Virtualization Adapted Adapting Business Processes for Virtual Infrastrcuture (and vice-versa)

2010/10/28

VAAI – Hitachi

Filed under: virtualization — iben @ 15:31

When VMware released VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) on July 13, 2010, Hitachi jointly released support for these APIs on our AMS 2000 storage arrays.

The testing that has been done with Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning volumes on an AMS 2300 with VAAI has shown the following results:

  • Full copy – 18% performance improvement (speed to copy VM’s)
  • Write same – 85% performance improvement (speed to clone VM’s)
  • Hardware Assisted Locking – 25% to 35% performance improvement including the removal of SCSI reserves (powering on 1400 VM’s on 4 x Servers simultaneously)

http://blogs.hds.com/hu/2010/08/hds-at-vmworld-2010.html

Hitachi storage integration with VAAI includes:

  • Hardware-assisted Locking: Provides an alternative means to protecting the VMFS cluster file system’s meta data
  • Full Copy: Enables the storage arrays to make full copies of data within the array without the VMware vSphere host reading and writing the data
  • Block Zeroing: Enables storage arrays to zero out a large number of blocks to enhance the deployment of large-scale VMs.

Hitachi Dynamic Provisioning allows organizations to create a storage pool from which capacity can be used as-needed to improve performance and utilization. Additionally, Hitachi Load Balancing active-active symmetric controllers distribute VMware workloads across all paths to ensure optimal performance by eliminating I/O path thrashing, which leads to performance degradation. This integration significantly enhances the customer experience through:

  • Improved scalability: More VMs per data store; better storage utilization
  • Improved performance: VMware vSphere offloads storage specific tasks to the arrays, freeing up cycles on the host for other workloads
  • Improved ROI: Faster time to deployment means less coordination between VMware and storage administrators
  • Reduced OPEX and CAPEX costs

http://www.hds.com/corporate/press-analyst-center/press-releases/2010/gl100713.html

See Also: http://storagenerve.com/2010/09/30/vaai-and-automated-storagetiering-with-storage-virtualization/

VAAI – Netapp

Filed under: virtualization — Tags: , , , , , — iben @ 15:21

New NetApp Virtual Storage Console 2.0 (VSC) integrates with VMware vSphere vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). VAAI provides additional interfaces to enable advanced capabilities developed by VMware vSphere workflows to integrate advanced storage capabilities from NetApp and other vendors.

http://media.netapp.com/documents/wp-7106.pdf

VSC consists of three distinct capabilities:

  • Storage Console is the foundation capability, providing storage discovery, health monitoring, capacity management, and storage configuration according to best practices.
  • Provisioning and Cloning (formerly NetApp Rapid Cloning Utility) provides end-to-end datastore management-provisioning, resizing, and deletion-and rapid, space-efficient VM server and desktop cloning, patching, and updating utilizing NetApp FlexClone technology.
  • Backup and Recovery (formerly NetApp SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure) automates data protection processes by enabling VMware admins to centrally manage backup and recovery of datastores and VMs without impacting guest performance, and to rapidly recover from backups at any level of granularity-datastore, VM, VMDK, or guest file.

Provisioning and Cloning

The provisioning and cloning capability of VSC 2.0 includes all the capabilities of previous versions of RCU, including the ability to efficiently clone new virtual machines from a baseline using NetApp FlexClone technology, manage and secure storage paths, configure deduplication and thin provisioining for storage efficiency, and resize datastores.

Another significant feature is the ability to redeploy existing virtual machines to bring them up to date with the latest patches and so on. Working from a baseline virtual machine that contains the same OS and applications as your deployed virtual machines plus the desired updates, this feature allows you to quickly reconstruct your existing VMDK files while keeping the unique configuration files for each VM intact. You can also choose to maintain current customization settings or apply new settings.

baselines_902x646.jpg

Figure – Redeploying your existing virtual machines from an updated baseline.

VMFS Versions – Drivers and Formats

Filed under: virtualization — Tags: , , , , — iben @ 15:14

There are no significant on-disk format changes going from version 3.33 to 3.46. However, there is a significant change between VMFS driver version 3.46 and driver version 3.33. In particular, 3.46 contains VAAI extensions, which leads VMFS to use hardware accelerated locking and the hardware accelerated data mover on VAAI compliant hardware.

