AnilDesai.net

Cloud Computing, Virtualization, .NET / SQL Server Development; Consultant / Author / Speaker

Archive for February, 2008

WebCast: Controlling VM Sprawl

Feb 20

Posted by Anil Desai in Management, Policies, Virtualization | No Comments

I recently recorded a live WebCast titled Virtualization: Best Practices for Preventing VM Sprawl.  The presentation walks through some recommendations for gaining (or regaining) control in environments where IT departments are having a hard time managing hundreds or dozens of VMs.  Here’s the abstract:

Industry experts agree that implementing virtualization without good management is more dangerous than not using virtualization in the first place. While organizations and IT staff do see the many benefits of implementing virtualization, the challenge of controlling virtual infrastructures is quickly rising as a top management priority. According to a Gartner survey, Virtual Machine (VM) "sprawl" is a major concern that appears to lack a comprehensive solution (Virtualization Needs and Trends, Cameron Haight, 29 August 2007).

This webinar will look at sources of VM sprawl and investigate the dangers inherent in a sprawl condition. It will focus on best practices for preventing VM sprawl and for establishing and maintaining control of virtualized environments.

The presenter, Anil Desai, draws on his past experience as a data center manager who has successfully managed environments of thousands of virtual machines as well as his books on this subject to outline a series of best practices aimed at maintaining control of your virtual machines, no matter how many you have.

The WebCast was sponsored by Embotics, and includes information about their V-Commander product, which helps manage VMs.  I hope you find the content to be useful!

Free P2V Backup/DR Tutorial

Feb 14

Posted by Anil Desai in Backup / Disaster Recovery, Management, VMware | No Comments

Virtualization technology provides a lot of promise related to implementing backups and  managing disaster recovery environments.  For example, since VMs are self-contained, they can be easily moved or copied to other servers.  Administrators can use a variety of methods to keep multiple VMs synchronized (see my Backup / DR category for some articles on the topic).  But, in the real world, the problem becomes implementation.  With most virtualization platforms, you’ll either need to invest in additional (and often, costly) tools, or you’ll need to roll your own.

For the latter approach, Frane Borozan has created a physical2virtual.backup tutorial that walks through the major steps of setting up backups and DR for VMware environments.  From the site’s home page:

I will here describe whole process of implementation of virtual servers into your current network infrastructure. With virtualization you will get virtual failover servers and you will have fresh replica of all of your important data, so in case main servers failure you will have fast disaster recovery plan that just works. Of course you can have clusters in your network infrastructure but what is the cost of managing clusters and paying licenses for that expensive kind on in stable software.

There are always savings into hardware and power consumption, imagine now you need to have one physical for every server you own if you want to have good disaster recovery plan, with this you can have dozen of backups on the same server and you will run only backup that is needed in case of the disaster.

He also provides scripts and batch file commands for automating the process (a huge time-saver for those that want to use this approach).  Perhaps the best thing about the Tutorial is that it’s really practical.  It doesn’t assume you’ll be making multi-million-dollar investments in proprietary hardware and software.  Rather, it helps you utilize your standard infrastructure – multi-homed servers and Gb Ethernet switches. 

Good luck, and feel free to leave comments if you have any feedback on the approach!

DevTeach Conference Sessions

Feb 13

Posted by Anil Desai in Databases / SQL Server, Microsoft Hyper-V, Virtualization | 1 Comment

I’m going to be speaking at the DevTeach Conference in Toronto, Canada.  The conference runs from May 12 – 16, 2008.  I’ll be giving two presentations on virtualization and one on SQL Server.  Here are the topics and descriptions:

Evaluating Virtualization Tools and Technologies

There’s far more than one way to implement virtualization. For example, Microsoft has several different products which are designed to help solve organizations’ largest IT challenges. This presentation will cover information about presentation virtualization (Citrix and Windows Terminal Services), application virtualization (Virtuzzo and Microsoft SoftGrid), and server virtualization (including products from VMware, Microsoft, and other vendors). The goal is to help IT professionals determine the best solution(s) for implementing virtualization in their environments.

Windows Server 2008’s Hyper-V: Inside and Out

One of the most compelling features of Windows Server 2008 is its completely new virtualization feature. This presentation will provide details related to the architecture of Hyper-V and what it means to IT departments. Details related to deploying and managing VMs will be presented, with a focus on virtual hard disk and virtual network management. Attendees will also learn how to automate virtualization using WMI and Windows PowerShell.

SQL Server Data Protection and High Availability

SQL Server includes numerous features for protecting important data and ensuring high-availability. This presentation will provide live demonstrations of implementing backup and recovery plans, log-shipping, database mirroring, Fail-Over clusters and database snapshots. The presentation includes recommendations for choosing the best approach given a set of requirements. Presentation scripts and sample code will also be made available.

You can also find more details on the dozens of other presentation topics on the DevTeach Sessions page.

A Comprehensive Document of What’s Really in Vista SP1

Feb 5

Posted by Anil Desai in Systems Admin, Windows Vista | No Comments

I have been testing Windows Vista SP1 for many months now, since the early beta versions of the update.  While I can’t say that it has solved all of my problems (see My Struggles with Windows Vista for details), it has made a few noticeable improvements in performance.  However, with all the media coverage I have seen thus far, people tend to focus on one or two of the hundreds of changes included in the Service Pack.  The information ranges from simple restatements of Microsoft press releases to "benchmarks" which use dubious measurement methods. 

Fortunately, Microsoft has recently published a comprehensive guide that lists all of the changes introduced by SP1.  You can download Notable changes in Windows Vista SP1 in PDF or XPS format.  The guide is long, but it provides a concise, descriptive and (presumably) complete list of what you can expect.  Certainly, there’s a lot of ambiguity based on "certain types of devices" and similar marketing-friendly terms.  (Sometimes I wish Microsoft would just identify the hardware manufacturers that don’t follow the rules for driver development.)  Overall, it’s a handy reference that I recommend.  The document also includes a whopping 35-page index of all of the hotfixes and security updates that are included with the SP1 update.

Unfortunately, even with the latest updates, I still can’t get Sleep mode to work on two of my desktop computers (one of which shipped with Windows Vista and the other which is based on a clean installation).  So far, it looks like Windows Vista SP1 will be "too little, too late" for me.  I just hope something happens to prove me wrong.