What You Need To Know About

Implementing Virtualization in the Workplace

Shane Cribbs
CEO, Georgia Technologies

1-800-843-8733
www.learningtree.ca

©2008 Learning Tree International. All Rights Reserved.


T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
Introduction....................................................1
1. Understanding Virtualization......................1
1.1 Hypervisors . ......................................2
1.2 Management Interface........................3
2. Realizing the Benefits of Virtualization.......4
2.1 Virtualization on the Desktop.............4
2.2 Virtualization in the Server Room.......4
2.3 E nvironmental, Management
and Service Benefits............................5
2.4 Additional Features.............................6
2.5 The Impact on End Users.....................6
3. Selecting a Virtualization Platform..............6
Summary.........................................................7
References......................................................8
About Learning Tree........................................9
About The Author............................................9
1-800-843-8733 • www.learningtree.ca
©2008 Learning Tree International. All Rights Reserved.
LEARNING TREE INTERNATIONAL White Paper
Introduction
IT departments are making a move to virtualization like
never before. Developers have come to learn how much
more efficiently they can work in virtual environments,
and management is pushing virtualization with cost
savings and an improved environmental image in mind.
Furthermore, recent trends in IT have caused server and
desktop “sprawl”as hardware prices continue to drop.
What many fail to realize is that the long-term cost of
owning more hardware is many times larger than the
initial purchase price. Virtualization alleviates that problem
by reducing the number of physical computers in an
environment. With several free or very inexpensive options
available, even environments with only a single server or
workstation are realizing the benefits of virtualization.
For those less concerned with the technical aspects, the
fact that virtualization can be a significant part of any
“Go Green” initiative creates additional interest. For some
or all of these reasons, virtualization has recently become
an important option for many organizations.
1. Understanding Virtualization
So you’ve heard of virtualization and maybe even heard
how much it can help your organization, but what
exactly is it and how does it work? While the term
“virtualization”can refer to several different technologies
and/or implementations, the most common use refers to
the employment of virtual machines, which are software
implementations of a computer. A single physical computer
can run one or more virtual machines, each with its own
operating system and set of applications. Each virtual
machine is not only isolated from the physical computer,
but from other virtual machines as well.
To create a virtual machine, an additional level of software
is introduced to the physical computer. Technically, this
software is referred to as a hypervisor or Virtual Machine
Monitor (VMM). This hypervisor is responsible for
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virtualization tasks such as emulating virtual hardware,
and passing I/O requests—such as network traffic—from
the virtual machine to the physical machine. In essence,
a single set of hardware is acting as if it were multiple
physical entities from both a user interface perspective
and for all network communications.
After installing a hypervisor on the physical machine,
virtual machines may be created. Virtual machines exist
as a group of virtual components, much like a physical
computer is composed of physical components. Those
virtual components may include devices such as a virtual
motherboard, hard disk, video adapter, network adapter
and sound card. In addition, some hypervisors support
advanced hardware such as USB devices and multiple
virtual CPUs. Typically, virtual machines are created from
a management tool provided by the vendor where some
of these virtual components may be adjusted. For example,
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you may adjust the amount of virtual machine memory, how
large the virtual hard disk is and even how many virtual
network adapters are installed in the virtual machine. Once
the virtual hardware has been created, an operating system
is loaded into the virtual machine after which applications
and services can be installed and configured.
1.1 Hypervisors
Hypervisors come in two general forms, hosted and
native. Hosted hypervisors are essentially applications
that are loaded on a standard operating system and
behave much like any other application. These are useful
when you want to maintain a standard operating
environment but leverage specific virtualization features.
These types of solutions are frequently used for development,
testing, training and light server consolidation.
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Diagram A
From the preceding Diagram A, you can see that hosted
virtualization introduces some complexity into the computing
environment. For example, when a virtual machine needs
to write to the hard disk, it must pass that write command
to the hypervisor, which passes it to the host operating
