Virtualisation and other stories

[glennda]

Under 400 quid I think there seems to be one supplier about online

[gshaw]

Interesting thread as always Dave_O, our VM stuff is settling down now and I'm enjoying the flexibility of building VMs on the fly to test out all the funky 2008 R2 services I couldn't get near on the old physical stuff

 

Once you go virtual there's no point piling multiple services onto a single VM, especially with some of the badly coded stuff out there that only needs to be looked at the wrong way to fall over

 

The Veeam direct SAN is how we set ours up in the end, would feel happier if we could do read-only LUNs on the SAN but not many seem to do it, that said it's OK at the moment just have to be careful that nothing changes the auto mount setting. Some of the Universal restore stuff is fantastic once you have a play with it.

 

Not looking forward to our 7 upgrade mainly down to folder redirection and profiles but gotta be done!

[Dave_O]

gshaw

 

Glad everything has gone well with the virtualisation. As you are, I am sure, finding now, many of the things you were worried about before virtualuising all seem insignificant now. The flexibility it gives you is very enabling. Virtualisation gives you the ability to seperate services at no real cost, whilst gaining stability and service isolation.

 

I was a bit annoyed that Veeam have only just bought out a patch for vSphere 5 direct SAN backup but that serves me right for upgrading before fully testing. Still no harm done .

 

My suggesttions to you Re Windows 7 are:- a) Test and retest you user experience, we took 6 months and still missed one or two things b) keep it simple don't try and do anything too clever it always end in tears c) As noted elsewhere in edugeek get rid of libraries they are both confusing and a liability.

[glennda]

My suggesttions to you Re Windows 7 are:- a) Test and retest you user experience, we took 6 months and still missed one or two things b) keep it simple don't try and do anything too clever it always end in tears c) As noted elsewhere in edugeek get rid of libraries they are both confusing and a liability.

 

Don't remove the documents/music/pictures/videos library though - it causes folder redirection to fail for all of them. I've just done it and spent 9 months planning - i redid all GPO's from scratch (as they where just setup ad-hoc over time so I shrunk them down from 20+ to about 6). But there is always going to be little niggerly problems so its work making SLT aware that there is always going to be slight issues (i found mainly over missed gpo's allowing students to do random little things and also Users not knowing how)

[Dave_O]

Don't remove the documents/music/pictures/videos library though - it causes folder redirection to fail for all of them.

 

Never seen that happen. See this for details of some of the main issues and work arounds.

[bossman]

@Dave_O:

 

Not having a great deal of knowledge or money available 2 years ago we decided on the virtualisation route and for various reasons chose 2 different SAN's, our setup also differs from most as quite a few people have gone down the ESX route we decided to go down the Xenserver route and our choice so far has been vindicated.

 

We are not a large school with approx 700 students and 50 teachers plus other staff which totals in all approx 1000 end users, 350 workstations plus approx 50 laptops.

 

Setup is 3 hosts (Dell 2950s with 73Gb mirrored 15000rpm SAS drives and 32Gb memory, 3 x twin nics + Dual fibre nics if needed + dual PSUs) these are attached through 2 x 1Gb managed switches (For failover) For the SAN backends we have 2 models as I have stated, one is the Hitachi SMS100 (50,000 IOPs) for user storage which gives us 6Tb of formatted storage using raid 6 and the other SAN for our VM's is a Sun 7110 with HA coupled to a temporary NAS box until we can afford another secondhand Sun 7110 to match our own or something that will allow us to mirror our existing Sun 7110 with.

 

We have 17 servers across the 3 hosts including our Sims and Zimbra e-mail service which are IOP intensive, we migrated in February this year to Windows 7 and since have found our login speeds have come down just a few seconds to around 35 secs for new profile and if user logs off and back on again comes down to approx 5 secs. Our Sims login from enter to home screen is around 11 - 15 secs depending on which workstation you are on in the school as we do have some older P4s (around 30 which we have been testing with SSDs at £70 each, this greatly increases the speed to that of our fastest workstations). We do still have our DC and secondary DC as physical boxes as we see no reason to virtualise these at the moment as they are on quite new hardware.

 

Cost:

 

XenServer (Free)

HA for above £400 per host

3 x Dell 2950s with all extra's £1800 each

1 x Hitachi SMS100 SAN £6k

1 x Sun 7110 SAN £7k

2 x Gb managed switches £140 each

 

Total just over £16k

 

We find things so much easier now in doing the most simplest of things to the most complex.

 

We may not have the most expensive or the most elaborate setup but it works very well indeed.

 

Just though I would share that with people who don't have too much money to spare.

[Dave_O]

Bossman

 

Yes point taken.

 

Really interesting and informative post. I looked at Xenserver when I started all of this virtualisation lark but did not have the guts to go down that route (too old, decrepid and risk aversed). As I have posted before, if you stick to big name brands you won't go far wrong. I too have a Dell 2950 that I use to support the VDI solution it's been around for 5 years and never let me down once. You have a well thought out resilient solution which is appropriately priced for you situation (Now I sound like Ofsted!).

