VMworld 2009 update workshop, sep. 2009

re-posted as handy reference

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EMC London
15-sep-2009

Same hosts as last time (apr): tony gent, mark burgess; lee

Attendee: merrell lynch - 1000 vdi pcs, ratio of 30:1; not yet optimised what each vdi pc does - need 2 cpu each

Flash drives in SAN

controller evens out wear - max 100,000 flips for each storage cell 5y warranty 2500 iops/s - 15x speed of FC drive with 10G Ethernet, iSCSI is promising

SAN power

"tray of disks $1000/y to spin" - so spin down useful [ Hitachi have an option for such power optimisation ]

vSphere

supports round-robin multipathing : active-active load balancing with Powerpath add-on from EMC, also need vSphere Plus

EMC Recoverpoint

supports HDS remote replication via journal, with rollback; can recover any point in time, read/write access to that image, mounted to any san host; from windows can bookmark points of consistency via vss; no need for backup agents on app host - just backup the snapshots; falconstore has similar technology; use clariion Splitter for writes (each write sent to two places) or a standalone box or achieve in fabric switch or in the clariion array

vCentre replication manager

automated recovery plans; central mgmt.; replaces ad-hoc scripts and knowledge; need vCentre at both sites; bi-directional; vstorage APIs include site recovery mgr, which hosts RM; hds support ready yet? site RM licence is per cpu socket on esx host holding protected machines at protected site; vmware may change licensing to destination environment; reversal is somewhat tedious - re-do plan in reverse - simpler method is in roadmap

Avamar

Hardware appliance or VMware virtual one for deduplication at source to disk array good for satellite sites - licensed by backend capacity; replaces trad. backup; can replicate to another avamar

Networker

auto-discovery of VMs; login to vCentre; multiple vCentres supported; licence now adapted for virtual env. - by esx host 'virtual edition client lic.'; integrates w/avamar; networker mgmt console manages avamar; single agent - generic microsoft - via vss - exch sharepoint sql DMP; policy-based snapshot mgmt - powersnap modules; ?hds support; off-host live backup to disk/tape; network data mgmt protocol - especially for NAS; networker fast start bundle - 20 clients

vSphere 4

esx 3.5 review:

• esx 3i faster startup; is strategic route; console in vmdk
• auto discovery of physical servers
• storage vmotion for FC SANs via cli - plug-ins unreliable
• VMware Consolidated Backup now in VM (not physical server)
• windows VSS quiescing

esx V4:

• Intel hardware-assist cpu & mem virt - g6 has both; g5 has cpu only
• vmxnet3 improved networking; need to enable, for v. intensive needs
• vmdirectpath io - passthough to vm - eg previously difficult-to-virtualise cases eg voip
• paravirtual. scsi driver, is add-on for high io env - tested 364K iops, 1000 disks
• alerts on many more things e.g. snapshots

DPM - dynamic power mgmt

monitors cpu & mem load, not disk or net uses wake on lan to start ESX hosts when needed; shuts them down when not needed also slow-down server mode - intel speed step

vStorage thin provisioning

eliminate never-used space (e.g. alloc. 30G sys disk but only use 10G)

vStorage APIs for data protection

replaces VMware Consolidated Backup; uses change-block tracking

vSphere data recovery

not physical servers, "poor man's Avamar" agentless disk-based backup, using APIs & change-block tracking; via vcentre vm or file-level restore no tape-out

vNetwork distributed switch

single virtual switch across hosts; need Enterprise Plus licence also 3rd party vswitch software too; can then hand mgmt to institutional network (cisco) team - need cisco add-on product

vmware FT

1ary - 2ary plus link : vlockstep technology - replay 1ary events on 2ary; 2ary is offline to storage & net; zero downtime and data loss; new 2ary created upon failover; only 1 vcpu supported

vmsafe

API for 3rd party sec - eg sophos, client firewall to esx level; none on market yet; will be big for VDI

vshield zones

packet filtering, firewall, zones; vm appliance to manage; for PCI (credit card) compliance etc; zones can span esx hosts

vApp

self-describing apps - enable automated SLA mgmt.

vCentre

many more alarms, better analysis; vcentre orchestrator - workflow; host profiles - reference configs - needs Enterprise Plus licence; linked mode - shared roles & lic. info; perl scriptings via cli; also powercli (like windows powershell)

vcentre Appspeed - they will send out presentation

vcentre chargeback - they will send out presentation

virtualisation for exch & sql - they will send out presentation

Preview of VMware developments

long-distance vmotion

vmware view 4 - by end of year:

rdp / ica

vmware TRUE PCoIP from teradici - expected to best ICA

- end-to-end s/w implementation, optional h/w accel.

- announced year ago, just starting demos

wyse building teradici chips into clients

RTO virtual user profiles [ie competitor to SmartStart]

- licenced to vmware, uses MS profiles, no backend infrastructure

- bundled w/ vmware View 4

client virtualisation platform

baremetal hyper-visor - bare metal for desktops/laptops; works with intel vPro; fully virtualises h/w - vista/7 aero desktop; runs online & offline Vmware View desktops; single VM at first

site recov mgr

out q409; many-to-one failover - outlying datacentres to centre

capacityIQ

q409; when run out of capacity? what if? spot underused resources

avamar 5

vsphere 4 support; use change-block tracking feature; incremental block-based vmdk backup

FAST V2

sub-LUN optimisation, positioning in store tiers (tier 1: solid/flash; tier 2: FC disks/SAS; tier 3: SATA)

array integration VAAI

misc storage optimisations e.g. direct array ops; e.g. lun state alarms