system, which in turn passes it to the disk to actually be
written. In scenarios in which the physical computer will
be dedicated to hosting virtual machines, security and
stability can be concerns. Most operating systems contain
numerous components and features that are useful for
workstations or servers, but would not be used on a
dedicated hosting machine and could be the cause of
potential instabilities and even security vulnerabilities.
However, the need to have a fully functional host operating
system to perform tasks other than virtualization often
outweighs these concerns.
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In contrast, native (or “bare-metal”) hypervisors operate
without a hosting operating system. In fact, they behave
as the operating system while providing virtualization
features. Typically, this type of hypervisor is used for
servers dedicated to hosting virtual machines.
1.2 Management Interface
Most management and administration in a virtual scenario is
carried out remotely. However, since local administration may
be necessary, especially when troubleshooting network issues,
management interfaces are implemented. Vendors usually
refer to these interfaces as service consoles or parent partitions.
These types of interfaces can range from a full installation of
Microsoft Windows to a minimal install of Linux. Since the
management interface is essentially a virtual machine that
can be controlled by the hypervisor, it has relatively no impact
on performance during normal operation.
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Diagram B
You can see in Diagram B above that, without a host OS to
impede communications, the hypervisor can more efficiently
interact with the physical hardware. In addition
to increased efficiency, this allows the hypervisor to manage
hardware directly in a manner optimized for virtualization
that may not be allowed by a host operating system.
Another unique feature of hypervisors that run natively
on physical hardware is that they typically do not have
any type of interactive user interface. This allows the
hypervisors to be written with much fewer lines of code,
increasing performance, stability and security.
2. Realizing the Benefits of Virtualization
2.1 Virtualization on the Desktop
Virtualization is used on desktop workstations and
servers for distinctly different reasons. On a desktop,
immediate rewards can be seen by developers and IT
staff. Developers can be given additional virtual machines
to test applications and installation routines. Leveraging
virtual machines eliminates the cost and space required
by additional testing computers which, in turn, means
more thorough testing as hardware costs decrease. In
addition, virtual machines include rollback features,
such as snapshots and undoable drives, that allow quick
recovery of a previous state, with typical rollback times
ranging from less than a second to a couple of minutes.
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IT staff are often responsible for supporting multiple
operating systems while only having a single operating
system available to them on their desktop. Through the
use of virtualization, each member of the IT staff can have
multiple operating systems on their computer. This allows
them to have different versions of operating systems to
more easily walk customers through troubleshooting
steps over the phone or via e-mail. They can also use
virtual machines for testing and problem re-creation
without the danger of corrupting the primary operating
system and causing instability or security vulnerabilities.
2.2 Virtualization in the Server Room
While taking advantage of virtualization on the desktop
is extremely useful, server rooms and data centers are
driving many virtualization projects due to their extremely
high return on investment (ROI) potential. Virtualizing
servers takes advantage of the fact that most physical
servers only use about 20% of their capacity. Why are
they so underutilized? Because when organizations
standardize hardware as a way to reduce management
and administrative costs (which it can), they usually end
up purchasing hardware that is much more powerful than
required for the task at hand. Therein lies the cause of
surplus capacity.
This raises the question: Why not consolidate many
functions onto a single server? Sometimes the answer
is simple, such as two applications are not compatible
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with one another and cannot be run on the same server.
Other times, flexibility and security are concerns and dictate
multiple servers. For example, if authentication, Web server,
database and file sharing services were all running on a
single machine, a single patch for the database
application would mean downtime for all applications as
the server is rebooted. But virtual machines can be restarted
independently of one another. If each of the previously
mentioned services were in their own virtual machine, the
database virtual machine could be patched and restarted
without affecting the availability of the remaining services.
Virtualization can leverage the standardized hardware to
run many smaller tasks on one physical machine.
Finally, the most obvious advantage of server virtualization
is cost savings due to fewer servers. While you may
