This document discusses virtualizing tier 1 applications. It begins by showing how virtualization adoption has increased significantly for mission critical applications. It then discusses specific steps and considerations for virtualizing tier 1 applications, including: 1. Ensuring the platform (hardware, virtualization software, etc.) can adequately support the application. 2. Ensuring the people and processes are in place to design, implement, operate and troubleshoot the virtualized application. This includes discussing skills, support models, change management and monitoring. 3. Reviewing the application itself and existing reference architectures to understand virtualization best practices and sizing for that application. The goal is to virtualize at the application layer rather than physical server layer.

1. Virtualising Tier 1 Application Iwan ‘e1’ Rahabok, Senior Systems Consultant, VMware e1@vmware.com | M: +65 9119 9226 | facebook.com/e1ang

2. Introduction Step 1: The Platform Step 2: The People Step 3: The Process Step 4: The Application itself

3. Introduction

4. The Trend Is Clear… % of customers running appsin productionon VMware 56% 53% 50% 41% 34% 36% 27% 24% MS Exchange MS SharePoint MS SQL Oracle Middleware Oracle DB IBM WebSphere IBM DB2 SAP Source: VMware customer survey, September 2008, sample size 1038 Data: Within subset of VMware customers running a specific app, % that have at least one instance of that app in production in a VM In a recent Gartner poll, 73% of customers claimed to use x86 virtualization for mission critical applications in production Source: Gartner IOM Conference (June 2008) “Linux and Windows Server Virtualization Is Picking Up Steam” (ID Number: G00161702)

5. HW-assist Virtualisation Source: Published/submitted/approved results as of July 2, 2009. Performance tests and ratings are measured using specific computer systems and/or components and reflect the approximate performance of Intel products as measured by those tests. Any difference in system hardware or software design or configuration may affect actual performance. Buyers should consult other sources of information to evaluate the performance of systems or components they are considering purchasing. For more information on performance tests and on the performance of Intel products, visit http://www.intel.com/performance/resources/limits.htm Copyright © 2009, Intel Corporation. * Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

6. VMware VMmark Use VMmark as the basis for CPU selection It is the official benchmark for VMware, and it uses multiple workload Other benchmark are not run on vSphere, and typically test 1 workload Use it as a guide only You need head room and HA. How it’s done 1 Tile = 6 VM. Each is 1 vCPU. MS Exchange, MySQL, Apache, J2EE, File Server, Idle VM Result page: www.vmware.com/products/vmmark/results.html VMmark 1.1 results is directly comparable to VMmark 1.0 results. The underlying virtual hardware definitions and load levels for each workload have not changed. 1 Tile = 6 VM Each 2 CPUs 2GB RAM

7. Sample Results (as at Feb 2010. Major update in May) VMware does not recommend 1 OEM over the other. I use 1 OEM here so we don’t compare between OEM Look at this number This number is when comparing with same #Tiles Opteron 8439, 24 cores Xeon 5570, 8 cores Opteron 2435, 12 cores Xeon 5470, 8 cores This tells us that DL380 G6can run 17 Tiles, at 100% utilisation. Each Tile has 6 VM, but 1 is idle. 17 x 5 VM = 85 active VM in 1 box! At 70% ESX host utilisation, that’s around 59 VM. DL 385 G6 runs 11 tiles. The 2 boxes have similar date submission, around mid 2009.

8. Xeon 5500 improvement over previous generation Confidential 8 Around 2:1 improvement Details Servers were Dell M600 and Dell 2950 Storage were a few Dell EqualLogic PS5000XV iSCSI arrays. MS Exchange Load Generator (LoadGen) was used to run the tests. The VM had 10GB of RAM and installed with Windows 2008 x64 Enterprise Edition and the Exchange mailbox role.

9. 8,000 Mailboxes 16,000 Mailboxes 16 cores 16 cores Exchange 2007: same box, 2x performance

10. SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL SQL 8 servers 16 processors / licenses 2 servers 4 processors / licenses $596K >70% cost reduction $600K $600K SA $500K $500K 16 Enterprise Edition licenses $400K $400K $300K $300K $158K $200K $200K SA $100K $100K 4 licenses 8 servers 2 servers Consolidate Software Licenses

11. Performance App Delivery Oracle Licensing App QoS Consolidation Match Native Performance Even in Consolidation Scenarios 95%+ Oracle instances match native performance on VMware Virtualization-Friendly Licensing Increase utilization of Oracle licenses Reduce HW costs by >50% Consolidate servers by 4X – 20X Accelerate Application Delivery Provision On-Demand (production and test/dev) Increase Application Quality of Service Scale dynamically Built-in High Availability and simple Disaster Recovery Why Deploy Oracle Products on VMware?

