Virtualisation thesis topic...

Swindon

Hi Guys
Im toying with the idea of doing my thesis in virtualisation for FYP,anyone have any info on this new technology,as in will it be around for a long time do ye think,would it make for a good area to talk about when being interviewed when going for a job?
Is there currently anyone here working with this technology in work and what are your opinions on it?(or is is just another buzz word that will fade away soon)... Just want to make the right decision in choosing a topic that has a bit of weight in it if ya know what i mean...
I know its a broad area in general but i will be looking into the specifics as time goes on,any info appreciated...

joePC

A quick tip look into the success stories on vmware.com / also research IBM p & z series virtualisation and Hugh consolidation projects going on at the moment.

Just look at VMWARE's sales figures year on year..... Virtualisation has exploded and is here to stay, also some major system builders Dell, HP etc... Integrating VMWARE onto the physical hardware ESXi.

Would make for an interesting topic....

Swindon

would server virtualisation be better...

Ghost Train

for a thesis maybe servers would be better... its more of a developing technology than desktop virtualisation which is already well established. You could look at the advantages from an administrative point of view, potential energy savings, best practices for how it can be set up and run, and the different approaches the competing companies are taking to it.
For going for a job, might be better slightly to know more about the desktop side... but maybe you could look at both servers and desktop

Stephen

VMWare Virtual Infrastructure (ESX server) is the daddy in this market. I use it in work - top stuff.

Jaoibh

Hey,

I designed my current infrastructure with ESX because MS wasnt released at the time. I've tested both and fine ESX most stable. But I'd keep my eye out here http://blogs.technet.com/daven this guy actually launched Windows 2008 and is just a genius.

Swindon

Stephen wrote: »

VMWare Virtual Infrastructure (ESX server) is the daddy in this market. I use it in work - top stuff.

Is that ESX server basically an all rounder,is it used alot in industry in ireland do you think?

Swindon

joePC wrote: »

A quick tip look into the success stories on vmware.com / also research IBM p & z series virtualisation and Hugh consolidation projects going on at the moment.

Just look at VMWARE's sales figures year on year..... Virtualisation has exploded and is here to stay, also some major system builders Dell, HP etc... Integrating VMWARE onto the physical hardware ESXi.

Would make for an interesting topic....

whats the idea behind consolidation projects may i ask...

Stephen

I don't know how much it is used in Ireland. It is quite expensive but I think its the best product. It actually runs a Linux kernel. Essentially its a lightweight host operating system/hypervisor that the guest VM's run on. If you've got a SAN you can really get value out of it. A SAN will allow you to seamlessly move a virtual machine from one host box to another, meaning you can have hardware maintenance windows and the like with zero downtime. VMWare have a load of management tools (google VMWare VirtualCenter) that you normally don't get unless you spend more money on an enterprise licence.

A very handy use of virtualization is to run a software test environment. We have our Windows 2003 active directory replicated into an isolated virtual LAN so we can test all sorts of potentially destructive changes/upgrades etc with no risk to our real services. VMWare have a tool called vmware converter that allows you to suck a physical server straight into the virtual environment quickly and easily. Very handy for this situation. I'm sure the other vendors probably have something similar as well.

Swindon

thanks stephen for that info,we have only done a few lectures in this area so its fairly new but i will be doing some research into it...seems like an interesting area and would not require a whole lot of technical details(maybe im wrong)...

krankykitty

Vmware is the dogs.
Makes life so much simpler - servers can be allocated extra ram/processors/disk at a whim. You can use the snapshotting option to take a snapshot of how a server is at a point in time.. then make your changes, and if something goes wrong, you can switch back to the old snapshot. Vizioncore VRanger Pro is a good option for backing up/restoring virtual servers.

Viirtual Center, as someone mentioned earlier enables various features such as VMotion (moving a virtual machine from one ESX server to the other in real time, only one packet max is dropped I believe), DRS which allows you to assign resources based on recommendations to different virtual servers, or you can set it to do this automatically, and HA which basically means if you lose an ESX server, the virtual machines which were running on that box automatically start on another ESX server.

Plenty of savings on hardware and time previously spent hacking together servers from random parts

Swindon

krankykitty wrote: »

Vmware is the dogs.
Makes life so much simpler - servers can be allocated extra ram/processors/disk at a whim. You can use the snapshotting option to take a snapshot of how a server is at a point in time.. then make your changes, and if something goes wrong, you can switch back to the old snapshot. Vizioncore VRanger Pro is a good option for backing up/restoring virtual servers.

Viirtual Center, as someone mentioned earlier enables various features such as VMotion (moving a virtual machine from one ESX server to the other in real time, only one packet max is dropped I believe), DRS which allows you to assign resources based on recommendations to different virtual servers, or you can set it to do this automatically, and HA which basically means if you lose an ESX server, the virtual machines which were running on that box automatically start on another ESX server.

