As virtual machines have become the default method of deploying new applications and services many organizations have found that they’re encountering the problem of “VM Sprawl” – the rapid proliferation of VMs that make management difficult. 

In this presentation, you’ll learn:

• Common causes of VM sprawl and how to address them
• Specific technical administration issues that are unique to virtual machines
• Methods of managing a VM’s “life cycle”, from initial deployment to retirement
• Ways to maintain control of data center resources while also allowing for end-user self-service
• Ways in which automation can help manage the major causes of VM sprawl

This online conference provides a wide variety of different presentations, so be sure to check out information about the Virtualization Summit and register for the event.

TechNet Webcast: Talk TechNet with Keith Combs and Matt Hester – Episode 36: Virtualization with Anil Desai (Level 200)

Here’s a brief overview of the topic description:

Want to talk about Virtualization?  This is the show for you.  Anil Desai is a Microsoft Windows Server Virtualization MVP so bring your Hyper-V questions. I’m sure Anil will be happy to takes questions on some of the other products like System Center Virtual Machine manager.  Tune in and listen, call in, or send us questions on the web via Live Meeting.  Take advantage of this great opportunity to get your questions answered.

Presenters: Keith Combs, Sr. Program Manager, Microsoft Corporation, Matt Hester, Sr. IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Corporation, and Anil Desai, Independent Consultant, Microsoft Windows Server Virtualization MVP

I look forward to answering questions from attendees!

Thursday, February 25, 2010
10AM PST / 1PM EST

With the new decade comes new opportunity to implement the best technologies and practices for IT.  Join this FREE live webinar to learn how to cost-effectively plan, implement and manage a 21st century data center to drive greater efficiency, security and compliance.

You’ll hear from leading experts about ways organizations are leveraging technologies such as virtualization and configuration management to build flexible, resilient, cost-efficient and high-performing data centers for 2010.

Join now to:

• Get a blueprint to plan and implement IT best practices to modernize, consolidate, and secure your technology environment
• Hear how to cost-effectively drive improved security and compliance across your IT infrastructure while staying agile and competitive
• Learn about the benefits of a combined solution for configuration assessment with configuration change auditing for improved data center operations

The presentation is arranged by Focus.com and is sponsored by TripWire.  I’ll begin the presentation with an overview of technical best practices.  Then, Barak Engel from EAmmune will provide specific information on products, technologies, and approaches you can use to achieve these goals.  We’ll wrap up by taking live questions from the audience.  The entire webcast should last under an hour.

The webcast is titled “Understanding and Managing VM Sprawl”.  An archived version is available for viewing at no cost (though registration is required).  Here’s a brief abstract of the topic:

Virtualization can help address many of IT’s biggest headaches, but it can also lead to a problem known as "VM sprawl" – the rapid proliferation of VMs without sufficient IT oversight.  The result is an environment that doesn’t meet security or administration requirements, putting applications, services, and data at risk.

This webcast will provide an overview of VM sprawl – its root causes and related issues, along with ways to mitigate the main issues.  Specifically, it will provide best practices for managing the entire virtual machine life cycle (from deployment to retirement) and details related to tracking VMs in the environment.  The webcast will then describe how automated virtualization management solutions can help provide all of the benefits of virtualization with minimum administrative overhead.

The content is targeted towards IT managers and higher-level IT people.  It focuses on virtualization management strategies, though there’s a good amount of technical depth.  The presentation is roughly 45 minutes in length.  I hope you find it useful, and feel free to post questions or comments here.

This Next Generation Networks virtual event will bring you up to speed on networking state of the art by discussing the technologies that are going to drive network design and implementations today and in the future. You will learn from peers, analysts, and vendors about where the technologies are today and how you can prepare for a network overhaul.
Attendee Benefits:

• Download informative research, white papers, and other resources straight to your Virtual Briefcase.
• Access insightful webcasts  featuring industry experts, Network Computing editors, and analysts.
• Interact with our guest speakers, other attendees, and exhibitors through real-time chat tools.
• Visit vendor booths and browse through products and solutions in our unique, interactive and entertaining environment.

Use the Event Registration page to sign up to attend.  In addition to the virtual conference booths, you can view a list of presentations on the Distinguished Speakers page.  I’ll be attending and will try to answer as many technical questions as possible in the Microsoft booth. 