 

My problem is that I find it easy to convince people to spend money, usually because I've done my homework and relate expenditure tenuously to educational need but mainly because I've taught for 21 years, staff are scared of me and I frequently play the "I've been there and feel your pain" empathy card. I need to be kept under control!

[irsprint84]

HyperV on 2008 r2 is quite mature I had XEN server to start with, it was Ok but be careful of the upgrades!

[bossman]

@irsprint84:

 

Xenserver has improved enormously and is now at version 6, as long as you have a good system setup then it's a re-install of the Xenserver OS and connect back up to the connected storage.

 

Its when you have local storage that it could become a problem and updating your hosts in the required sequence is key.

 

Will take your advice onboard though.

 

Even Hyper-V has its problems with upgrades according to some people, you pays your money and you take's your choice.

[irsprint84]

Its a bad sign when citrix are trying everything to support other management tools like sccm 2012 look how Borland Delphi turn out when it supported .net!

 

Citrix was good but so much had to be added on like backing up for example plus a bad upgrade happened to me last year with not much in event logs and little help in the citrix forums, thats my major gripe.

 

So whats happening with 6.0 then?

[bossman]

@irsprint84:

 

XenServer 6 – New Features:

 

Cloud:

Self Service Manager – This new feature (superseding Lab Manager) enables you to build self-service environments for “private clouds.” Self-Service Manager includes support for both XenServer as well as VMware vSphere

- simple virtual appliance and web-based UI.

- offers multi-tenant support for creating VM “service catalogs”

vApps- Virtual Appliance support. Within XenCenter 6.0 you can create multi-VM virtual appliances (vApps), with relationships between the VMs for use with the boot sequence during Site Recovery. vApps can be easily imported and exported using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard

Microsoft System Center integration:

 

Starting with the XS 6.0 release, you will have the option of managing XenServer hosts and VMs with System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2012. For more information refer to the Microsoft System Center 2012 beta page

- System Center integration is available with a special supplemental pack from Citrix (installed on XenServer hosts), which is targeted for general availability when System Center 2012 ships later this year.

 

XenDesktop:

GPU pass-through (formerly experimental support) – With the 6.0 release, a physical GPU can be assigned to a VM so the applications running in the guest can leverage GPU instructions (“GPU pass-thru”). This provides significant TCO benefits for the XenDesktop HDX 3D Pro technology used for delivery of CAD and other graphical applications via virtual desktops

Other (virtualizationmatrix-related) updates

 

Host RAM support has been increased to 1 TB

VM vCPU and vRAM support is increased e.g. up to 16 vCPUs and 128 GB RAM for Windows; increased Linux vCPU and vRAM support levels vary by distro

 

These are just a few changes: Some say that it may be Citrix looking to promote Microsofts SCVMM 2012 to which they maybe leaning towards but seeing as they have discontinued support for Citrix Essentials for Hyper-V could have been interpreted as effort to focus on its own XenServer management capabilities.

 

Its what you want from your Hypervisor that is key and I feel it offers a little more freedom than Hyper-V but that is just my choice.

[bossman]

@irsprint84:

 

Here are a few more for you to look at: here

 

Good reading.

[Dave_O]

Bossman

 

I find the whole topic of claimed IOPs an interesting one. The IBM DS3500 claims 40,000 IOPs (with turbo mode) and as you state the Hitachi SMS 100 50,000 IOPs. Now reading the reviews of each unit on PCPro I see the following:-

 

DS3500 (without turbo mode)

 

"For performance testing, we started with a Broadberry CyberServe dual Xeon X5560 server running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise R2. We mapped it to a dedicated volume and saw Iometer report a fast 648MB/sec raw read throughput. We then added a Dell PowerEdge R715 dual Opteron 6100 server and mapped a second dedicated volume to it. With Iometer running on both systems we saw a cumulative raw read throughput of 1,280MB/sec."

 

Hitachi SMS 100

 

"For testing, we used a pair of Boston Supermicro dual 3GHz Xeon 5160 servers loaded with Windows Server 2003 R2 and Microsoft's iSCSI initiator. With one server logged into a data port on one controller we saw Iometer return a speedy raw read rate of 110MB/sec. We logged the second server onto a dedicated data port on the other controller and watched Iometer report a cumulative throughput of 218MB/sec for both systems."

 

Sun 7110

 

"The 7110 proved quick, with Iometer reporting a speedy 112MB/sec raw read throughput for one iSCSI target. Running Iometer on two servers, each logged in to different data ports and dedicated targets, saw a cumulative speed of 134MB/sec showing contention for resources."

 

 

SAN metrics are not a straight forward topic. The best way to test, is in your own environment under real conditions.

[bossman]

@Dave_O:

 

You are totally right, unless you can afford to have consultants come in and design the system for you then it is what we ourselves perceive through our raw reading and learning skills plus our experience gained from what other professionals feed us through various mediums EG being one of them.

 

I don't profess to be an expert in any field, more common sense than anything.

