Akorri Blog Authors
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By Rich CorleyCIO Perspectives
By John GavinMarket & Industry Watch
By Lisa CreweIT Perspectives
By Rob Strechay
Top Server Pain Points
By Lisa Crewe
Bob Gill, Managing Director for Server Research with the InfoPro presented the key findings from their brand new Wave7 research on a webinar this week. All the research I’ve seen lately continues to point to the need for virtual infrastructure management solutions. The InfoPro’s research shows the top 5 server pain points are server sprawl, environmental (heat and power), manageability, and virtualization complexity.
To hear all the findings, watch an on demand replay of this webinar, Reducing Virtualization Complexity: Management strategies to help you cope.
Is your cluster N+2, N+1, or N+0 from a capacity perspective?
By Rob Strechay
Most of you know how vMotion and DRS work and ensure you do not “shoot yourself in the foot” by exceeding thresholds for too long. You also know this is not load balancing.
If one physical host goes down and sheds its VMs successfully to the rest of the cluster, is everybody going to play nicely? Take this very simple example.
You have 100 VMs on five hosts. One host goes down and 20 servers vMotion to the remaining servers. Each physical is handling about the same workload, only if the five servers it receives were loaded the same. Otherwise, it could be an exponential workload increase.
If all the VMs’ workloads were not created equal, expect more VM transfers and some amount of pin-wheeling and rotation of the VMs around the remaining member hosts.
Some vendors offer a “capacity planning” option for their software that makes getting all the data about your data-stores and storage in general an exercise in excel. How does this type of planning make you or your guys more efficient? The most important planning key is to get the right data in the right hands at the right time. Is the right thing graphing 74 servers in one graph or telling that a spike in memory, cpu or IO is an issue?
Another thing I’ve learned through working with a lot of virtualization administrators is that reports, such as BalancePoint’s Performance Index report, get IT folks out of counting “c drives” and into fixing problems, avoiding application slow downs, and lowering their costs by getting the most out of the physical and human assets.
Total System Workload/Capacity Modeling
How can you get a handle on how much cluster capacity you have if you can’t get the right data at the right time in the right hands? You would think simple questions like “is our cluster N+1″ should really just pop out of a tool. They don’t. All VMs are not created equal. Workloads vary per VM and sometimes within VMs based on times of day. This is tough math and not a straight line equation. It is not simply drawing pretty graphs. Remember – garbage in…garbage out.
The whole idea around Performance Indicators is to turn data into information. For example, if I have a Performance Index of 90 across my cluster of 200 guests:10 ESX servers, I am not N+1. Ultimately, there will be an impact on response time of my applications if I have a hardware failure or even if you use vMotion to do maintenance.
Easily Manage Your Virtual Resources
By Lisa Crewe
Those of you struggling with infrastructure performance issues and fingerpointing may be interested to read this case study published in Processor Magazine. Kevin Brown, Infrastructure Manager as Service Corporation International talks about his experiences managing a virtual infrastructure. Here’s an excerpt.
There’s always a problem with others taking responsibility for an application’s and/or system’s performance. The two quick responses when individuals are asked about poor performance of the resources are: “It’s the network” or, “My stuff is working fine.”
Read the full article in Processor Magazine.
Akorri News Releases- E-Safe Technologies Joins Akorri’s PartnerPoint Program as an Authorized Reseller March 10, 2010
- Suburban Propane Optimizes Virtual Machine Performance, Saves On Hardware Costs Using Akorri BalancePoint March 10, 2010
- Bill Simpson, Vice President of Worldwide Sales for Akorri, Recognized as a 2010 Channel Chief by Everything Channel’s CRN March 10, 2010
- Akorri Wins the Gold in the 2009 Storage magazine/SearchStorage.com Storage Management Tool Product of the Year Award March 10, 2010
- Akorri BalancePoint Selected for International Computerware, Inc.’s vCube Offering March 10, 2010
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