12. Step 1

13. Designing for Tier 1 How does your Architecture….. lend itself for troubleshooting? ensure high availability? integrate with DR? integrate with security? minimise risk during vSphere update/upgrade? encourage the expert own their respective area? Storage, Network, Server help Application team monitor/troubleshoot? Is vSphere alone sufficient? Products from VMware Products from non VMware that deliver superior technology Next few slides show an example of an architecture.

14. Sample Architecture Secondary DC Main Data Center VMware SRM

15. Main Data Center

16. Example of our Design being applied

18. ESXi: Network Configuration

20. Monitor application performance against SLAs at the transaction level

21. Root cause analysis and faster troubleshootingApplication Performance Monitoring

22. Value add over vSphere AppSpeed provides application-awareness to vSphere. Answer questions like: What applications are running in my data center? Are the users getting good response times? When the application is slow, is it at all my VMware fault? Where is the bottleneck? Am I meeting my SLA? What are the different transactions a user makes on an application and how are they performing? What is the relationship between application performance and resource utilization?

24. AppSpeed maps the app for one or more servers

27. Compare per-transaction performance

28. Drill down to source of changes

30. Step 2

31. The “people” side Knowledge Design knowledge Troubleshooting knowledge Virtual environment is easy to install & configure. Troubleshooting is a different ball game. Practice helps. Read the logs (fastest way to put your kids to sleep ) VCP & VTSP are Level 100. Consider Advance VCP. Process vCOE Proper Support TAM Business Critical Support

32. Design Knowledge Design Process Overview ESX/ESXi Host Design vSphere Virtual DC Design vSphere Network Design vSphere Storage Design Virtual Machine Design Management and Monitoring Design

33. Troubleshooting Knowledge ESXi Troubleshooting ESX, ESXi, and vCenter Log Files Network Troubleshooting Management Troubleshooting Storage Troubleshooting vMotion & storage vMotion Troubleshooting DRS, HA, DPM, VM Troubleshooting

34. Storage Latency in virtualised world Confidential 27

35. Planning Ahead… “Testing” period Explore Expand Standardize 6 months (you are not full time)

36. Internal support

37. Common Questions What’s in it for me? Is my application supported? Who owns Vmware, Windows or UNIX? Who’s going to pay for these LUNs? Trunks into a server? No way! How are we going to secure this environment? How do we monitor and who do we call?

38. Business Critical Support Designated Support Team Direct Routing to Senior Level Engineers Customer Site Profile Proactive Health Check Root Cause Analysis Support for Migration and Updates Monthly Support Review Meeting http://www.vmware.com/support/services/bcs.html

39. Copyright © 2004 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. Technical Account Manager (TAM) Proactive, on-site, objectives-based

40. Step 3

41. Common Questions How do we charge for this? What should we track, and how do we do it? You mean it automatically changes? What kind of changes are there and what are the risks? How do we manage releases? When do we expand? How do we react to alerts?

42. Virtualization Capability Assessment Before doing Tier 1…. take an honest look at your organisation capability for Tier 1? no need to be long & detailed assessment.

43. Service Lifecycle Phases

44. VCA Methodology - Assessing the VI Ecosystem Does the environment have the appropriate number of staff and/or skill set to implement, operate and manage the VMware Infrastructure? Do the appropriate procedures exist to allow the organization to effectively manage the VMware Infrastructure at the required service level? Do the necessary tools exist to support the processes and operate the virtualization environment? Can the current VMware Infrastructure design (represented in the existing implementation) provide the desired service levels or operational behavior (i.e. automation, etc.)?

45. Criteria Within Each Service Phase People Process Technology Architecture

46. Step 4 The Application Itself

47. Application Review the Ref Arch Desktop MS Exchange 2007 SAP Do Application-sizing, not physical sizing. 1000 SAP SD users, not 8 core Xeon 55890 Go Horizontal if possible. Consolidation Ratio may be lower

48. Sample: Exchange 2010 Ref Arch