decide to implement more powerful servers, modestly
consolidating four existing servers onto one physical server
will still provide significant savings. In addition to direct
cost reduction, fewer servers provides other benefits, such as
reduced server space, and reduced cooling and power costs.
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2.3 Environmental, Management
and Service Benefits
From an environmental standpoint, virtualization makes a
lot of sense as well. First, energy consumption is reduced.
Also, in environments where battery backup power is
used, fewer batteries are needed. Battery disposal can be
very hazardous if not performed properly, especially in the
quantities that a larger organization must replace them in a
data center.
In addition to environmental and cost-saving benefits,
virtual machines, by virtue of how they operate, provide
significant management and service continuity benefits as
well, namely in the areas of virtual machine storage and
virtual hardware emulation. Virtual machines are typically
stored within a single folder on the physical computer. This
enables easy backup and movement of virtual machines.
In addition, the hypervisor has a preset list of hardware
that it emulates for each virtual machine. This emulated
hardware is static and is not dependent upon the hardware
in the physical computer, allowing virtual machines to be
moved between hosts and remain unaffected by changes in
underlying hardware.
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Portability is another advantage of virtual machines that
can be leveraged in several scenarios. First, when one host
becomes overloaded and another has free resources, virtual
machines can be moved to more evenly distribute the load.
Second, in the event more total processing power is needed,
a new server can be introduced and virtual machines can
be migrated to it through a simple folder copy. Finally, for
disaster recovery, a simple folder restoration is all that’s
required to fully restore all applications, settings and data.
2.4 Additional Features
Vendors have also been adding additional features to
provide even more advantages to virtualization. The
benefits range from simplified backup and hot migrations
to centralized management, monitoring and alerting. When
combined, these benefits should provide enough motivation
for almost any organization to begin a virtualization project
or optimize a virtual infrastructure already in place.
A current trend, which combines server and desktop
virtualization advantages, is to leverage virtualization to
provide virtualized desktops for general computing. The
idea is to provide relatively inexpensive and lightweight
equipment to end users and simply allow them to remotely
control centralized virtual machines that have been
specially configured for them. While this requires more
powerful servers, the desktop machines themselves must
only be powerful enough to run the remote control
application. A typical implementation may include only a
thin client on the users’ desktops which typically requires
much less management and administration than a full-
featured PC. The advantage of this is that all of the virtual
desktops can be centrally managed. Therefore, if and when
client hardware fails, no data or applications will be lost and
no reconfiguration will be needed when replacing it.
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2.5 The Impact on End Users
As with any technology, there are pros and cons for the
end user. For example, when using virtualization on
desktop computers, these virtual machines may tend to
be slower than their physical counterparts. The extent of
this performance degradation depends on several factors,
including the amount of memory in the physical computer,
the number of virtual machines being used concurrently
and the processing speed of the host server. However, this
drawback can be easily addressed with the proper amount
of planning and configuration. This holds true for server
virtualization as well. When done properly, performance is
the same (or better) and all the benefits still apply with no
negative impact on end users.
Ultimately, virtualization represents several positive results
for end users and the organization as a whole. Cost savings
from reduced power consumption benefit both the enterprise
and the environment, while increased availability and faster
disaster recovery plans enable users to be more productive
and less frustrated by outages.
3. Selecting a Virtualization Platform
When selecting a virtualization platform, the deciding
factors typically include price, performance, features and
support. In the enterprise market, there are currently three
major vendors providing virtualization applications. They
are VMware, Xen and Microsoft.
VWware is currently leading the virtualization drive with
several products aimed at different markets; however,
their product offering, for the most part, revolves around
their three virtualization applications: Workstation, Server
and ESX. Workstation and Server are hosted products
which require a supported operating system (Windows or
Linux), but have slightly different feature sets to meet the
general needs of the virtual machines. ESX is VMware’s
flagship native hypervisor product, serving as both the
