CHAPTER3 VIRTUALIZING ATESTAND DEVELOPMENTmedia.techtarget.com/Syndication/NATIONALS/IntroTo... · CHAPTER3 VIRTUALIZING ATESTAND DEVELOPMENT LAB Nowisthetimeto r eal iz o fth b n

aVIRTUALIZING

A TEST ANDDEVELOPMENT

LAB

aCONSOLIDATING

VOLATILE ITENVIRONMENTS

aCASE STUDY

aBUILDING YOURENVIRONMENT

aEXPANDINGYOUR LAB

CHAPTER 3

VIRTUALIZINGATESTAND

DEVELOPMENTLAB

Now is the time torealize all of the benefitsof virtualizing your testand development lab.

p2VIRTUALIZING A TESTAND DEVELOPMENT LAB

p4CONSOLIDATING VOLATILE

IT ENVIRONMENTS

p7CASE STUDY

p9BUILDING YOURENVIRONMENT

p 10EXPANDING YOUR LAB

Introduction to Virtualization E-book

Virtualizing aTESTAND

DEVELOPMENTLAB

IT PROFESSIONALS AND developersalways need access to complex tech-nologies—directory services, emailservices, databases, Web servers,and so on—for a variety of reasons,but mostly for testing and develop-ment purposes. To do this, they runlaboratories—IT labs that include allof the required technologies to sup-port our efforts. In addition, manyorganizations provide and managetheir own training centers. These aresimilar in nature, if not in kind, to testand development laboratories. Unfor-tunately, none of these environmentsare treated the same.Training environments often have

up-to-date technologies becausethey need to present trainees witheverything they’ll use in production.Development environments mustalso have the most current technolo-gies because they need the latest andgreatest to produce new code. How-ever, test environments are often

built with leftover computers thatalready belong in a scrap heap. Inthe end, organizations are left withseveral official and unofficial environ-ments jumbled together in no partic-ular fashion in an effort to get sys-tems up and running.In an ideal situation, organizations

would connect these systems in aunified infrastructure that wouldsupport all services. But that is oftendifficult to do. Development projects,in particular, have their own budgetsfor hardware acquisitions. Theseprojects can contain multiple envi-ronment layers for unit, functional,integrated, staging and pilot or pro-duction testing—each layer can haveits own hardware. However, eachsystem will have very low utilizationratios and will be at rest most of thetime. If you try to set up two develop-ment projects on the same machines,you’ll learn that it isn’t possible.Many training classrooms also

CHAPTER3 Virtualizing a test and development lab

2 INTRODUCTION TO VIRTUALIZATION

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house far-from-ideal setups. Some-times each classroom will use a dif-ferent system. Often, classroomsmust use complex procedures toreset each system after every class

so all students start at the beginningof the training process.In a time when most CIOs state

that their goals are to develop a flexi-ble and efficient infrastructure, this

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EVEN THOUGH YOU’REworking with VMs, you still have to be conscious oflicensing issues, especially if you’re building a permanent laboratory. LicensingVMs is very similar to how you would image disks from physical computers.

q Template virtual machine:A template VM is one that is ready to be dupli-cated on your network. It doesn’t require a license because it is a machinethat’s used only to seed other machines. The machine doesn’t actually getused as is. Once you’ve copied the template VM and beginpersonalizing it, you need a license for it.

q Running VMs: Each machine that is individually named and running on aconstant basis needs its own license.

q Copied VMs or snapshots: Each copy of a VM does not need its own licenseas long as it hasn’t been renamed and is using the same IP address in eachcopy. Because it uses the same name and has the same IP address, only onecopy of the machine can run at any time.

q Copied and renamed VMs: Each time you copy a VM and rename it, youneed to assign a license to it. A renamed machine is treated as a completelydifferent machine; therefore, it needs a license.

