e-guide: vmware vsphere tips for smbs

VMware vSphere Tips for SMBs

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VMware vSphere 4 best practices: A review of what's new for storage administrators

10 ways to improve data protection in VMware environments

This searchsmbstorage.com eguide gives a comprehensive review of vSphere as it looks at some of the features in vSphere that are most important to data storage managers as well as best practices for vSphere. This eguide also offers a list of the most common and affordable shared storage options for small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) from different vendors.

VMware vSphere 4 best practices: A review of what's new for storage administrators By: Eric Siebert

vSphere 4 is VMware's latest bare-metal hypervisor that is the successor to

Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3) and includes more than 140 new features.

vSphere competes with several other hypervisors including Microsoft's

Hyper-V, Citrix's XenServer and Oracle's Oracle VM. This review of vSphere

looks at some of the features in vSphere that are most important to data

storage managers as well as best practices for vSphere.

vSphere 4 and different storage types

Data storage is critical to virtualization, and vSphere supports several

different data storage types including local storage using SCSI, SAS or SATA

drives; network-based storage using iSCSI or NFS; and more expensive

Fibre Channel (FC) data storage. To take advantage of many of vSphere's

advanced features like VMotion and high-availability (HA), you should use a

shared storage device. Fortunately iSCSI and NFS are both supported and

provide affordable solutions that perform well enough as alternatives to Fibre

Channel for all but the most intensive disk I/O workloads. vSphere has a

software iSCSI initiator and NFS client built right into it so connecting to

iSCSI or NFS storage targets is simple to set up. Also, vSphere supports

using hardware iSCSI initiators with TCP/IP offload engines to reduce the

CPU overhead on the host.

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In addition, vSphere uses a special high-performance cluster file system

called Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) that allows concurrent access by

multiple host servers. VMFS volumes take away the backend storage

complexities from the virtual machines (VMs) by presenting a single unified

storage volume to them. One of vSphere's best storage features is thin

provisioning, which makes more efficient use of disk space by growing a

virtual disk and blocks are written to it instead of allocating it all at once when

it is created. This allows you to overcommit your storage and take advantage

of the often un-used disk space inside a guest VM's operating system. Some

additional storage-related features of vSphere include the following:

• Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) support

• Jumbo frame support for iSCSI and NFS

• Ability to hot extend virtual disks

• Ability to grow VMFS volumes

• Storage paravirtualization

• VMDirectPath for VM direct I/O access

• vStorage APIs

• vSphere 4 and networking

The vSwitch is the heat of a virtual nework, and vSphere has several options

you can use based on your requirements. The simple standard vSwitch is

easy to use, and provides fault tolerance and load-balancing across NICs.

For larger environments that have many hosts and vSwitches, the vNetwork

Distributed Switch lets you create global vSwitches to configure multiple

hosts instead of configuring each host sepearately. vSphere can also support

third-party vSwitches. Cisco's Nexus 1000v is the first virtual switch with

vSphere support. This allows for tighter integration between the physical and

virtual networks. All vSwitches in vSphere support advanced features such

as VLAN tagging, NIC teaming and layer two security policies. Some

additional network-related features of vSphere include:

Virtualization is all about putting all your eggs in one basket, so maintaining

high-availability is critical. If a single host fails, then all the VMs running on it

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will also fail, but vSphere includes features that can minimize or eliminate the

amount of time that VMs are down due to a host failure. vSphere's high-

availability feature allows VMs on shared storage to quickly be re-started on

other hosts in the event that a host fails, minimizing downtime for the VMs.

The fault tolerance (FT) feature takes this a step further and offers

continuous availability by keeping a secondary VM on another host that is

continuously updated in real-time using a Lockstep technique. This

completely protects a virtual machine against a host hardware failure and

results in zero downtime and data loss for the VM. While these features

protect against unschuled hardware failures, there are also features that

make planned maintenance easier. VMotion allows a running VM to move

from one host to another on the same storage volume and Storage VMotion

allows a running VM to move from one storage volume to another on the

same host. These features let you perform maintenance on host hardware or

storage devices without downtime.

vSphere 4 management

vSphere 4 also has tools for managing the virtual environment. The vSphere

Client is a Windows application that serves as the primary management tool

for vSphere. There is also a web user interface for managing virtual

machines on ESX hosts (not ESXi) and command line management tools

such as the vSphere CLI (vCLI) and the VMware Management Assistant

(vMA). vCenter Server provides centralized management of hosts using the

vSphere Client, and has features such as alarms, performance reporting,

automation, and templates. Features such as high-availability, distributed

resource scheduler (DRS) and VMotion require a vCenter Server. Multiple

vCenter Servers can run in linked mode to provide centralized management

of multiple virtual environments.

