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Virtualization Terminology and Concepts

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Agenda

Virtualization Overview vSphere / Virtualization Concepts

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Virtualization Overview

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Virtualization Overview – Resource Optimization

Physical World Virtual World

Many:1 relationship between applications and hardware

Densities are increased improving resource optimization without sacrificing performance

1:1 relationship between applications and hardware

No resource optimization

1:1

1:1

1:1Many:1

1:1

1:1

1:1

VM density matters!

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Virtualization Overview – Advantages to Virtualization

CPU Optimization / Scheduling

VMware can account for CPU and I/O needs of virtual machines by dynamically allocating more resources and larger

processor timeslices to VMs. Based on this technology, a single vCPU virtual machines can operate better than an

oversized multiple vCPU VMs.

Memory Oversubscription / Optimization

More efficient use of physical RAM by reclaiming unused physical memory and consolidating identical memory pages

among VMs on a host.

DRS with Resource Pools

Dynamically load balance VMs across a cluster so applications get required resources when they need them – a “safety

net” that lets administrators run individual servers at higher utilization levels while meeting service level agreements.

Direct Driver Model

VMware ESX can achieve very high I/O throughput and can handle the I/O requirements for more VMs simultaneously

requesting hardware resources.

Support for Large Memory Pages and Nested/Extended Page Tables

Optimize memory access and can provide substantial performance benefits for mission critical, memory-intensive

applications, can reduce CPU resource consumption by up to 15%.

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Virtualization Overview – Capacity versus Overhead

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vSphere / VirtualizationConcepts

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts - Glossary of Terms

Datacenter: A required structure under which hosts and their associated virtual machines are added to vCenter Server. vCenter Server supports multiple datacenters. A host can be managed under only one datacenter.

Cluster: A server group in the virtual environment. Clusters enable a high-availability solution.

Resource pool A division of computing resources used to manage allocations between virtual machines.

Datastore: Virtual representations of combinations of underlying physical storage resources in the datacenter. A datastore is the storage location (for example, a physical disk, a RAID, or a SAN) for virtual machine files.

vDS: A distributed virtual switch (vDS) is an abstract representation of multiple hosts defining the same vSwitch (same name, same network policy) and port group. These representations explain the concept of a virtual machine being connected to the same network as it migrates among multiple hosts.

dvPort group: A port group associated with a vDS. The port group specifies port configuration options for each member port. A dvPort group defines how a connection is made through the vDS to the network. See also vDS (distributed virtual switch).

dvPort : A distributed virtual port on a vDS that connects to a host’s service console or VMkernel or to a virtual machine’s network adapter. See also vDS (distributed virtual switch).

Host: A computer that uses virtualization software to run virtual machines. Also called the host machine or host computer. The physical computer on which the virtualization (or other) software is installed.

Hypervisor: A platform that allows multiple operating systems to run on a host computer at the same time.

VMware Technical Publications Glossary: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/master_glossary.pdf

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Application Services

Infrastructure Services

Scalability

VMware vSphere 4.1

Security

• VMsafe APIs• vShield Zones

• Hot Add• # of Hosts, VMs

• HA • FT

• vMotion/S vMotion• Data Recovery

Availability

NetworkStorage

• Distributed Switch• Network I/O Control

• VMFS• Thin Provisioning

• Storage I/O Control• Storage APIs

• ESX/ESXi• DRS/DPM• Memory Overcommit

Compute

vCenter Server• Host Profiles

• Linked Mode

• Orchestrator

• Update Mgr

vSphere / Virtualization Concepts - vSphere

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts - VMware vCenter Server

vCenter Server v5 Scalability

Hosts per vCenter Server: 1,000 Powered‐on virtual machines per vCenter Server: 10,000Concurrent vSphere Clients: 100 Registered virtual machines per vCenter Server: 15,000

vSphere v5 Configuration Maximums Link: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere5/r50/vsphere-50-configuration-maximums.pdf

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – VMware vCenter Server

vCenter Server

Automation

vCenter Orchestrator

• Workflow engine for orchestrating virtualization

• Automate manual, repeatable steps by drag and drop interface

Scalability

vCenter Server Linked Mode

• Standard vSphere Client can access inventory across multiple vCenters

• View and search across a group of VC Servers

Visibility

Host Profiles

• Simplified setup and change management for ESX hosts

• Easy detection and remediation of non-compliance with standard configurations

VMware vSphere

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – VMware Update Manager

Update Manager is a simple patch management solution for the virtual infrastructure. It applies security updates and bug fixes to reduce risks from vulnerabilities.