It’s somewhat ironic that one of the main problems that server virtualization is designed to address, server sprawl, is often replaced with a similar problem – VM sprawl.  It’s a topic that I’ve written a lot about in the past and on this blog.  I recently revisited the topic and expanded on it in a White Paper that I wrote for Sun.  Here’s the introduction from Best Practices to Prevent and Manage Virtual Machine Sprawl:

While server consolidation using virtualization can significantly decrease costs and improve efficiency, organizations often find that they need to deal with an associated issue: the rapid proliferation of VMs with inadequate management. This article will provide best practices for addressing the issue of "VM Sprawl", including the following:

• Creating and enforcing deployment policies
• Detecting and addressing unauthorized VMs
• Managing security and compliance in virtual environments
• Managing the entire VM lifecycle and Planning for VM retirement
• Sidebar: Steps to gaining (or regaining) control of a virtual environment.

The White Paper is available for free, but registration on the Sun Web site is required.

Virtualization expert Anil Desai discusses the capacity planning and management demands created by virtualizing production-level applications, creating virtual infrastructures and server platforms, such as blade servers.

There are new challenges posed by virtualizing on a mix of blades or high-density servers and x86 in the same environment. Desai warns of the common mistakes made in capacity planning as virtualization usage is increased and offers ways to avoid them. Finally, he taps his own experiences with capacity planning and reveals best practices he uses everyday.

You can download the webcast for free (registration is required).

Free virtualization e-learning collection

Take Microsoft E-Learning Collection 6333: Exploring Microsoft Virtualization Technologies for free! Collection 6333 includes the following:

• Clinic 5935: Introducing Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008
• Clinic 6334: Exploring Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008
• Clinic 6335: Exploring Microsoft Application Virtualization
• Clinic 6336: Exploring Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008

Click on the links for the entire Collection, or for individual courses to add them to your e-Learning Library.  You’ll need to login with a Windows Live ID to activate the content.

Personally, I’ve used dozens of e-Learning courses (mostly free ones, I’ll admit) to learn the technical details that aren’t always readily available on the product marketing web sites.  Most courses are fairly in-depth (including code samples where appropriate), but there are usually some rough edges that seem to be remnants from beta versions of the courses.  Overall, though, I think they’re an excellent resources.  And, all of the courses listed above are available for the convenient and affordable price of free.

Virtualization has brought next-generation network-attached storage (NAS) beyond the limitations of the old NAS architectures. View this webcast with virtualization expert Anil Desai to learn more about this evolution and get tips on best fit scenarios and deployment techniques.

Deciding the best place for NAS implementation is very hard in the complicated world of the new data center. In this webcast, Anil Desai describes the right NAS scenarios, right choices and the right deployment options for your infrastructure.

The Webcast is available for free, but registration with TechTarget’s Bitpipe.com is required.

The implementation of new technology often comes with new challenges. While a pessimist might point out that many IT departments and the businesses that they support are resistant to changes, there’s an opposing view: Often, new technology such as virtualization can provide a compelling reason to address organization-wide operational and management issues. The major challenge faced by most IT teams is the constant struggle to meet business requirements while staying within budget. Overall, the goal is for technology investments to remain aligned with business initiatives. Virtualization is attractive for just these reasons: It provides unprecedented flexibility and agility to data center resources.

Despite its technical benefits and the ability to lower operational costs, many IT managers have found that they are unable to keep pace with the needs of the users they support. In some cases, cost overruns lead to budget constraints which, in turn, can slow business growth. Personnel and expertise are limited, and it often seems that no matter how well-planned the infrastructure is, there’s some portion of the environment that fails to meet requirements.

Returning to an optimistic view, virtualization provides an excellent opportunity for organizations to implement methods to address these issues. This chapter focuses on the topics of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and charge-backs – two methods of improving coordination, communications, and priorities within a business. As in previous chapters, the goal is to maximize the benefits of virtualization while minimizing costs and related management overhead.

You can download chapters from this eBook for free (registration required) from the Embotics Knowledge Center.

We techies tend to look forward to new technology with good reason. In most cases, new products and services improve upon old technology. But migration in production environments can be slow. So what about existing technology? A good case in point is Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 (MSVS). MSVS is available for free and is a perfectly viable option for many environments. In this tip, I’ll look at when, where and why you might want to use MSVS rather than its newer replacement, Hyper-V.

You can read the entire article for free: See Microsoft Virtual Server still viable management option.

I recent recorded a webcast, sponsored by Computer Associates (CA), titled Managing Virtual Machine Sprawl: Best Practices.  From the abstract for the presentation:

Virtual Machine (VM) Sprawl is an issue that is common with organizations that have dipped their toes in virtualization. It can cause issues with system management, security, resource optimization and lack of IT control, as well as workload management including software, hardware and services.