Ease of use

The vSphere hypervisor comes in two editions, ESX and ESXi. ESX has a

larger footprint (1.7 GB) and a more complex Service Console that runs a full

Linux OS. ESXi has a simpler management console, and smaller footprint

(70 MB). As a result, ESXi can be installed in a few minutes and with almost

no interaction. VMware also has a free service called VMware GO that helps

users who are new to virtualization get up and running quickly. VMware's

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free Converter product and vCenter Server's Guide Consolidation feature

also simplify virtualization by converting a physical server into virtual

machines.

Security

vSphere is a controlled and secure environment, and the hypervisor has

never been compromised. vSphere's security is due in part to a set of

security APIs called VMsafe that allows third-party applications to have tight

integration for providing even better security controls. vSphere also includes

a product called vShield Zones that provides a virtual firewall and IDS that

can be used to provide better protection for virtual machines.

Data backup and data protection

vSphere has several data backup and recovery features that come with it.

For example, virtual machine snapshots can be used to roll back to a

previous virtual machine state. This feature is useful when patching guests or

installing applications, so you can easily recover from any problems that may

result. vSphere also includes a product called VMware Data Recovery (VDR)

that can perform backups of virtual machines to any disk storage device

using inline deduplication and compression. In addition, the vSphere APIs for

data protection allow third-party backup applications to have tight integration

for backing up and replicating virtual machines.

Scalability

vSphere hosts and virtual machines scale well enough to allow almost any

application or workload to be virtualized. With support for 1 TB of physical

memory and 64 logical CPUs, vSphere hosts can support up to 256 running

VMs per host. Plus, virtual machines can be assigned up to eight vCPUs and

255 GB of RAM to support even the most demanding applications. Using

advanced memory techniques like transparent page sharing (TPS) and

memory overcommitment, vSphere can allow more virtual machines to run

with less physical resources.

Cost savings

Virtualization can help save money on power and cooling, but vSphere takes

it even further with advanced features like Distributed Power Management

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(DPM) and Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS). DPM allows

hosts to be automatically powered down and virtual machines migrated to

other hosts during periods of low activity. When the resource demands

increase, hosts are powered back on and VMs move back onto the hosts.

DVFS allows host CPUs to dynamically change power states (p-states) when

resource demands are low to reduce a host's energy consumption. CPU

frequency and voltages are lowered and raised based on demand from

virtual machines. When these two features are combined, it can help save

money, especially in environments with regular extended periods of inactivity.

Extensibility

vSphere has many APIs and SDKs that developers can use to write

applications for vSphere. There are also scripting languages available such

as Javascript, Perl and PowerShell to automate tasks and help manage the

virtual environment. This allows for many free tools and scripts to be

developed that can be used in place of more expensive add-on software.

10 ways to improve data protection in VMware environments By: Lauren Whitehouse

With backup vendors revising their offerings to take advantage of VMware

vSphere 4's new features, an upgrade to vSphere in 2010 could protect your

organization's data storage.

Because a virtual machine (VM) is an encapsulation of an operating

system, applications and data, protecting a production virtual disk is vital. IT

organizations face several challenges when it comes to protecting their

virtual machine disk image (VMDK) files. Finite shared physical resources on

the host system and in-guest I/O-intensive backup processes have the

potential to bring VM performance to a crawl. The increase in the amount of

data in VMware environments can impact the backup window.

VMware Inc.'s release of vSphere 4 in the first half of 2009 introduced

several data protection enhancements over VMware Infrastructure 3-era

tools. And now that backup vendors have had several months to revise their

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offerings to take advantage of its new features, an upgrade to vSphere in

2010 could greatly improve your organization's data protection.