[Dave_O]

That's very similar to what We get Although We will be hitting 220 a year replacement on a 5 year cycle with next summers less (because on the original plan of the previous next summer is the servers rather then desktops.

 

The only failures We seem to have at the moment are air-con and internet which is out of my control! The air was serviced 5 weeKs before it failed ( I do have 2 but anything longer then 1/2 hours it get above a comfortable temp.

 

And the internet was a hardware failure with hr's media converter!

 

That makes 1100 PCs/laptops must be a big school. We have approximately 870 machines which on a 6 year program of 130 replacements pa leaves a nasty gap.

[nicholab]

With Virtualization I never been able to use it I as I was told:

RM don't support it

To expensive

No schools use it

Has not been proven in use yet.

Can't virtualize DC/Exchange/SQL

Don't have the experience to manage a virtual environment.

 

I just feel I missed out now I work in a different environment and it is all cloud computing so I miss the VM boat.

[Quackers]

With Virtualization I never been able to use it I as I was told:

RM don't support it

To expensive

No schools use it

Has not been proven in use yet.

Can't virtualize DC/Exchange/SQL

Don't have the experience to manage a virtual environment.

 

I just feel I missed out now I work in a different environment and it is all cloud computing so I miss the VM boat.

 

 

Think somebody has been telling you porkies, we have Exchange 2010 and SQL 2008 virtualised here and they run fine. Its not expensive, and i think many schools use it. Do not think i could not virtualise now, its so much better.

[Dave_O]

Nicholab

 

1. RM are a liability, they need to move with the times. We have just supported one large secondary in moving to a virtual platform. They project a ROI within 3 years (set against the RM costs)

2. See above and it depends on the value you place in IT.

3. All of the fortune 500 organisations have a virtual infrastructure of some level. Not sure who's feeding you this information but they need to get their heads out of their collectives a**es. As stated above we have run virtualisation for the past 5 years, is this not proof enough.

4. Can't virtualise DC, Exchange, SQL WTF! What planet are they on?

5. Neither did I but you learn, that's what life and progress are about.

 

Never give up. If you feel it would be of any value I would be happy to talk to anyone who has objections to using virtualisation in a school environment, which lets face it isn't exactly demanding in terms of virtualisation kit. There are examples of a range of kit even on this thread to suit most size schools. If you want to arrange a visit with these people then again you are quite welcome. I can show implementations from schools with 2000 students and 1200 PCs down to schools with 800 pupils and 200 PCs.My guess is that the people voicing and hiding behind these objections do not want to invest and are scared of change. This is not a technology that is a flash in the pan, it is here to stay.

[glennda]

That makes 1100 PCs/laptops must be a big school. We have approximately 870 machines which on a 6 year program of 130 replacements pa leaves a nasty gap.

 

its all a bit messed by at the moment ad We have been rapidly expanding the system (380 new machines in 3 years ontop of the previous 500 which where o. Site) . My theory for now is 220pa for 4 years (aprox 75kpa) then in the fifth year 40/50 ( which is next summer unless slt want more rooms) which then gives us the finances to replace servers/switching and other infrastructure bits. Overall We have about 920/30 machines and about 1550 kids (to hit 1700 within 4 years with extra 30 pa)

 

And two of us manage it all! I do the backend stuff the tech does the majority of the desktop stuff. We also have a very good program of using technically minded 6th formers 1 day a week (when they have say 2 lessons in the morning - the rest of the day is us) it's something to add to there icas reference.

 

We also have a group of 7/8 year 10/11 kids who are incharge of all equipment and setups for assemblies/parents evening etc.

[nicholab]

1. RM are a liability, they need to move with the times. My predictions about migrating to CC4 versus looking at vanilla came true. I heard this from a friend who was teaching at the school after I left that it had been a nightmare migration.

 

It also came down to me trying to lead beyond the roll that people wanted me to have in their school.

 

I now work a SMB and things like that are not in the business plan for a while.

[Dave_O]

Anybody heard of a SAN by Huawei Symantec called the S5500T? I've seen the demo and it looks pretty good. Uses SSDs to do SmartCaching. Worth a look.

[wesleyw]

We've been virtualised (90% anyway) for around 3 years, XenServer has been fine I don't upgrade it until I've read all the problems first As for SQL, Exchange, DC SQL I prefer the physical as there is a slight reduction in speed maybe thats all in the mind though. DC, Exchange, Sharepoint, Moodle everything else is on except our Print Server which performs very sluggishly if its a VM but fine when not?

 

Wes

[cpjitservices]

The IBM's are brilliant servers may I recommend Oracle for storage

 

Oracle Storage

[glennda]

The IBM's are brilliant servers may I recommend Oracle for storage

 

Oracle Storage

 

You might want to check that link!

 

I Personally use an HP Msa2000FC san for my storage not retail storage

[cpjitservices]

OOOPS something went wrong with that link - I'll give you the right link this time.

 

Sun Storage and Tape | High Performance Storage | Oracle

 

I double checked it this time!!!