Plenty of savings on hardware and time previously spent hacking together servers from random parts

Hi kranky kitty!
Do u think virtualisation would make for a good thesis project?Any opinions on what areas i could cover as someone who works with this technology...

joePC

Have a read of some case studies for the IBM P series consolidations

Virtualisation would make a great thesis project.

krankykitty

Swindon wrote: »

Hi kranky kitty!
Do u think virtualisation would make for a good thesis project?Any opinions on what areas i could cover as someone who works with this technology...

Its certainly one of the exciting/useful technologies that have come out over the past while, so I'm sure it would make for a good project.

You can get free trials of the software from the VMWare site:

https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware

Could be an idea to download it yourself and have a look. There's also good documentation on that site, administrator guides etc, and the forums are excellent.

What approach will you be taking to the project? If you have any questions based on my use of the product, just post away and I'll answer if I can!

Mitch Connor

Have a look at AIX 5.3 and IBM Power 5/Power 6 processors - dynamic hardware allocation (harware virtualisation) on the fly as system resources are demanded -great stuff for efficiently handling system load across different servers based on their actual usage requirements. It can be used to virtually split CPU cores in to 10 (I think) seperate Computing Units, which are then allocated around the overall server environment as required; with the possibility to define minimum resources allowable on each virtual server.

Alun

Also remember that virtualization isn't actually anything new, it's just been 'rediscovered' or 'reinvented' like a lot of supposedly new things in IT these days. (I'm an old fart in the IT business as you can probably tell!)

IBM were doing it with their mainframe VM/370 product way back in the early 70's. You could run multiple parallel versions of their MVS operating system, say a production and a test version on the same machine as well as CP/CMS a sort of time sharing system that was actually multiple instances of a single user OS. You could drop back to a command prompt and issue a reboot command for example. I used an office automation system called PROFS under CP/CMS for years in the 80's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM/CMS#History

Capt'n Midnight

VMS is what Dec bet the company on back in the late 70's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenVMS

multi-user, multiprocessing virtual memory-based operating system (OS) designed for use in time sharing, batch processing, real time (process priorities can be set higher than OS kernel jobs) and transaction processing. It offers high system availability through clustering, or the ability to distribute the system over multiple physical machines. This allows the system to be "disaster-tolerant" against natural disasters that may disable individual data-processing facilities.

http://www.uptimes-project.org/hosts/view/150
Current Uptime:12 Years 96 Days 13 Hours 47 Minutes

The Dutch Police had a cluster with 10 years uptime

A lot of these clusters have had all the hardware replaced and OS upgrades while still having the applications running.



Other things to include

Might be worth looking at licensing costs for the servers/clients especially at std. vs. enterprise packages. An important thing to remember is that virtualisation means you have one point of failure if there are hardware problems, you pays your money and you takes your chances. But then again for disaster recovery VM is a lovely solution, just have a bog standard server spare, fire up the backup images and Ok it will be slow till you get proper hardware but at least you are up and running

Swindon

krankykitty wrote: »

Its certainly one of the exciting/useful technologies that have come out over the past while, so I'm sure it would make for a good project.

You can get free trials of the software from the VMWare site:

https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware

Could be an idea to download it yourself and have a look. There's also good documentation on that site, administrator guides etc, and the forums are excellent.

What approach will you be taking to the project? If you have any questions based on my use of the product, just post away and I'll answer if I can!

Thats the thing im not sure what approach i will take on it yet as its new to me but im reading up on it at the mo and the responses to my post were great...actually went through consolidation the other day in a lecture,maybe something like how consolidation effects companies advantages/disadvantages...why u would want to implement consol and operational impacts of virtualisation...maybe this would still be too vague! I will keep reading for the time being:)

joekelly123

Some other free tools that you could try out
http://www.virtualizationmanager.com/tools/

Hope this is of some help.

Best of luck with the thesis!

Swindon

How about advantages of virtualisation in data centres?...

Dorsanty

No one has mentioned Xen as a virutalization technology as yet so just thought I would.

http://xen.org/

Swindon

was thinking about virtualisation security,could make for an interesting topic also...

Stephen

Swindon wrote: »

How about advantages of virtualisation in data centres?...

2 things mainly - space and power. Data centres charge customers normally by the amount of floor/rackspace their equipment occupies, as well as some other things like power usage. If you virtualise, say, 10 servers into onto one host machine then you're cutting down massively on the amount of rack space and power you will be consuming. It also makes it very easy for IT departments to deploy new servers to the data centre remotely, whereas this would have required a site visit and security clearance to do with physical servers.

Capt'n Midnight

recovery from a hardware failure should also be easier since you can run the image on another box with different hardware without having to faff about with drivers

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/14/microsoft_vm_mobility_licensing_change/

It may have finally dawned on Microsoft that its current software licensing restrictions kill one of the major benefits of virtualization — the ability to move a virtual machine freely about physical servers.

oops http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/12/vmware_12_august_esx_cockup/

Irate VMware customers were left unable to power up their virtual servers this morning because of a bug that killed their systems when the clock clicked round to 12 August.
...
Niemer claimed that given it’s only been two weeks since ESX 3.5 update 2 was made available for download, it was unlikely that many people would have installed it in a live production environment.