If you’re runningWindows infrastructures, you should be using either Micro-soft Developer Network or TechNet Plus subscriptions for your laboratories.These subscriptions give you access to 10 or more licenses of eachMicrosoftproduct, though each license needs activation. This is the best way to test newtechnologies or develop new software onWindows networks.If you’re running non-Windows software or operating systems, you should

verify with your manufacturer to see which licensing scheme offers the bestchoice for testing and development support. �

VIRTUAL MACHINES AND SOFTWARE LICENSING

situation cannot continue. Unfortu-nately, both IT infrastructures andmentalities are slow to change.Worse yet, IT budgets have fixedexpenses in spite of being confrontedwith changing business needs.Despite these constraints, many

businesses have moved forward withsystem consolidation projects toincrease resource utilization anddecrease costs and physical serverfootprints. Those organizations real-ize the gains through server virtual-ization projects—consolidating physi-cal servers into virtual machines(VMs) running on host servers.While organizations tend to pro-

ceed with these projects for produc-tion environments, few realize howuseful and successful these physicalconsolidation projects can be for test-ing and training, as well as for devel-opment and other volatile IT environ-ments. This chapter highlights someof the benefits of consolidating yourtest and development environmentsthrough virtualization, including costssavings, accelerated time to deploy-ment and system consistencythroughout your environment.

CONSOLIDATING VOLATILEIT ENVIRONMENTSUsing physical consolidation prac-tices for volatile IT environmentsmakes sense, especially at a timewhen companies are tightening theircollective belts because of economic

hardships. If production serverresources are only used at 10% to15% of operational ratios, then it’slikely that other environments haveeven lower operational ratios. In most

cases, volatile IT environments, suchas test or development systems, areused only at high operational ratiosduring stress testing, pushing theservice or application to its limits tosee how it performs. In such cases,systems can run at upwards of 50%utilization ratios. Stress testing, how-ever, occurs only at specific timesduring the staging or developmentprocess and can be scheduled. Therest of the time, machines tend torun at less than 5% utilization.The goal of physical server consoli-

dation is virtualization, which offersthese environments the followingadditional benefits:

� You can virtualize more than 95%of the servers. Only specific machineswith custom hardware dependencieswill defy virtualization and require adedicated physical system.

� Server virtualization is designed



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Using physicalconsolidationpractices for volatileIT environmentsmakes sense.


to support maximum resource utili-zation. Some virtualization platformsare designed to share CPU capabili-ties and memory between VMs.

� The cost of these environmentscan be reduced because severalavailable virtualization technologiesare free.

� Server virtualization reducescosts because fewer physicalmachines are required to supportmultiple environments.

� The same physical machines cansupport several different volatile ITenvironments (FIGURE 1).VMs can be saved as templates

and deployed as needed to build

almost any environment.� VM deployment times are

significantly shorter than physicalmachine deployments. This can saveresources and shorten deploymenttimelines and project completiontimelines.

� When systems administratorsbuild the source VMs or templatesused to generate each environment,this can guarantee the consistencyof each environment. Too often,developers build their own systemsand take shortcuts because of timeconstraints. Then, when machines donot match production configurations,inconsistent test results may occur.


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FIGURE 1

A properly configuredsingle host server canrun multiple volatileIT environments.

SOURCE: RESOLUTIONS ENTERPRISES LTD.



� VMs are simply a set of files ina folder, making them easier to backup and restore. Virtual environmentsuse considerably less physical spacethan conventional laboratories.Users can connect to VMs in

any environment through their ownworkstation using standard networkconnections.

� VMs support the concept ofsnapshots—point-in-time imagesof a VM state that can be takenwhether the machine is running ornot. Each time users perform tasksand want to save the results, theycan take snapshots. Then, if usersperform subsequent tasks that don’twork, they can return to a previoussnapshot. This saves enormousamounts of time in that they canavoid rebuilding the system (FIGURE2). Snapshots also support trainingenvironments because administratorsneed only to return to the snapshotto recover the original state of anytraining machine.

� VMs are completely isolated

from one another because of thehost server’s network virtualizationcapabilities. In addition, users willnot know they share host serverresources because their environ-ments will be completely contained.

� Virtualization technologiesallow self-service VM provisioningand management, which enablessystems administrators to per-form other vital tasks within thenetwork.

� Administrators can controlhow many resources are availableto a VM. They can throttle certainresources to ensure that VMs don’tconsume all of the physical host’sresources. This can guarantee thatperformance levels remain accept-able for each user sharing physicalresources.

Organizations should decide touse virtualization to build laboratoriesin order to save costs, maintainconsistency and reduce their carbonfootprint.

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(Continued on page 8)

FIGURE 2

Snapshots make it easier to perform tests and maintain results of what worked.