Here are 10 backup-related reasons why you should consider a vSphere

upgrade in 2010:

1) VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection. VMware introduced

VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) command line utilities in ESX 3.0 to

simplify data protection by offloading backup from ESX Servers to one or

more centralized proxy servers. It allows a live system image to be captured

without disrupting the VM-resident applications or overwhelming the host's

CPU. With VCB, backups occur off-host so there's no "backup window" to

contend with. This method also removes the need for an agent in every

virtual machine and provides VM-level recovery. But it requires either a two-

step backup or recovery to perform a file-level recovery. In vSphere, VMware

completely rearchitected the facilitation of backup. Instead of acquiring VCB

and implementing it with your backup application, your backup vendor now

leverages vStorage APIs (virtual machine file system, or VMFS, drivers) to

access data on VMFS volumes. This integration makes for a much better

backup implementation.

2) VMware Data Recovery (VDR). For those who prefer to use a native

backup tool, VDR is an agentless, disk-based (local or Fibre Channel, iSCSI

or network-attached storage shared disk) backup solution that employs

snapshots and data deduplication. Running in a virtual machine as a Linux

virtual appliance, VDR backup and recovery tasks are launched through

VMware vCenter Server. Because VDR takes advantage of the vStorage

APIs for Data Protection, a VM-level backup is performed that enables fast

backup and recovery. Granular (file-level) recovery is possible from the VM-

level backup. Using block-level data dedupe, it keeps required disk space to

a minimum. VDR is included with vSphere Enterprise Plus, Advanced and

Essentials Plus editions.

3) Granular recovery. File-level recovery is now possible from a VM-level

backup without a two-step process. This allows organizations to perform an

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image-level backup (with no impact on the CPU of the host system) and to

later do either a bare-metal-like or individual file recovery.

4) Changed block tracking (CBT). In the past, copying VMDKs for backup

purposes meant moving large files around your LAN, WAN and/or SAN. The

effect? An increase in network traffic and backup time. VMware introduced

CBT in vSphere 4 to markedly improve performance. CBT allows the

VMkernel to track changed blocks of a virtual machine's virtual disk. Backup

applications using vStorage APIs can immediately identify the blocks that

have changed since the last backup and copy only those blocks -- cutting

down the time it takes to capture and transfer data, as well as reducing traffic

on the network.

5) No physical proxy server required. Previously, a physical machine was

required for the VCB backup proxy server. But organizations can now reduce

their infrastructure commitment because the proxy system that mounts the

LUNs can be a virtual machine.

6) vCenter Server plug-ins. Monitoring and management improvements are

gained via vCenter Server integration. Backup vendors offering vCenter

Server plug-ins can provide views of a virtual machine's backup status,

including success/failure, method of backup and schedule. Some even

automate the process of assigning backup policies to new VMs as they come

online, eliminating protection gaps.

7) Direct backup from shared storage. When the backup data path

includes a proxy system, it can create network bottlenecks and inefficiency.

Now, a direct-to-target architecture is employed, allowing backup data to go

from the ESX host to the storage target. Leveraging the vStorage APIs,

virtual disk data is read directly from the SAN storage device.

8) iSCSI enhancements. Organizations using software iSCSI initiators to

implement shared storage in virtual server environments could see

performance improvements with vSphere. More disk I/O throughput and

reductions in CPU overhead benefit I/O-intensive backup processes.

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9) Thin provisioning. VMware made some improvements in vSphere for

thin provisioning: the ability to overcommit disk space. Not only is it easier to

create, maintain and monitor "thin" disks, but using them could help improve

backup performance, as well as the capacity of space used on host's data

stores. Here's why: When a VM is created, storage is allocated. Virtual

machines typically don't use all of the storage space assigned, so the VMDK

file could be unnecessarily larger. Backup applications are able to recognize

"empty" file system space to avoid backing them up, but the process takes

up valuable time. Thin provisioning results in smaller VMDK files and faster

backups.

10) Data deduplication. Data deduplication is not a feature of vSphere

unless you use VDR for backup. Therefore, it's likely that you will look to your

backup application provider for this feature. Since taking advantage of

vSphere features, such as CBT, vStorage APIs for Data Protection and

vCenter Plug-ins, requires you to also upgrade your backup application,

you'll likely gain dedupe features in the upgraded backup application. Given

the tendency for duplicate data in backup processes, eliminating duplicates --

at the "source" VM or the proxy server -- will reduce the amount of data

transferred and stored, and improve performance.

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