.Running "enterprise" applications like Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, and many others on VMware is a topic that becomes more popular as virtualization continues to grow. Initial uses of VMware's virtualization products are often focused on test and development or consolidation. Following this initial phase many find that there are administrative and management advantages to using virutalization and want to move more applications or servers onto a virtualized platform. This chat topic focuses on the questions and issues that come up when enterprise applications are under consideration for movement onto a virutlaizaiton product like VMware ESX Server.

Technical Community - Background Reading

• TechCenter - Exchange and VMware
• TechCenter - SQL Server and VMware
• TechCenter - Virtual NIC Performance - Virtual Frontier Blog

• IT-Manage Blog - Microsoft and VMware
• VMware Community - Virtualizing Exchange 2003/2007 for 4500 users
• VMware Community - Exchange Performance

• VMware - Virtualize Your Exchange Server 2007
• VMware Support Statement
• Microsoft Support Policy

Chat Transcript

	DELL-ToddM	Hello
	DELL-ScottH	Hey now!
	DELL-ToddM	We're just waiting for everybody to join
	DELL-ToddM	Welcome slbrown
	slbrown	Hello todd & scott
	DELL-ToddM	We're just waiting for the crowd to gather
	slbrown	Understood.
	DELL-ToddM	Any virtualization of applications stuff you want to cover today?
	slbrown	Nothing off the top of my head. Do you plan on explaining the way our management applications work with ESX?
	DELL-ToddM	Sure, Server Administrator, DRAC, and IT Assistant? Others?
	DELL-ScottH	Classic ESX or embedded?
	slbrown	SA and SUU on classic and embedded
	DELL-ScottH	Did you see my post on SUUon ESX?
	slbrown	Yes I remember seeing it now.
	DELL-ScottH	www.delltechcenter.com/page/04%2f10%2f2008+-+script+for+applying+dell+server+updates+in+esx+3.x
	DELL-ScottH	That's for ESX classic...for 3I you'd have to boot from the SBUU
	DELL-ToddM	Let's get started; I guess that we kind of already have
	DELL-ScottH	Hey Marc
	DELL-ToddM	Welcome to this week's TechTuesday discussion around virtualization of "enterprise applications"
	dell-marcfarley	Yo!
	DELL-ToddM	Things like Exchange, SQL, Oracle—you know, the important stuff
	DELL-ToddM	Yo Marc!
	dell-marcfarley	Just curious, do you know if the servers we run the chat software on are virtualized?
	slbrown	What about SAP?
	DELL-ScottH	Todd locked up, he'll be back in a second
	DELL-ScottH	The hosting company for the chat software is on a dedicated Dell PowerEdge 1950. We upgraded before the EqualLogic chat, which was worth it because we had over 50 attendees, but I'm sure the 1950 had no problems keeping up :-)
	DELL-ScottH	Todd says we can take a run at SAP too
	dell-marcfarley	SAP, are you using Oracle as the backend?
	DELL-ToddM	I return!
	dell-marcfarley	Ta Dah! nick of time
	DELL-ToddM	I know that SAP has been run on VMware by quite a few folks for test and development. I haven't yet talked to a customer that is running SAP, but I do know that VMware has some resources dedicated to it. So there is interest, even in running things like SAP. So - in terms of management, OpenMange is supported with VMware ESX. Server Administrator can be installed on the service console of ESX classic, which has been true since ESX 2.x (with increasing level of support over time)
	slbrown	Okay, thanks
	DELL-ToddM	With OpenMange 5.4 IT Assistant will see ESX servers as ESX servers (and not an unknown system). The DRAC can also be used with ESX for remote management with full console redirection
	DELL-ScottH	install guide is easy to follow, and updated for ESX 3.5:www.dell.com/downloads/global/solutions/installing_dell_openmanage_on_esx.pdf
	DELL-ToddM	Of course, most of the day-to-day management of VMware ESX servers is done with Virtual Center. OpenManage covers the hardware side. There will be integration of some Dell hardware information into Virtual Center with the ESX 3i (or is it 3.5i). So you will be able to view hardware health for the Dell servers in Virtual Center
	dell-marcfarley	I don't want to ask a dumb question, but what parameters does OpenManage report on that are particularly useful for VMware sites?