Virtualization expert Anil Desai reviews the definition of VM sprawl including impacts ad challenges, best practices for end-to-end management and centralizing administration and benefits of workload automation.

The free webcast is an overall description of the many different causes and effects of the rapid proliferation of unmanaged VMs and some suggestions on how IT departments can gain (or regain) control over their environments.

Virtualization expert Anil Desai explores backup products and capabilities in Microsoft virtual environments. This webcast will look at Windows-based features and options for performing backups, as well as the capabilities of other products such as Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager.

Users of Microsoft Virtual Server and the upcoming Hyper-V platform have several different approaches for protecting their virtual machines. This webcast will look at Windows-based features and options for performing backups, as well as the capabilities of other products such as Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager. The presentation will help attendees determine which backup method is most appropriate for each type of workload, and their options for meeting those requirements.

I have recently written two articles for SearchServerVirtualization.com that cover the  topic of monitoring and optimizing your VMs that are hosted on Microsoft Hyper-V.  Some might be obvious, but others are somewhat cleverly-disguised.  The first article, Optimizing Hyper-V performance: Monitoring tips focuses on ways in which you can make sure your host servers and VMs are running smoothly.  From the introduction:

How can you be sure whether your Hyper-V host servers and virtual machines (VMs) have been optimally configured? Installing and enabling Microsoft Hyper-V and creating VMs is a fairly straightforward process; but the techie tendencies in all of us seems to nag the question "Isn’t there something more I should do to improve performance?" This tip targets system administrators who have deployed Hyper-V and want to ensure that they’ve made the most of host servers and VMs.

The second article, Optimizing Hyper-V performance: Advanced fine-tuning provides details on Integration Services, synthetic vs. emulated drivers, and ways in which you can improve overall performance of storage and network resources.

I hope these articles will serve as a useful checklist for Hyper-V management.  If you have any further suggestions, feel free to leave them as comments here or on SearchServerVirtualization.com.

"The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations." – David Friedman

Make no mistakes, my friends. Virtualization technology is serious business. The stakes are high and the stakeholders are highly-motivated. War is a dirty word, and we did not choose this situation. However, today, we are called upon to defend ourselves against a vicious and unforeseen onslaught of virtual machines. They have attacked from every direction, and we now find ourselves in the middle of a battle for control. These once gentle automatons now threaten our very way of life within the IT department. Their unmanaged proliferation must be stopped here and now.

This will not be an easy fight, so heed these words carefully. The fate of entire data centers hangs in the balance, and mismanagement of one or a few VMs could tip the balance in favor of the enemy. But rest assured, my friends: There is hope, if only we allow cooler heads to prevail. Batten down the hatches, up the irons, release the Jolt! Cola, and prepare for Managing Virtualization: The Art of War.

Hyper-V is the latest virtualization product from Microsoft. The new hypervisor platform works with Windows Server 2008 to create and manage a virtual infrastructure. As with any virtualization platform, Hyper-V makes for a more efficient data center, maximizing resources and reducing costs.

Hyper-V consists of a 64-bit hypervisor that can run 32-bit and 64-bit virtual machines concurrently. Hyper-V virtualization works with single and multi-processor virtual machines and includes tools such as snapshots, which capture the state of a running virtual machine.

Hypervisor-based virtualization with Microsoft’s newest offering promises more efficient virtual machine hosting as well, with new "synthetic" drivers.

For more information on Hyper-V, consult the resources in this introductory guide.

Also, keep a look out for many other articles by me and other writers on the site!  A good way to keep up is to sign up for the site’s newsletter.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: You are being called upon to partake in one of the most important duties of an IT professional.  You will be asked to objectively evaluate claims and determine whether a relatively new development in virtualization technology – desktop virtualization – is a valid and useful solution for your environment.  You have already heard many strong arguments for desktop virtualization from much of the industry.  You will now hear from the other side: A discussion of how you can gain many of the benefits of virtualization without moving desktop computing to the confines of the data center.

OK, all drama aside, I should be clear about the point of this article.  My goal is not to convince you that desktop virtualization is not a good idea.  Rather, I’d like to provide some counter-point to a lot of the hype that we have been hearing lately.  Specifically, I’ll point out how many of the problems that desktop virtualization is designed to solve can be addressed in other ways.  The goal for you, the reader, is to determine which of these is the best way to solve these problems.  Order in the court!

