Server virtualization is not a new gratitude for his 40 years in the big IBM machine introduced the concept of virtualization. But the server virtualization this "old Former Yan Wang Xietang" until nearly two years, "flying into the homes of ordinary people" such as mushrooming. Today, if your server virtualization is still not carried out, or even simply not thought to understand the benefits of virtualization, I feel a little behind the times.
What is virtualization pushed to the limelight of today's IT sector, the wave do? In fact, the reason why server virtualization by IT industry wide attention, not some technology enthusiasts of hot-headed, but from the following several elements. First of all, PC servers have become more robust, do not feel the board had "critical applications" lobby has been a growing PC server "erosion" with only high-end Unix server can act as role to play, low-cost PC servers, and easy to use, etc. characteristics, so that we gradually increased the confidence of the PC servers, PC servers constantly conquering a city, constantly gaining more and more attention.
How to choose the right virtualization product to support the next generation data center? What are the characteristics of virtual data center is essential for? The author believes that the data center-class server virtualization product must have the following seven features:
1. Data center virtualization programs need access to enterprise-wide user authentication
To virtualization technology into the data center-class environment, we must first examine the situation of users of the product. If a small number of users of the product, not in a variety of complex environments, the actual verification, even if you can provide a very nice presentation, still can not key in the data center environment to get these large-scale use. Because the data center environment is often very complex, data center users time online applications have strict requirements, the introduction of immature products may lead to endless trouble.
Today, we can see many different server virtualization products, the most mature is 9 years ago, the first headlong into the PC server virtualization VMware, the global Fortune 100 companies all use the VMware virtualization solutions. Meanwhile, VMware's virtualization solutions is also more than 20,000 enterprise users access to the verification environment and praise. While entering the Chinese market soon, but has established a large number of Chinese users, VMware has become the preferred enterprise-class data center server virtualization brand.
2. Virtualized data center to form a complete eco-system
To access the data center applications, virtualization products must meet the needs of a variety of complex environments. A wide range of data center equipment, model complexity, which made virtualization products demanding. Virtualization products is not only the server can be installed in the PC everything will be fine, because virtualization is often related to IT, the whole structure, so virtualization and storage products and ensure network equipment compatibility seamless access to various hardware manufacturers to support and recognition. In addition, virtualization is also involved in the appropriate operating system and application layer, and data centers have a variety of X86 platform running the operating system and application of good compatibility and ensure interoperability. Therefore, the selection process of virtualization, IT architecture through to examine all aspects of its compatibility and interoperability, not just simple and determine the trouble from the server.
At present, the compatibility of virtualization as an important factor in the VMware has been the industry a variety of hardware and software platform providers reached a broad co-operation, the formation of a broad support platform. This constitutes a program of VMware virtualization ecosystem, to ensure that virtualization based on VMware to create enterprise-class data centers can receive fast, timely and extensive support.
3. Data center virtualization program to have strong reliability and scalability
Server Virtualization is rapidly changing the IT architecture, so once deployed, virtualization product reliability and scalability for data centers becomes crucial, life and death. Therefore, reliability, and expansion of capabilities from the comprehensive study of virtualization products face. In order to achieve the reliability requirements, data center virtualization architecture can only select the bare metal virtualization architecture.
For this architecture, virtualization layer stability are critical, so in order to achieve reliability requirements, virtualization layer is often designed virtualization kernel, rather than general-purpose operating system, which can improve reliability. Of course, the best reliability and scalability of the verification is not a theory, but the practical application of the user. As shown below is VMware ESX Server users the actual data, enhanced through a virtual layer to ensure that the PC server is running more than 950 days without any downtime phenomenon.
The cases also show a large number of users VMware ESX Server remarkable expansion, many domestic and international users have a PC in the 4-way CPU server deployment and reliable operation successfully more than 30 virtual machines. The VMware VirtualCenter management tools is the complexity in the data center environment for their outstanding have been easy to manage thousands of virtual machines, a virtualization management center, data center virtualization choice for environmental management.
4. Data center virtualization performance also made heavy demands
Data center performance is an important indicator of the pursuit, so virtualization is also a study on the properties of an element of consumption. A good virtualization product itself to be able to account for as little as possible resources, allowing more resources to run user applications. Scheduling should also be good resources between different virtual machines to run in a virtual platform to ensure that all applications are high-speed reliable operation. To achieve this requirement, virtualization products on the CPU and memory to achieve precise control of such resources, such as to control the CPU MHz, the memory control to the MB, to ensure maximum utilization of the resources of the server in the same time, as simple as possible by the virtualization layer bring the load. Of course, some features CPU also well supported, such as: multi-thread, multicore, virtualization. As shown below, is in the VMware ESX Server running on IBM Notes on a virtual machine configuration, where multi-threading CPU, MHz configuration is simple, to maximize use of CPU resources so as to achieve the optimal performance .