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operating system and virtualization application. ESX is now
marketed as part of the VMware Infrastructure product
suite, which includes applications such as the Virtual Center
management suite and the VMotion application for moving
live virtual machines from one host to another.
Xen offers a native hypervisor that competes directly with
ESX although it is fundamentally different in that it is an
open source project. In early versions, Xen required virtual
machines use an operating system that was specially
designed to be virtualized. However, recent versions take
advantage of virtualization acceleration built into newer
processors and support most mainstream operating
systems. The focus of the Xen project is to produce a very
lean, efficient and secure hypervisor with no real effort put
toward add-on products such as advanced management
tools. Like many open source applications, Xen encourages
third parties to develop applications that will work in
conjunction with their hypervisor. Companies such as
Virtual Iron and Citrix (previously XenSource) provide
solutions based on Xen but add features such as centralized
management and high availability.
Microsoft is the most recent major player to enter the
virtualization market. Microsoft started by purchasing
a prewritten virtualization solution from Connectix and
rewrote it to bring it in line with Microsoft’s goals and
standards. They began with two products, Virtual PC and
Virtual Server. Much like VMware’s hosted offerings, they
are both hosted products, but each offers features optimized
for its intended use. With the release of Windows Server
2008, Microsoft has now entered into the world of native
hypervisors with Hyper-V. In addition to the Hyper-V
hypervisor, Microsoft also provides a management suite
called System Center Virtual Machine Manager which
allows centralized management of virtual machines
throughout the environment.
So the question is…which product is right for your
organization? All three vendors offer very compelling
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products with unique advantages. Currently, VMware offers
the most mature and robust solution suite. However, the
proprietary hypervisor ESX can introduce a steep learning
curve along with the most expensive price tag. While the
core product of Xen is available for free, the costs begin to
mount as you purchase support and management software.
And although Microsoft is the newest of the three vendors,
it seems to be adding features with substantial stability.
Ultimately, all three vendors should be considered and
piloted to see how they meet your organization’s needs.
Summary
While virtualization promises numerous benefits, it
is like any other technology in that it must be fully
understood and correctly implemented. Horror stories of
virtualization projects gone bad or virtual machines that
did not perform well abound. This is simply a matter of
improper planning. While there are times when virtualizing
a server or application isn’t the best answer, a belief that
virtualization is a bad or unsafe technology represents a
lack of understanding. Sadly, these misunderstandings all
too often cause companies to decide against leveraging this
technology, resulting in lost cost savings and wasted time.
Although it is not a new technology, virtualization is
making a comeback by proving itself as a stable solution
to many of the pressures IT environments face today. As
this White Paper points out, there are many benefits that
can be realized from virtualization, from reducing costs to
increasing availability. Management and maintenance can
also be significantly improved, thanks to the portability and
isolation virtualization provides. As if these didn’t provide
enough motivation, virtualization can also help your
organization become more environmentally friendly.
Properly implemented, virtualization has something to offer
almost any organization, being one of the most effective
technologies you can implement into your IT infrastructure.
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References
Virtual Strategy Magazine
http://www.virtual-strategy.com/

There are several blogs but most are not vendor neutral.
One that is server-virtualization specific but covers several
vendors is:
http://servervirtualization.blogs.techtarget.com/

Also see:
http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

For news, I suggest:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/hardware/virtualization/

and
http://virtualization.com/

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About the Author
Shane Cribbs
CEO, Georgia Technologies
scribbs@georgiatechnologies.com
Shane Cribbs has been working in the IT industry for 13
years with expertise in virtualization, clustering, Active
Directory, Windows deployment and Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server. Mr. Cribbs is an owner and the CEO
of Georgia Technologies, Inc., specializing in integrated
solutions of computers, networks and VoIP telephony
systems, servicing several markets, including government
agencies, private medical practices and public library
systems. He is also a Learning Tree Course author ,
technical editor and instructor.
Chicago
Philadelphia
Ottawa
Stockholm
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