 

Update Manager is a vCenter Server plug-in that allows you to apply updates and patches across all ESX/ESXi hosts. It is used to install and update third-party software on hosts and it is used to upgrade virtual machine hardware, VMware Tools, and virtual appliances.

It enables centralized, automated patch and version management from within VMware vCenter Server. Security administrators can compare ESXi hosts, as an example, against baselines to identify and remediate systems that are not in compliance.

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – Hypervisor (Compute)

VMware Architecture

True thin hypervisor (ESX 4i = 70 MB Foot Print)

No general-purpose OS

Direct driver model = I/O scaling

Drivers optimized for VMs

Page Sharing = Greater Density

Hypervisor owns the resources

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – DRS (Compute)

VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) aggregates computing capacity across a collection of servers into logical resource pools and intelligently allocates available resources among the virtual machines based on pre-defined rules that reflect business needs and changing priorities.

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – DRS Host Affinity (Compute)

• Host Affinity rules sets constraints that restrict placement between a group of virtual machines and a group of hosts in a VMware DRS enabled cluster.

• Host Affinity rules are useful for enforcing host-based ISV licensing models, as well as for keeping sets of virtual machines on different racks or blade systems for availability reasons.

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – DPM (Compute)

VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM), included with VMware DRS, automates power management and minimizes power consumption across the collection of servers in a VMware DRS cluster.

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – Memory (Compute)

Transparent Page Sharing (TPS)In ESX / ESXi, the redundant VM memory pages are identified and only stored once in physical memory. This means that pages with identical content can be shared regardless of when, where, and how those contents are generated. ESX scans the content of guest physical memory for sharing opportunities. Instead of comparing each byte of a candidate guest physical page to other pages, an action that is prohibitively expensive, ESX uses hashing to identify potentially identical pages.

Memory BallooningDue to the virtual machine’s isolation, the guest operating system is not aware that it is running inside a virtual machine and is not aware of the states of other virtual machines on the same host. When the hypervisor runs multiple virtual machines and the total amount of the free host memory becomes low, none of the virtual machines will free guest physical memory because the guest operating system cannot detect the host’s memory shortage. Ballooning makes the guest operating system aware of the low memory status of the host utilizing the Host Ballooning driver in the VMware Tools on the Guest OS.

Memory CompressionThe idea of memory compression is very straightforward: if the swapped out pages can be compressed and stored in a compression cache located in the main memory, the next access to the page only causes a page decompression which can be an order of magnitude faster than the disk access. With memory compression, only a few uncompressible pages need to be swapped out if the compression cache is not full. This means the number of future synchronous swap-in operations will be reduced.

vSphere v4.1 Memory Performance Best Practices: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vsp_41_perf_memory_mgmt.pdf

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – VMFS (Storage)

VMware® vStorage Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) is a high-performance cluster file system that provides storage virtualization optimized for virtual machines. Each virtual machine is encapsulated in a small set of files and VMFS is the default storage system for these files on physical SCSI disks and partitions.

Key Benefits

• Greatly simplify virtual machine provisioning and administration by efficiently storing the entire virtual machine state in a central location.

• Run multiple instances of VMware ESX™ to access the same virtual machine storage concurrently.

• Support virtualization-based distributed infrastructure services using VMware vCenter Server, VMware VMotion™, VMware DRS and VMware HA.

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – Thin Provisioning (Storage)

VMware vStorage Thin Provisioning dramatically increases virtual machine storage utilization by enabling dynamic allocation and intelligent provisioning of physical storage capacity.

Key Benefits

• Increase storage utilization

• Enhanced application uptime

• Simplified management

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – Storage I/O Control (Storage)

Storage I/O Control (SIOC) monitors the latency of I/Os to datastores at each ESX host sharing that device. When the average normalized datastore latency exceeds a set threshold (30ms by default), the datastore is considered to be congested, and SIOC kicks in to distribute the available storage resources to virtual machines in proportion to their shares. This is to ensure that low-priority workloads do not monopolize or reduce I/O bandwidth for high-priority workloads. SIOC accomplishes this by throttling back the storage access of the low-priority virtual machines by reducing the number of I/O queue slots available to them. Depending on the mix of virtual machines running on each ESX server and the relative I/O shares they have, SIOC may need to reduce the number of device queue slots that are available on a given ESX server.