Of course, the effective scheduling of resources is an important indicator of performance, by the following Reservation (reservation value), Limit (max) and the Shares (share) the management of the scheduling at the system critical resources to ensure efficiency of system resources use. Can be assigned only the most basic resources, through the Shares to the introduction of the priority of the virtual machine and resource competition, when multiple virtual machines simultaneously competing for a resource, based on their Shares to be allocated to ensure that high-priority virtual machines most first access to these resources. The same time ensure that these resources when idle, the other virtual machines can also be used.
In addition, the performance of virtualization can be from virtual environment and physical environment compared to determine the resource virtualization occupancy. The following is a user-site in Hong Kong on VMware ESX 3.01 and comparing the physical machine performance test results, using the test tool is SPECcpu INT2000. You can see the performance of virtualization have little effect on the server, basically a small impact at 6-7%, and slightly different effects for different applications.
5. Data center virtualization program to be able to support enterprise-class application load
Data centers vary widely, some applications of the load may be higher, how to support these high-load applications, virtual platform is a challenge, as listed in the application diagram. To do this, select the virtual time of the product depends on the load support capacity, it will be so many applications, data centers can not enjoy the benefits of virtualization, management had to achieve group and increase the complexity of the data center . VMware ESX 3.x on each virtual machine can support to 16GB of memory and 4 virtual CPU, large loads can easily run a variety of applications, fully meet the data center on the ability to support high-load applications.
6. Data center virtualization to provide flexible resource scheduling and dynamic load regulation capability
Construction based on virtualization in the data center, enjoy the server utilization to improve, we must also take into account the ease of maintenance. For example, when a physical server virtualization to run 20-30 months, if not an effective framework for the design and provide resources for dynamic scheduling capabilities, will enable the maintenance of the physical server becomes struggling. Because in the traditional mode, each server hosts only one application, usually for shutdown to maintain the server, this time will only affect an application. Deployment of server virtualization platforms, the server hardware will affect the dozens of application downtime, making stops physical server to be even. Therefore, virtualization platform must provide the virtual machine live migration capabilities, the need for server maintenance, the physical server, virtual machine dynamic online migration to other physical servers, making maintenance of peace of mind. In fact, the current virtualization leader VMware on the Virtual Infrastructure 3 product provides functionality to implement VMotion virtual machine migration of the dynamic line.
When we left the server maintenance, we simply run on its Windows and Novell virtual machines through the VMotion technology, online migration to the right physical server. Started on the left after the physical server maintenance, or even change into the new server. VMotion technology allows data center users to easily stop the application of physical servers and keep the myth.
Of course, if the load according to the size of the virtual machine, virtual machine's dynamic distribution of data center virtualization will allow for more returns, allowing users greater flexibility to control their server resources and application distribution. This requires the virtual machine live migration feature of support, no online migration of virtual functions, dynamic distribution of the virtual machine becomes a castle in the air. In fact, VMware by DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduling) function, has the physical server load according to the distribution of the distribution of the dynamic load, and ensured that all access to the physical server resources to maximize the use, thus avoiding a server resources scarce resources on a server and the other free, and this also indirectly increase server utilization, reducing server hardware investment costs.
7. Data center virtualization program to provide outstanding management can
Once the deployment of virtualization, the management of the entire data center virtualization will rely heavily on the management. Therefore, virtualization management must be precise, accurate and convenient. This is also the choice of virtualization products, one of the important considerations. Of course, out of consideration virtualization management software itself, but also note that virtualization management software and third-party software integration capabilities and virtualization products that are available and easy to use SDK API, to facilitate the secondary development.
VMware aims to provide the industry's most sophisticated Virtual Center to manage the virtualized data center environment, to enjoy the enormous benefits of virtualization, while not increasing the burden of user management, but lower data center server management more difficult.
Data center virtualization is irresistibly rapid development, whether you admit it or not, by 2009 more than 50% of new purchases will default to PC server virtualization. Through comprehensive consideration of the above seven major factor, you can easily lie data center virtualization products, the best choice. The selection based on full consideration and virtualization solutions to meet data center reliability, stability, compatibility, performance, manageability and other aspects, can they really enjoy the benefits of virtualization.