Perhaps it’s a bit too dramatic, but I think it presents a good case, overall.  Feel free to leave your pleas and judgments here.

Have you ever wished you could go back in time and remember how your virtual machines (VMs) used to look? You know, like before you installed that pre-production beta patch on a mission-critical application? Or before you accidentally overwrote the passwords in a login table by leaving off the WHERE clause of an SQL UPDATE statement?

As the father of more VMs than I can count, I often feel the same way. Fortunately, Microsoft’s Hyper-V provides a useful method of creating and applying point-in-time views of the status of your VMs: the aptly-titled snapshots feature. This easy-to-use tool can create VM snapshots from the Hyper-V Management Console.

See the full article for an in-depth discussion of the benefits of snapshots and how you can use them to help manage your VMs.

I recently wrote an article on SCVMM for SearchServerVirtualization.com.  From the introduction:

Is it really possible to have too much of a good thing? When it comes to virtual machines (VMs), that often seems to be the case. More is not necessarily better from the standpoint of systems administration. The issue of VM sprawl – the rapid proliferation of virtual machines in a production environment – can present a challenge. Apart from the larger number of operating systems and application stacks to manage, the entire process of IT systems management can be upended.

For most IT departments, automation is a necessity for managing more than a few systems, whether physical or virtual. In this tip, I will offer a solution: Microsoft’s System Center application suite. While this software package is only one option, I’ll use it to illustrate how automation can help resolve real issues.

You can access the entire article, Managing virtual machines with Microsoft System Center for free online.

Whether your primary job function is more like that of Han Solo – avoiding Imperial pursuit forces – or that of Darth Vader (doing said pursuing), you know that performance is important.  Part of every IT manager’s mission is to squeeze as much potential performance out of existing investments as possible.  While your data center might resemble a massive Death Star, it’s important that it’s individual components run as smoothly as, say, a TIE Fighter.

In my previous article in this series, Empire Management 101, I focused on topics related to how you can monitor the performance of your virtualization host servers and the VMs that they support.  In this article, I’m going to focus on the application of this information – how you can use performance details to make better decisions about how to deploy and distribute your VMs.

Don’t let all the Star Wars references fool you – the article does include some important technical recommendations for monitoring, managing, and optimizing virtualization performance.  May the Force be with you!

When it comes to determining the type of storage to deploy, are you a storage-technology snob? Or do you consider network-attached storage (NAS) devices as part of your storage strategy?

There’s clearly a perception among some systems administrators that high-end solutions such as Fibre Channel-based SANs provide the better performance. Or they might prefer products based on iSCSI, which provide some of the same benefits such as block-level disk I/O. Plus, iSCSI-based products run over existing copper-based Ethernet connections instead of requiring a much more expensive fiber optic infrastructure, making them even more attractive to admins.

So where does this leave the tried and true NAS device? While newer technologies get most of the attention, modern NAS devices provide many new features, including ones that simplify virtualization and support larger numbers of virtual machines (VMs). How these advanced features benefit virtualization will be the focus of this tip.

Personally, I think NAS solutions are great for organizations of all sizes.  They’re certainly far more cost effective than Fibre Channel SANs and work well with solutions that don’t need block-level I/O.

Read the full article to learn about these advanced features and to find out if or how NAS devices can help alleviate potential storage-related issues for your virtual infrastructure.

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!

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!

IT organizations are often aware of the fact that costs associated with managing new technology can far outweigh the initial deployment costs. Virtualization is no exception. Although the ability to run multiple isolated workloads on the same hardware can provide immediate cost savings and benefits throughout the environment, the associated administration tasks involve significant time and effort.

Throughout the previous chapters, I have covered a wide array of practices and recommendations for gaining and retaining control over virtualized environments. The primary challenge is that properly managing an environment that contains dozens (if not hundreds) of virtual machines can be very difficult. When these tasks are performed manually, IT organizations must absorb significant costs.

Fortunately, there’s a better way—through the use of virtualization-aware enterprise automation solutions much of the work can be simplified or even eliminated. With the proliferation of virtual machine technology, literally dozens of products are available for meeting these needs. The focus of this chapter is on presenting factors that should be considered when evaluating these solutions. I’ll present details related to the overall goals of virtualization management, along with specific features IT organizations should look for in products that will help manage their mixed virtual and physical infrastructures.

I hope readers find the entire guide to be useful.  Feel free to leave questions and comments here.