IT Staff Convention 2008:Server Virtualization Vendor Panel

From Provider Notes

Server Virtualization Vendor Panel

Moderator: Anthony Ferguson, Dell

Notes: Steve Strawser, Information Systems & Computing

Contents 1 Panel Members 2 Company Introductions 3 Pains of Being a Network Admin 3.1 Patching 3.2 Support 3.3 High Availability (failover) 3.4 Application Backup 3.5 Shared Storage 4 Why Buy Their Products

Panel Members

• Larry Gilreath (Microsoft) - larrygi@microsoft.com
• Warren Corriveau (Virtual Iron) - warren@virtualiron.com
• John Bullitt (VMWare) - jbullitt@vmware.com

Company Introductions

• Microsoft Intro

1. Presentation, Desktop, Server, and Application Virtualization
2. Microsoft has products for each of these virtualization sectors

• Virtual Iron Intro

1. Policy-driven infrastructure management
2. Network booting clients off central virtualization manager
3. Price was emphasized

• VMWare Intro

1. Turning focus to supporting base of customers (Penn is important player)
2. 3rd generation of product focus is on infrastructure management and automation
3. VMWare in 2008 - centralized virtual desktops, disaster recovery, infrastructure management, application virtualization

Pains of Being a Network Admin

Patching

Having to bring down all the virtual servers when needing to patch host virtual server

Support

Many vendors say they won't support you when you say you are running on a virtual server

1. Applications running on guest OS's - vendors are changing their stance on what they are willing to support
2. VMWare and Virtual Iron - have resources to deal with companies that say they won't support virtual environments, so tell them so they can work with those companies
3. Competition in the virtualization sector is actually helping vendors realize they need to begin supporting virtual environments
4. The vendors have people to work with you if you are seeing differences in code behavior on a virtual vs. non-virtual environment

High Availability (failover)

Needing to hit several 9's on availability

1. Virtual Iron - when a server goes down you can have a secondary resource defined to take over (in the time it takes to boot the virtual resource)
2. Microsoft - when resources go down, the node auto-alerts and moves to the next available resource
3. VMWare - clustering helps but you probably don't want to have to set up a cluster for every set of resources so you can have a "next available resource" defined

Application Backup

1. Virtual Iron - taking snapshots while the host and guest are running (can be scheduled), can restore files from images taken (to different locations if needed)
2. Microsoft - Volume Shadow Copy (MS) - snapshot technology, options will increase with next Hypervisor release
3. VMWare - snapshots available or integrated tools to do backups and limit network load while backing up, can do incremental backups on your servers and file level restores

Shared Storage

What if it goes down

• Microsoft with Server 2008 - still shared storage but geographically diverse (different locations) to account for the fact if your storage network goes down at a certain location

Why Buy Their Products

• Virtual Iron - Ease of use and price (focus of virtualization is to save money)
• Microsoft - scalability and ability to use existing, robust server management tools
• VMWare - leader in virtualization (tried, true, and tested), tons of satisfied customers

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