	DELL-ToddM	The stuff that is useful is alerts about hardware failures, or potential failures. So if the temperature is getting too hot, or a disk fails, or a power supply fails, OpenManage will report this, and then action can be taken to avert server downtime or avert VM downtime
	Hywel	Hello, sorry guess I am a little late
	DELL-ToddM	So you can VMotion your VMs to other healthy servers while you remedy the alert that OpenManage sent out. We even did a demo that showed how you could automate this type of VMotion in the event of a potential hardware failure
	dell-marcfarley	Cool, is it still available?
	DELL-ToddM	I'm trying to figure out if we recorded it and where it would be. We used it in the booth at several trade shows. There was scripting involved to make it all work
	dell-marcfarley	I'm sure there was scripting—unlike these chats Lol
	DELL-ScottH	Here's the link to the paper; it's a little dated, but the idea is still solid: www.dell.com/downloads/global/solutions/om-vmware-integration.pdf
	DELL-ToddM	A lot of this functionality is now covered by VMware HA
	DELL-ToddM	I feel a good comment coming from Hywel....
	Hywel	I guess we are chatting about 3i and management, OMSA seems now to be able to do this. We are an Altiris customer to get inventory information, etc. Is there similar progress in this area too? I know Dell is very close to Altiris (now Symantec)
	DELL-ScottH	Here's a more up-to-date paper on the subject from the Dell Virtulization engineering team: www.dell.com/downloads/global/power/ps2q07-20070131-chandrasekaran.pdf
	DELL-ScottH	And here's mine on HA DRS with VMware: www.dell.com/downloads/global/vectors/dell_and_vmware_drs_ha_solutions.pdf
	Hywel	Sorry this is about other topics, but I guess it all comes down to reliability, management, and performance
	DELL-ScottH	Hmmm, "legal guidelines prohibit us from commenting on future products" ... that may be coming soon :-)
	DELL-ToddM	The topic for today is virtualization of enterprise applications, but management is important if you are going to virtualize them. That's how we got here. You are right about reliability and performance also being important. The other issue that comes up a lot is support
	Hywel	We have been VMing a fair number of Microsoft SQL servers recently
	DELL-ToddM	What type of SQL Server? DBs? OLTP? DSs?
	Hywel	Some really good performace improvements
	DELL-ToddM	Performance improvement over previous physical servers?
	DELL-ToddM	I have seen performance improvement with ESX 3 and 3.5 in terms of I/O for SQL servers
	Hywel	Data crunchers to form XML and then passing off to be inserted into a data wherehouse
	Hywel	These were on physical IBM x346 with local disks, and we migrated to PowerEdge1955 on VMware with a SAN backend—about 100 percent improvement in time for the process to complete
	DELL-ToddM	That's an impressive gain! I would guess that a large part of the performance improvement is the SAN. Did you also consolidate?
	Hywel	Yeah, we went from about 50 physical servers to 7 :) Plus another 30 VMs
	DELL-ScottH	Hey, I still hold a little IBM stock; did you have to consolidate that much :-) But I own more Dell stock now!
	dell-marcfarley	I suspect the data was spread more evenly over the disks, avoiding hot spots?
	DELL-ScottH	How many more spindles?
	DELL-ToddM	One of the big stumbling blocks that many run into is the acceptance of application owners of virtualization
	DELL-ToddM	Guys just don't want their stuff virutlaized because they fear that it will hurt their performance. Did you have to overcome any issues like this in your organization?
	dell-marcfarley	My guess is that there were fewer spindles going from 50 servers to seven, but the distribution of the data was probbaly better
	Hywel	Well, this is quite interesting...five physical x345 each with six disks. Changed to three VMFS LUNs with OS, file shares, and DBs, all of which were RAID-5 (as we were short of space); OS on five disks, files shares on nine and DB on 9. We had to move some of the DB onto a RAID-10 later as we got more disks. That improved things even more
	DELL-ToddM	This is Dell/EMC (Clariion)?