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – Storage APIs (Storage)

vStorage APIs takes the benefits of Consolidated Backup and makes them significantly easier to deploy, while adding several new features that deliver efficient, scalable backup, and restore of virtual machines. vStorage API make it possible to offload backup processing from ESX servers, ensuring that you deliver the best consolidation ratios without disrupting applications and users. The vStorage API for Data Protection enables backup tools to directly connect the ESX servers and the virtual machines running on them without any additional software installation. They add the ability to enable backup tools to do efficient incremental, differential, and full-image backup and restore of virtual machines.

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vSwitch

vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – vDS (Network)

• Aggregated view of virtual networking

• Datacenter level networking (versus host level)

• Historical statistics follow the VM

• A unified infrastructure for networking services (monitoring, filtering, mgmt via PVLANs)

• Simplified setup and change; seamless addition of capacity

• Easy troubleshooting, monitoring and debugging

• Enables new security services

vSwitch vSwitch

App

OS

App

OS

App

OS

App

OS

App

OS

vNetwork Distributed Switch

vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) - Datacenter-level Virtual Networking

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – Network I/O Control (Network)

VMware Network I/O Control (NetIOC) provides users with the following features:

• Isolation: ensure traffic isolation so that a given flow will never be allowed to dominate over others, thus preventing drops and undesired jitter.

• Shares: allow flexible networking capacity partitioning to help users to deal with over-commitment when flows compete aggressively for the same resources.

• Limits: enforce traffic bandwidth limit on the overall vDS set of dvUplinks.

• Load-Based Teaming: efficiently use a vDS set of dvUplinks for networking capacity

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – HA (Availability)

VMware High Availability (HA) provides easy to use, cost-effective high availability for applications running in virtual machines.

Key Benefits include:

• Minimize unplanned downtime and IT service disruption.

• Eliminate the need for dedicated standby hardware and the installation of additional software.

• Enable affordable uniform high availability across the entire virtualized IT environment.

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App

OS

App

OS

App

OS

X

VMware ESX VMware ESX

vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – FT (Availability)

VMware Fault Tolerance (FT)

• Single identical VMs running in lockstep on separate hosts

• Zero downtime, zero data loss failover for all virtual machines in case of hardware failures

• Integrated with VMware HA/DRS

• Zero downtime, zero data loss

• No complex clustering or specialized hardware required

• Single common mechanism for all applications and OS-es

FT

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – vMotion (Availability)

VMware vMotion enables the live migration of running virtual machines from one physical server to another with zero downtime, continuous service availability, and complete transaction integrity. VMotion is a key enabling technology for creating the dynamic, automated, and self-optimizing datacenter.

Key Benefits

• Improve availability by conducting maintenance without disrupting business operations.

• Ability to move virtual machines within server resource pools to continuously align the allocation of resources to business priorities

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – Storage vMotion (Availability)

VMware Storage vMotion enables live migration for running virtual machine disk files from one storage location to another with no downtime or service disruption.

Key Benefits:

• Simplify storage array migrations and storage upgrades.

• Dynamically optimize storage I/O performance.

• Efficiently utilize storage and manage capacity.

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – vDR (Availability)

Key Benefits:

• Provides fast and efficient data protection for all your virtual machines, even those powered off or migrating between physical hosts.

• Reduces the cost of backing up virtual machines and minimizes the backup window using a snapshot based (agentless) approach.

• Simple configuration and management of backup jobs through a central interface within VMware vCenter Server.

• Reduces disk space consumed by backup data with built in data de-duplication technology

VMware Data Recovery (vDR) enables quick, simple and complete data protection for your virtual machines. vDR is a disk-based backup and recovery solution and is fully integrated with VMware vCenter Server to enable centralized and efficient management of backup jobs and also includes data de-duplication to save on disk storage for your backups.

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vSphere / Virtualization Concepts – vShield Zones (Security)

• Self-learning, self-configuring firewall Service

• VMotion and network-configuration aware trust zones

• Dynamic firewall policy using application protocol awareness

• Dynamic security capacity using infrastructure services

• Security policies auto-adapt to network reconfiguration or upgrades

VM-level Security for Your Private Cloud

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Questions ?