Thoughts on Virtual Infrastructure Management

IT Perspectives
By Rob Strechay

Moving Deck Chairs on the Titanic? Ionix Changes Hands … Partially

By Rob Strechay

In a very interesting move and one that makes perfect sense to me, EMC has sold assets (software, development and sales) to VMware.  I think this is an extremely shrewd move by both companies.  But what does this mean to the customers?  Chad’s Virtual Geek blog has a great break down of what went from EMC to VMware and why. 

My thoughts are this.  The Ionix deal went a long way to ensuring that EMC and VMware will not overlap or compete in the management arena as VMware transitions from a hypervisor company to a virtual server and application management company.

What I find very interesting is that this now disconnects the server and storage domains.  If you know Akorri , we’re all about servers and storage, or what we call cross-domain.  Now I am sure there will be overlap within the EMC and VMware portfolios in the future (probably on purpose).  Perhaps one will  leave off or even hand off to the other’s management software.  So does this mean you will need a multi-vendor solution for cloud and virtualization infrastructure management?  I argue yes.

What’s the likely overlap?  I’m thinking SMARTS ADM / APPSPEED and the rest of the SMARTS family.  Almost instantly APPSPEED becomes a formidable APM management platform.  No longer just being J2EE application mapping and performance.  Now it can start to competing with the likes of HP BAC, Dynatrace, AppDynamics,  Bluestripe, Solarwinds, and many more.

As Chad states in his blog on the subject, cross licensing and integration among the software vendors has happened for many years – especially the cross-licensing / OEM’ing of SMARTS by Cisco and others to improve their correlation and event management.

So what does this mean to the customers?  I really don’t think it changes too much in the way the products operate today.  In the future will they become more VMWare specific?  Doubtful.  In fact this could be very positive for the development of the software.  Moving from inside a hardware-come-software-company-lately to a pure software company may bring life and future development focus to the products. 

At the end of the day the winner seems to be VMware in this.  I think for EMC it is a push given the development money spent over the years, the rebranding, and the acquisition costs.  Customers may win too – but we will have to see.

I don’t think it’s necessarily “moving deck chairs on the titanic” but I do think that it draws a line in the sand for the companies and reveals where they are not going to compete.

March 4, 2010 | Filed Under Industry News & Opinion | Leave a Comment 

From Virtualization to Cloud Computing: Are You Ready?

By Rob Strechay

If you’re thinking about deploying an internal cloud for your organization then you might find this article interesting. The article explains the three stages of virtualization from Akorri’s perspective based on our work with customers including the evolution and steps to take to assure performance and manage service levels.  This is good stuff to use when you are going between the reality of deploying virtualization and the hype of cloud.  It may give you a few good ideas on line items for your resume too … as you are now a “Cloud Architect” … check it out.

 
Optimize While You Virtualize to Get to the Cloud
— Virtualization is the key technology for the cloud. Its ability to separate the OS and application from the hardware enable it to best deliver on-demand cloud services. Charles King, Principal Analyst at Pund-IT, said it best: “Without virtualization there is no cloud – that’s what enabled the emergence of this new, sustainable industry.” But, how can IT organizations leverage virtualization to create their own private cloud?

February 16, 2010 | Filed Under Industry News & Opinion, Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment 

What does VMware know about storage?

By Rob Strechay

The answer is probably about as much as you do!  Why do I say that?

As we all know, they are owned by EMC and the two are close.  But much like the cobblers children not having shoes, VMware doesn’t seem to have  integrated EMC’s storage expertise yet.  My case in point is how you have to go through and configure different alerts for the different types of VMDKs.  This seems a little tedious, non-descriptive, and almost useless.

95% full for the first alarm when you are running out of space?  Doesn’t that seem a little high?  What seems to be a learned attribute between the two companies are tons of alerts … many, many alerts.

I thought the reason EMC bought SMARTS was to really bring alerts out of ECC under control?  Alerts without context make little or no sense.  Don’t you want to know “who” is filling up the datastore?  Is this normal?  How long do I have before I run out of space?  Did the Storage vmotion case the alert?

I am sure they will add some of this in the coming releases of vSphere.  But how will they keep all of these alerts from just becoming background noise?

Having been on the other side of the fence, it seems to me that VMware is stealing a page from Cisco and others, keep the technology mystical and complex as a barrier to competition.  Now, will Microsoft seize on this and make things simpler to manage?  Time will tell.

Bottom line is that third-party management solutions, specifically those that function as IT referees, will be in high demand for a long time to come based on the way the market is maturing.

February 8, 2010 | Filed Under Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment 

Server Tiering? What the heck is that!

By Rob Strechay

With it being the new year I figured I would try to impart something new.  Or maybe instead share something from the “everything that is old is new again” file.  I have found a renewed interest in storage tiering among our customers.  This is not too surprising with the folks at EMC rolling out FAST and the continued success of these in the array tiering of companies such as Compellent, HDS, and NetApp. 

This is not “repacked Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)” but instead organizations are trying to figure out how many IOPS applications are really doing, what needs Solid-State-Disk (SSD), what will be just fine on Serial ATA (SATA), and then go with Fibre Channel for the rest.  Within those tiers they are also mixing RAID types; such as RAID-5, RAID-DP and RAID-6 for bulk, RAID-10 for higher throughput read, and exploring thin-pooling / thin-provisioning to conserve more expensive disks.  But what the heck does this have to do with servers?