UTOMOTIVE PARTS supplier Del-phi Corp., headquartered inTroy, Mich., hit a few road-blocks when setting up testand development in a vir-

tual environment. Eventually, though,the company found a way to reap thebenefits from this new architecture.Delphi’s biggest challenge was not

determining how to run test and devel-opment on virtual machines (VMs)or whether the technology wouldwork. Instead, it had difficulty gettingits outsourcing partners on board tosupport it.“Technology is always the easiest

part,” said Edward Mutz, principal archi-tect, network and platforms at Delphi.“It’s the political and contractual issuesthat hold up progress.”The automotive company has three

IT outsourcing partners. One partnermanages 4,000 applications—1,200 ofwhich are classified as “mission critical.”Another partner hosts Delphi’s serveroperation (approximately 3,500 sys-tems) and the third outsourcing partnermanages all of the company’s desktops.The first partner’s contract with Del-

phi required four servers per applica-tion: one for production, one for devel-opment and a third for testing, plus adatabase server rolled into the mix.

Virtualization has turned this pictureon its head. In a virtual environment it’spossible to set up a VM in a matter ofminutes, tweak the application as need-ed and then shut down the VM oncethat’s done. “We no longer needed 300development servers sitting arounddoing nothing,” Mutz said.This contract, however, was based

on physical machine management.Although it was a battle to renegotiatethe contract to support test and devel-opment on VMs, the outsourcing part-ner eventually agreed to it.Delphi now has 200 production appli-

cations running on VMs; the VMs alsorun the test and development environ-ment as needed. With fewer physicalmachines, it meant fewer full-time staffmembers were required to manage thesmaller environment. This enabled Del-phi to save money in some of its out-sourcing contracts. —JoMaitland



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CASE STUDY:

Mixing VM test anddevelopment with outsourcing

AIn a virtual environment,you can set up a VMin a matter of minutesand then tweak theapplication as needed.

.SIMPLE STEPSTO VIRTUALIZATIONMoving to virtual volatile IT environ-ments is relatively simple and can bedone in a few quick steps. It doesn’thave to be an overly expensive ven-ture either, because current hardwareis much less expensive in terms ofdollars for processing power. Don’tovercomplicate the project. The key

to a successful virtualization projectis to keep it simple.First, obtain the proper hardware.

Host servers require a great deal ofresources, including multi-core CPUsand large amounts of RAM, networkadapters and storage. For example,you can start with small-footprintservers that have one quad-core CPU,up to 8 GB of RAM and include alarge amount of storage. Prices range



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(Continued from page 6)

ONCE YOU’VE IDENTIFIED the hardware you want to use and on which virtualizationtechnology you will rely, you’re ready to build your laboratory environment.Follow these steps to set up your new virtual laboratory.

e Start with the base server configuration for the host servers. This meansinstalling additional RAM, network adapters and disks as required.

r Begin the base server installation for the host servers. This means installingthe hypervisor on bare-metal machines.

t Plan adequate storage space, an average of 500 GB or more, for thefollowing:• Storing all laboratory data• ISO or DVD files for all required operating systems and software• VM images that will be created during all testing• Backup data of virtual hard disks

u Download and prepare the VM for evaluation tools.

i Create new VMs or transform existing physical machines into VMs.

o Build multiple environments to support testing graduations.

p Prepare a self-service portal for end users to manage their own VMs. �

STEPS TO BUILDING VOLATILE IT ENVIRONMENTS

from $350 to $2,000 for a loadedserver, and the machines fully sup-port server virtualization. Additional-ly, you don’t need to buy new hard-ware if you can recover a similarsystem from existing machines.Next, obtain a free virtualization

engine. All major virtualization ven-dors offer top-level virtualizationengines at no cost. Some virtualiza-tion engines are bare-metal hypervi-sors, which means that they don’trequire an underlying OS to operate.Other free virtualization products

may require that an OS is installedbefore installing the server. Usingsuch software-based virtualizationproducts, however, can reduce per-formance. On the plus side, though,these tools can run on older hardware

and can help to further reduce lab-oratory costs.

BUILDING YOUR ENVIRONMENTAfter selecting which virtualizationengine to use, it’s time to start build-ing your virtualization environment.A simple method for doing this is toperform physical to virtual (P2V)migrations, which can be done forfree using certain tools.The next step would be to point to

all test and development machinesthat make up your environments andgradually convert each one to a VM.Some tools support online conver-sions or conversions that occur whilemachines are delivering services tousers.



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FIGURE 3

WinImage canconvert physicaldisks into virtualdrives.

