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Next Step for Virtualization –Pre Production Testing
Dennis Powell
StackSafe, Inc.
Agenda
• Virtualization, The Second Generation
• Pre-production testing and virtualization
– The impact of downtime
– Calming the Perfect Storm
– Challenges
• Summary
VirtualizationThe Second Generation
Virtualization
Red Hot Technology
• Traditional drivers:
– Consolidation cost savings
– Simplified QA testing
• Innovation drives the second generation
– Green computing
– Business continuity
– Service-oriented virtualization
– Data center automation
– Pre-production infrastructure testing
ServiceTransition
Virtualized Pre-production Testing
and Service Transition
• Change Management
• Validation Management
• Release Management
• Deployment Management
• Evaluation Management
Cope with higher volumes of
change without impacting
service quality
Pre-Production Testing
The Impact of Downtime
IT Operations and Service Transition:
The Perfect Storm
• Extreme availability demands
• Highly complex environments
• Inter-dependencies
• High volume of changes
Downtime
A Leading Critical Concern
• The highest concern by all sized companies in managing multi-tier applications
Security (32%)
Troubleshooting (32%)
Insuring High Performance (34%)
Speedy Deployment of Changes (38%)
Minimizing Downtime (38%)
Medium Enterprise
(5000-9999) employees)
Complexity (36%)
Security (36%)
Troubleshooting (38%)
Insuring High Performance (48%)
Minimizing Downtime (51%)
Large Enterprise
(10,000 + employees)
Small Enterprise
(750-4999 employees)
Insuring High Performance (35%)
5
Complexity (37%)4
Security (39%)3
Troubleshooting (45%)2
Minimizing Downtime (48%)
1
Concern
Rank
Statistical source: “IT operations Buyer Behavior Study”, June 2007. Research Edge
Inadequate Testing
A Leading Cause of Downtime
• Companies consider insufficient pre-production testing a key reason for downstream production problems
• Particularly considered a problem for companies:
– with high change volumes
– that consider e-commerce a top priority application (32%)
– that operate in the financial services sector (25%)
Software Changes, IT Resources,
and Downtime
• 65% of companies see patches, software changes, or OS updates as the most significant cause of downtime*
• Impact on resources
– Average business loses more than 2,000 IT staff hours annually due
to downtime*
* “IT operations Buyer Behavior Study”, June 2007. Research Edge
IT HOURS REQUIRED DUE TO UNPLANNED DOWNTIME BY COMPANY SIZE
1,441
2,079
3,184
0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
3,000
3,500
IT S
taff
Ho
urs
)Small Enterprise (750-4,999 Medium Enterprise (5,000-9,999) Large Enterprise (10,000+)
2,115 hrs = Average #
of IT Staff Hours Due to
DowntimeAll Firms
Pre-Production
Testing
and VirtualizationCalming the Perfect Storm
Improving Testing Maturity During
Service Transition
• Adopt best practices for smoother process
• Set customer expectations
– Regularly schedule changes
• Establish a consistent evaluation framework
– Maintain a staging environment for IT operation testing
• Reduce predicted vs. actual performance variation
– Invest in automated change management
• Thoroughly test to reduce known errors and risk
– Test changes across the stack before deploying to production
Benefits of Improved Testing Maturity
• 30% less downtime incidents on an annual basis
• Reduction of change impacts to production
– 22% lower problem rate
– 33% lower rollback rate
– 21% lower delay rate
• 17% reduction in IT hours spent per test
• Smoother change/release management process
Statistical source: “IT operations Buyer Behavior Study”, June 2007. Research Edge
Virtualization Helps IT Maintain
Consistent Change Schedules
Rapid test platform build/update reduces change schedule
dependency on the ‘right’ test platform
Regularly scheduled changes generate business benefits
across all change management maturity factor categories:
• 6% fewer production problems caused by changes• 5% reduction in IT staff devoted to change management • 7% reduction in emergency changes• 4% have greater confidence that changes will work properly• 33% describe smoother change management process
Eliminates ad-hoc reactivity, sets customer expectations
Virtualization Facilitates Automated
Change Management Process
Automated provisioning (test images, DR…) quickly
delivers representative systems for change management
Automated change management improves business
benefits in four of five categories:
• 7% fewer production problems caused by changes• 4% reduction in IT staff devoted to change management• 6% greater confidence that changes will work properly• 33% described smoother change management process
Reduces variance between predicted and actual performance
Virtualized Environments are Easily
Maintained for Change Testing
Less time and effort needed to build, copy, replace, and delete staged images
Companies that manage a testing environment gain
business benefits in three of five categories:
• 9% reduction in emergency changes• 12% have greater confidence that changes will work properly• 12% describe smoother change management process
Establishes consistent framework from which to evaluate change
Virtualized Environments Support
Completeness of Change Testing
End-to-end testing across multi-tiered infrastructure
stacks, hybrid imports, virtual and physical networks
Companies that test changes on the entire infrastructure
stack gain greater business benefits in two categories:
• 4% fewer production problems caused by changes• 40% describe smoother change management process
Reduce known errors and risk in the reality of today’s Data Center
Virtualization Supports Process
Adoption of Choice
Customers deploying virtualization can select change
and release guidelines of choice without limitation
Companies that adopt ITIL or another process gain
business benefits in two categories:
• 4% have greater confidence that changes will work properly• 30% describe smoother change/release management process
Smoother processing increases confidence and buy-in
Business Benefits of Virtualized
Pre-production Testing
Less Mature More Mature
Change Testing Environment
None Staging Platform
Process Adoption
None ITIL or Other
Change Scheduling
Ad Hoc Regular Intervals
Change Management Process
Manual Automated
• Fewer Production Problems
• Lower Percent of IT Staff Devoted to Change
• Fewer Emergency Changes
• Greater Confidence in Changes
• Smooth Change Management Process
Change Management
Maturity Factors Business Benefits
Completeness of Change Testing
No test or partial test Test Against Entire Stack
Pre-Production
Testing
and VirtualizationChallenges and Summary
Virtual Testing Limitations
• The virtual environment
– Avoid mixed hypervisor environments
– x86 OS support
– Verify physical license restrictions
– Lack of fine-grained security control
Virtual Testing Limitations
• The virtual environment
– Network devices don’t import
– Each virtual processor “believes” that it has 100% of its physical processor resources
• Don’t oversubscribe physical processors
– ISO isn’t for shops with high disk utilization
• Verify free space before copying files
Virtual Testing Limitations
• Testing the enterprise
– Network administration needed to connect to non-virtualized components
– Imported test tools take up disk space
– Virtual production increases testing complexity
Summary
• IT operations’ perfect storm impacts change testing, leads to downtime
• Change maturity within Service Transition limits impacts/downtime
• Virtualization builds change maturity for IT operation pre-production testing
– Establishes formal staging and testing platform
– Quickly builds, updates staging and testing platform
– Minimizes dependency on ‘right’ test platform availability
– Helps test changes across E2E infrastructure stack
– Helps IT operations test much higher percentage of changes
– Nurtures the adoption of best practice guidelines
Follow up
• Questions: Dennis Powell, Sr. Product Manager, StackSafe, Inc.
– dpowell@stacksafe.com
– 301-992-2989
Thank you!
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