtualization benefits were “all about the infrastructure,” cloud computing will prove to be “all about the application”.

In fact, an agile infrastructure that is disconnected from the applications it supports simply does not serve the business. I hear this every time I speak with IT leaders. They tell me service level agreements for applications are top of mind, including speed of deployment, troubleshooting and overall visibility. Ultimately, they are looking to ensure that their apps reliably do what they are intended to do for employees and customers.

In cloud computing, I see great opportunity for these customers. If you think about it, cloud computing is, at its core, focused on applications. In the very large cloud centers, where we run the Windows Azure,  Office 365, Xbox Live, and Bing services (among others), application service levels are all that matter.  We have optimized everything – the facility, the infrastructure, the processes – to deliver on-demand, standardized IT services that run on shared resources. While Microsoft’s investment in these types of cloud centers is unique, the best practices can be directly applied to every IT environment.

So, how does a company get there? Certainly virtualization is an important step, and many organizations are at that phase in their “journey to the cloud.” (Case in point: retail leader Target Co. using our Hyper-V technologies.) But how can you be sure your company is well positioned to move to cloud computing, ready to meet the business demands for faster, more reliable application services?

You start with a management infrastructure that is designed to empower IT. A management infrastructure that brings together the network, storage and computing islands into an integrated fabric. A management infrastructure that can create clouds with just a few clicks. Management that empowers the business to build, deploy and scale applications on their terms. And management infrastructure that is not just “virtual machine aware,” but delivers the application insight that your business depends upon, spanning both private and public cloud services.

That kind of management can make the difference between IT really delivering business value and just managing cost and complexity. In addition, IT administrators will find that it unlocks career opportunity, as well. Just as we move from individual servers to infrastructure fabric, server administrators will see an opportunity to lead the journey to the cloud.

That’s what we’re showing at MMS today. (You will soon be able to view my keynote speeches and read our news announcements here.) Our management offerings are designed to help IT organizations build private cloud solutions that deliver application services, not just virtual machines. With our approach, the applications drive the IT infrastructure, not the other way around. The management technologies at the center give both IT managers and application managers throughout the company a unified view into applications in private, public and hybrid cloud scenarios.

Finally, with a Microsoft private cloud, customers can use the infrastructure they know and own today to build and deliver private cloud computing as a managed service, including other vendors’ tools, platforms and virtualization technologies. We emphasize putting our customers’ needs ahead of any particular technology.

If you’re interested in more details, I invite you to watch my keynote speeches here, or visit our Hyper-V Cloud web site. Let us know your thoughts!

Posted by Brad Anderson
Corporate Vice President, Management and Security Division, Microsoft

Hi everyone. I’m Fritz DeBrine, senior group manager for Server Technology & Enterprise Storage with Target Corporation. Here with me is Keith Narr, technical architect consultant in our Infrastructure Strategy & Architecture team. It’s been fun reading this blog and learning about how real-life workloads are being deployed on Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and managed with System Center. We would like to share with you how we use these solutions in our stores and a brief overview of how we got there.

Today, inside each of our stores’ control rooms, we run Hyper-V on a pair of Dell R710’s hosting our mission-critical guest-facing apps like point-of-sale, pharmacy, assets protection, SQL Server, and our in-store processor. Target has 1,755 stores around the country and performance and availability is really critical. So is managing and securing all those servers.

We started virtualizing in stores back in 2006 with Microsoft Virtual Server (MSVS).  We evaluated and compared VMWare and Microsoft and, based on our analysis of the technologies at the time and on our close relationship with the Microsoft product teams, we felt Microsoft offered the highest value for our investment. The first virtual machine we deployed to our stores was actually a SUSE Linux instance running our pharmacy application. Things were running well and we created three additional workloads on MSVS over the next 18 months. We migrated two more existing workloads; SQL Server and our In Store Processor and also created a new server instance within the store to host infrastructure services such as System Center Configuration Manager.

But then came the summer of 2009.  We identified a performance bottleneck within one of our virtual machines which runs SQL Server.  This performance bottleneck was affecting how long it took our store team members to perform certain job functions.  And that brings us to how we deployed Hyper-V remotely to all our stores inside 45 days.

We noticed it was taking our team members longer to unload trucks at the stores. Our teams use handheld devices to scan merchandise as it arrives and the replenishment application was constrained. At Target, we want to deliver the right product to our store shelves so it’s there when our guest needs it. Because we were approaching our busy holiday season, we needed to move quickly. Rolling out new hardware just wasn’t an option.

We have a very short window of time to perform maintenance and upgrades. Our conversion process was deployed using a combination of Target and Microsoft written scripts which did an upgrade-in-place with no additional hardware to be deployed to the store. The four existing workloads were migrated within a two hour outage window at each store with a failure rate across the chain below 3 percent.  The diligence put into design and testing allowed us to complete conversion of the entire chain inside our tight timeline and ensure stability prior to our peak holiday season. Hyper-V satisfied the demands of our replenishment application and SQL Server, and helped us get those trucks unloaded on schedule.

Today we use System Center Operations Manager and System Center Configuration Manager to manage more than 15,000 servers and 29,000 workstations in our stores. Add to that more than 52,000 registers and thousands of kiosks. We also have System Center Configuration Manager agents on almost 70,000 mobile devices. Add in the rest of the Target enterprise, and we have more than 300,000 endpoints. 

We continue to rely on Microsoft technologies and participate with Microsoft in their Technology Adoption Programs (TAP) whenever possible.  Our membership within the Microsoft Hyper-V TAP program and the direct support of the Hyper-V product team really enabled this upgrade and the elimination of the performance bottleneck. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading our success story as much as we enjoy reading the others!

For additional details about Target’s use of Microsoft virtualization and management technology, read the full case study.