So the short answer is that you do not need to upgrade to a new on-disk vmfs 3.46 but instead the new 3.46 driver on ESX 4.1 will bring you the benefit even with vmfs 3.33 on-disk filesystem, if these are on array whose firmware is upgraded that provides such VAAI extensions.

VMware ESX 3 – VMFS ver 3.21
VMware ESX 3.5 – VMFS ver 3.31
VMware vSphere 4 – VMFS ver 3.33
VMware vSphere 4.1 – VMFS ver 3.46
VMware vSphere 5 – VMFS ver 5

HyTrust Appliance 2.1 Available

Filed under: virtualization — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — iben @ 14:36

HyTrust recently celebrated its 3-year birthday.  HyTrust was founded in October 2007 to bring secure access control and policy to virtual infrastructure, enabling wider adoption of virtualization throughout the enterprise — exactly the same focus that we have today.

It’s amazing to see what we have achieved in the last three years: great enterprise customers; solid partnerships with the major players in virtualization (VMware, Cisco, RSA, Intel and Symantec); numerous accolades, including Best of Show at VMworld; and, of course, several significant releases of HyTrust Appliance…

So we’re excited to let you know that HyTrust Appliance 2.1 is now generally available. It is chock-full of exciting new enterprise features, including protection for the control of Cisco Nexus 1000V, application-level high availability, and smart card support.  As always, we have also made 2.1 available in the Community Edition form, which can be downloaded for free here: 
http://info.hytrust.com/appliance.html

New HyTrust Appliance Capabilities At a Glance

  • Support for VMware vSphere 4.1
  • Integrated access control, policy and audit logging for Cisco Nexus 1000V CLI management (NX-OS command set)
  • Support for complex, multi-domain Active Directory environments
  • Single sign-on via Windows pass-through authentication with smart card integration
  • New ESX hardening templates including VMware Hardening Guide 4.0 and (Sarbanes Oxley) SOX hardening template
  • Application-level high availability (in addition to VMware HA/FT and federation)

If you would like to take a look at the new functionality, we have recorded demos of the new version available for your viewing pleasure.
http://info.hytrust.com/recorded_product_demo.html

For those of you currently evaluating HyTrust Appliance, we’d like to extend an added incentive to make your purchase in Q4: for a limited time, HyTrust is offering a free “jump-start” professional services package to help you get up and running quickly. Contact sales (sales@hytrust.com) for more information.

2010/10/23

Vyatta router upgrade procedure

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — iben @ 12:36

Upgrading in a Virtual Environment

Upgrading in a virtual environment involves two steps:
1 Install the new appliance to a fresh virtualized environment.
2 Migrate your configuration from old to new Vyatta appliances.

Migrate the configuration

1 In configuration mode on the old system, use the save command to save the
current configuration.
2 For all Ethernet interfaces, remove the hardware ID values using the delete
interfaces ethernet ethx hw-id command to remove the hardware ID values, then
commit and save the configuration to a name other than config.boot (for
example, save oldconfig).
3 Use the load command to return the original configuration to the old system.
4 Use the set service ssh command and then the commit command to configure the
system to allow for SCP file transfer.
5 In configuration mode on the new system, assign an IP address to an interface
residing on the same subnet as one on the old system (for example, set interfaces
ethernet eth0 address 192.168.1.99/24), and then commit the change.
6 Copy the saved configuration (the one with the hardware UDs removed) from the
old system to the new system. For example, if the old system is at 192.168.1.20,
the saved configuration file is name oldconfig, and the username vyatta is
available on the old system, issue the scp command as follows:
scp vyatta@192.168.1.20:/opt/vyatta/etc/config/oldconfig
/opt/vyatta/etc/config/oldconfig
7 Load the copied configuration using the load command (for example, load
oldconfig). At this point, the configuration on the new system should match that
on the old system (except for the hardware IDs).
8 Shut down the old system using the shutdown command.

Reference:

http://www.vrouter.net/solutions/branch_virtualization.php

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