Online conversions are not sup-ported for every OS, but there should-n’t be a problem if you are runningWindows Server in your network. Ifyou’re running another underlyingserver technology, it’s possible to relyon a multitude of tools to perform asimilar conversion. WinImage, forexample, is a program designed towork with DVD images downloadedas ISO files. The tool can also converta physical disk into a virtual harddisk that works with most majorvirtualization technologies (FIGURE 3,page 9). Conversion involves morethan simply converting a disk, buthaving the disk in virtual format atthe beginning is a great first step.

EXPANDING YOUR LABOnce you’ve converted all of your

environments, you can move to otherimplementations in the laboratory.It’s important to evaluate which lab-

oratory management tool has the bestfunctionality for your project. Whileyou can evaluate some tools for short-er periods of time, few of them areavailble for long-term evaluations.At this point, your laboratory

should include multiple environ-ments, each of which has its ownrequirements. VMs allow you toimplement full graduation proceduresfor newly developed code as well asnew technologies that you want toput into production. These environ-ments build on each other in termsof complexity. They also supportthe implementation of entry andexit criteria to control how code andservices progress through differentenvironments (FIGURE 4).



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FIGURE 4

Use graduation environmentsto control the introductionof new code and services.


http://www.winimage.com/download.htm

WHAT ARE THE NEXTSTEPS IN VIRTUALIZATION?After users have worked with VMs intheir environments, you might wantto consider adding more VMs to thelaboratory. For example, if you decidethat the free or evaluation technolo-gies you used met your needs, con-sider buying them. That way, youdon’t need to restart the deploymentprocess. You can simply activate themachine you’re already using.You may also want to investigate

using storage area networks (SANs)to centralize all files comprising yourVMs in an effort to improve labora-tory performance. SANs cost moremoney, so you won’t want to moveto this level until the new virtual labshave proven records of performanceand cost reductions. Keep in mindthat you must still put proper backupand recovery practices into place.If you face recalcitrant testers and

developers, you can actually performthe migration without telling themyou have done so. For example, oneadministrator converted all of thecompany’s new systems to VMs

without telling anyone in the organi-zation. Later, when the CIO said itwas time to convert all systems to vir-tualization, he was surprised to learnthat more than 60% of the infrastruc-ture was already running on a hyper-visor. Converting without telling any-one is a viable option but should bedone cautiously.Although it’s possible to use free

and evaluation versions of many vir-tualization tools, don’t skimp on othercomponents. For example, one cus-tomer used poor-quality networkingcables on host servers just becauseit was too much work to run anothercable through the floorboards. But,each time someone walked past thehost servers, the cable would pop outand users would lose contact withmore than a dozen VMs.There are several other benefits

when moving to a virtual infrastruc-ture for the volatile IT environmentsin your network. Generally, you’llhave less work and more fun doingyour job, and you might even havesome spare time once the project iscomplete. �



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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Danielle Ruest and Nelson Ruest are IT futurists focused on continuousservice availability and infrastructure optimization. They are authors of mul-tiple books, including Virtualization: A Beginner’s Guide andWindows Server2008, The Complete Reference for McGraw Hill Osborne, as well as theMCITP

Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-238): Deploying Messaging Solutions with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 forMS Press. Their upcoming book will be a training kit for Microsoft exam 70-652: ConfiguringWindows ServerVirtualization with Hyper-V. Contact them at [email protected].

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/books/10938.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/books/10938.aspx

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Reference/dp/0072263652

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows-Server-2008-Reference/dp/0072263652

http://www.amazon.com/Virtualization-Beginners-Guide/dp/007161401X

q Virtualization 101

qUsing virtualization for testing and development environments

qWhat is Microsoft Hyper-V?

About Dell Inc.:Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovativetechnology and services they trust and value. Uniquely enabled by its directbusiness model, Dell is a leading global systems and services company andNo. 34 on the Fortune 500. For more information, visit www.dell.com, orto communicate directly with Dell via a variety of online channels, go towww.dell.com/conversations. To get Dell news direct, visit www.dell.com/RSS.

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CHAPTER3 VIRTUALIZING ATESTAND DEVELOPMENTmedia.techtarget.com/Syndication/NATIONALS/IntroTo... · CHAPTER3 VIRTUALIZING ATESTAND DEVELOPMENT LAB Nowisthetimeto r eal iz o fth b n