I am seeing more customers looking to do the same on the server side and wondering where to start.  For the most part, 90% of the organizations I talk to allow uncapped access of servers to resources.  And still far too many organizations are doing in-place virtual server provisioning.  What is in-place virtual server provisioning you might ask?  It is the craziness of taking a physical server that you are going to virtualize and provisioning in the virtual world the same number of cores and memory the server had in the physical world.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. 

Weren’t you the guy who pushed back when they ordered that server without you knowing for the project?  I can hear you now saying “just because the vendor said it needs that much doesn’t mean it can really use it”.  Guess what?  You were probably right.  Why not take this opportunity to fix that problem?

This takes qualitative numbers … aka facts!  Being able to say “Mr. app owner, you have not used more than 25% of the four cores you currently own,” and “when we virtualize we will give you double your current usage,” meaning two vcpu’s worth.  Take a deep breathe … now doesn’t that feel good?

Already down the virtual-first path you say?  Well here is a perfect opportunity to go back and prove that you can get better than 10 VMs per one host.  Here is a perfect time to go and beat the industry average.  Again this is average and not all applications are the same.  So, gather the quantitative data first then make your adjustments.  And get management buy in first and I discussed in my last blog.

Once you know what the apps really use then you can tier them.  I would suggest using resources pools within VMware.  Maybe you have been using them as folders for certain types of applications.  Most people are not using them for anything more than organization.  Here are the rules of thumb I would suggest:

  1. Gather quantifiable data on CPU, Memory, and IO
  2. Keep your tiers simple – no more than three types / tiers
  3. Create specific resource pools for high-end mission critical, “I-lose-my-job-if-there-is-an-issue” applications that have minimum service levels
  4. Create a resource pool for everyone-else (the middle-class) and maybe set no upper or lower reserves or caps
  5. Now create ones for those servers that are allowed to be “slow” and put caps on them
  6. Measure your success (see #1 and compare) – you should be able to provide service levels to keep even the most vocal critic happy

As always, please share ways you have been able to bring service levels into you virtual environment.  Also, let me know how you define server tiers in your organization.

January 11, 2010 | Filed Under Virtual infrastructure management | Leave a Comment 

Why aren’t you successful consolidating?

By Rob Strechay

It being the first week of January, I thought it was time for some reflection on the past year.  I have been hearing many IT folks say, “We need to reduce storage and/or server costs”.  Interestingly, I was at a VMUG  meeting discussing this with some of the attendees when I asked, “Why are you not virtualizing more then”?  I got two answers.

1. FLAT budgets are making it difficult to purchase tools that provide the needed visibility into the infrastructure and reduce the risk of virtualizing production applications. 
2. FLAT head count is making everyone work longer hours and take on less new projects.

Server consolidation, especially in environmentally and space strapped locations, is back in vogue after a little reprieve.  Then why are most companies still getting what I feel, based on the ratios our customers are able to drive, are extremely conservative consolidation ratios (10 to 1)?  It’s not because they don’t want to consolidate more.  Many factors seem to be getting in the way in addition to the money and people constraints.

1. POLITICS:  This is not a swipe at the President or Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).  It’s actually company politics that seem to be the #1 inhibitor.  When I was in IT, I didn’t want to get involved in a project without knowing that it clearly mapped to the executive committee goals  and objectives.  In other words, if the project didn’t have CXO support it would limp along. 

2. TIME:  This comes down to how much planning it takes to change the engine on a plane while you are flying .  We used to create three to five year plans in IT.  It was easier to dictate where funds would be spent based on the IT roadmap.  The last year has turned most three year plans into three month plans if you are lucky.  Most of the people I talk to are seeing server to admin ratios grow from 100-1 to 300-1.  It used to take three weeks to get a server installed, up, and ready for deployment. Now, with virtualization, it is taking 30 mins.

3. Process – or the lack of it:   I remember that “ analysis paralysis ” could be the case when I was in the last big IT shop.  But I think that process is really taking a major back seat.  This is hurting IT organizations when it comes to justifying purchases, especially those meant to help with some of the soft costs.  You know,  those costs that equal you vpn’ing in on your weekend or worse from your vacation.  I think the lack of process is leading to an easy way to have little or no accountability by IT management.

4. Tools maturity: Tools have been slow in catching up to the change in how to manage old processes for the physical world.  Two things need to happen. First,  we as an industry need to mature and realize there is still not one vendor or tool that can solve all our issues.  Second, we need to use the hierarchies such as FACS or ITIL frameworks to lead us in enabling our management.  One example is understanding that you WILL have multiple event/fault management systems (VMware vCenter , MS SCOM, NetIQ,  EMC Ionix) which will need to be augmented with tools from independent third-party vendors.

Obtaining higher consolidation ratios is going to take some effort, so my recommendation is to establish a management hierarchy first. Then figure out how to minimize the number of tools you need to enable your processes; like ITIL.  Establish a gap analysis of your current tool sets and determine what type(s) of tools you are looking for.  This will be critical to get CIO / VP / Director buy in as budgets return.  Also, tools that do not take a full time employee will help as well. Let me know if you’re seeing the same inhibitors in your organization and whether you think this approach would work.  I’d love to get your feedback.

January 5, 2010 | Filed Under Virtual infrastructure management | 1 Comment 

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