	Hywel	Yep, CX3-40c
	dell-marcfarley	It doesn't get much faster than RAID-10
	DELL-ToddM	You are using the Fibre side of the combo? (I know that Marc is a huge iSCSI fan)
	Hywel	Nah, can't wait for SSDs to come
	dell-marcfarley	I won't let that bother me ::biglips
	DELL-ToddM	Hey, you can get them in the XPS notebooks
	DELL-ScottH	You have budget, early adopter?
	Hywel	Just Fibre, in fact I think we made a mistake getting the C not the F
	DELL-ToddM	I thought that they only made the C (combo) now?
	Hywel	We got a CX3-40f for a DB and it flies! Four busses like the CX3-80
	Hywel	I think you were correct earlier when you said, its the SAN that helped; I think we see so many benefits for SAN storage with "normal" systems its hard to put a value to it
	DELL-ToddM	One question that I get a lot is about Microsoft support for these types of solutions. Did you ever have any concerns about support?
	Hywel	Yes, this weekend had a major Exchange outage and the second question Microsoft asked was "Is your Esystem on VMware?" I think they said only best efforts will be made to solve the problem...but it does make you think
	DELL-ToddM	Hey, I thought there was a don't ask/don't tell policy! So, you guys don't have Exchange on VMware today?
	Hywel	Well, I have a small system, in our production environment on VMware, but it's really an SMTP relay. Thinking about our Office system at the moment
	DELL-ToddM	I have tried to find examples of people finding issues with Exchange that were due to VMware, but have not found one yet. Although, I guess that searching with Google and within VMTN is not an exhaustive search
	Hywel	No but another Microsoft support guy suggested they have *lots* of ISA problems due to VMware. I doubt it, to be onest
	DELL-ToddM	::biggrin
	Hywel	I saw the other day that IBM broke some record hosting Exchange on VMware, which is interesting
	DELL-ToddM	I think that performance can be an issue if you try to move too large a workload
	DELL-ToddM	Yes, I saw that post too. Very interesting
	DELL-ScottH	Todd was just talking about that this am, and said he's going to do 16,001!
	DELL-ToddM	We just got a new server in the lab that would be capable of the same user count on a single box
	DELL-ToddM	PowerEdge R900 with 128 GB of RAM: www.delltechcenter.com/page/04%2f14%2f2008+-+screenshot+for+geeks+-+comments
	Dell-MarcF	We need a new section for VMware in the Guinness book
	DELL-ToddM	The methodology that was used to create the Exchange VMs was inline with what I presented at VMworld in September: www.delltechcenter.com/page/exchange+and+vmware
	DELL-ToddM	Using 1000-user VMs to scale up Exchange
	DELL-ToddM	I'm not sure that running 16000 Exchange users on a single server is something that most people will do, but it is a cool number
	DELL-ScottH	16001 is a cooler number
	Hywel	Sorry, back to work not play ;) The only big issue I am seeing with VMware at the moment is the network performance. We struggle to get >250 MB/sec. out of the VMs; do you guys see this?
	DELL-ToddM	I haven't measured the network throughput from VMs during the testing that I have done
	DELL-ScottH	Click on a link, eh?
	DELL-ToddM	Most of the time it has been OLTP or Exchange messaging traffic, which is small. I will see what information I can find and post it to the home page for this chat
	Hywel	Yeah, unfortunately more of our DB maintenance plans still use SQL; backups for the network performace is pretty inportant
	Hywel	Yeah clicked on link :S
	DELL-ToddM	Have you looked into a VCB-type of a backup solution?
	Hywel	Yeah, I am using VBC with vRanger, but...
	DELL-ToddM	I know this is an issue with DB, as the database has to be stopped or paused or something to ensure consistency
	Hywel	There isn't any guessing as we have had problems with the lgtodriver and had to disable it. I wish they could synch with VSS and VCB; that would be really cool
	DELL-ToddM	I believe that VMware (and some others) are working on that
	Hywel	I think all in all that VMware, whether it be with SQL or whatever, really has so many more positives than negatives—even the sceptical at work are won over with it
	DELL-ToddM	I agree that the gains in flexibility of managment (and general cool stuff you can do with VMotion) make it pretty compelling
	Hywel	Yeah, one thing not sure that you guys have come across; we were pretty low on memory, about 70 percent usage across the HA cluster; when we were upgrading from 16 GB per server to 32 GB and put servers into maintenance we struggled with some SQL servers. As VMotion migrated some machines it doesn't seem to be as good judging memory as CPU, hence some servers got close to their physcial limit. It was my understanding that they would start using the VSWP files on the VMFS volume but SQL seemed to struggle with this and two hung :(
	Hywel	I thought the VSWP file would be used in a situation where there was low physical RAM but SQL failed to use this
	DELL-ToddM	I did see some performance issues with some Exchange 2007 VMs and SQL Server 2005 VMs when I oversubscribed the RAM and then did VMotion. The peformance would be okay until after the VMotion, and then the VMs would struggle in terms of performance. But I didn't actually hang them up. They were struggling becuase they were using the VSWP files and performance suffered as a result
	Hywel	In fact it was even worse than just hanging because VMNware then tried to VMotion them to another server and failed half way through and then had to wait for a time out
	DELL-ToddM	So the lesson learned was to keep extra capacity for things like this?
	Hywel	Yes deffo
	DELL-ToddM	Not the best answer, but you did consolidate down to a much smaller number of servers
	Hywel	But this is one thing DRS doesn't do well is try and balance RAM as well as a CPU
	DELL-ToddM	Good point
	Hywel	Well, we consolidated then lots more were added...VM sprawl!
	DELL-ToddM	Well, that's one of the things that happens ::biggrin
	Hywel	Yeah
	DELL-ToddM	Management of VMs includes a different set of things than physical servers
	Hywel	I am really glad i came across this site—a real good resource. The hardest thing I find with work is quickly finding the things that are important for a given task and not having to read whole manuals to locate something written in "code"; with the correct input I think it could really help users of Dell equipment
	DELL-ToddM	Thanks for the comments. Well, we are way over our time. Should probably wrap it up
	DELL-ScottH	I'm with you on that; welcome aboard and we welcome all your contributions to the site
	Hywel	Especially after moving from IBM servers it was hard to userstand what software could do and how to do it
	DELL-ToddM	You're a decoder ring guy
	DELL-ScottH	Did you use our secert decoder ring?
	Hywel	Nope?
	DELL-ScottH	www.delltechcenter.com/page/04%2f03%2f2008+-+secret+decoder+ring
	Hywel	Did i stumble across some CIA trap ;)
	DELL-ToddM	Hey, Scott. What is next week's topic?
	Hywel	Ah, I saw the logo but didn't read the writing ;)
	DELL-ScottH	Quick tip: if you right-click the links, you won't get kicked out :-)
	DELL-ScottH	Next week's topic is "OpenManage – Power Monitoring"
	DELL-ToddM	Hywel, thanks for the excellent discussion
	DELL-ScottH	Ues, thanks
	DELL-ToddM	You can contact us anytime through the Dell TechCenter discussion forums
	Hywel	Ah, cool topic. One tip, can you please send an international time–friendly invite? :) What is CST anyway?
	Hywel	I have seen our PowerEdge R900 power reading that is cool
	DELL-ScottH	Central Standard Time U.S. (-600) I believe
	Hywel	Now all we need it a rack layout with IT Assistant and the servers in it, and hey presto ;)
	DELL-ToddM	We have a link to a calendar invite that I think is Time Zone aware on the chat page: www.delltechcenter.com/page/chat+topics+and+transcripts
	DELL-ScottH	Yes, I've been asking for that. What I do here is to create groups called Rack 1, Rack 2, etc. and place the servers in those groups
	DELL-ToddM	I've gotta run to another meeting, but really appreciate the conversation. I hope to see you next week
	Hywel	Yes, we have a limit of 2 kW per rack; this is what we need. yes i'll try to be there thanks.