Managing virtual servers

Proper virtualization implementation and management means cost savings, including the cost of server hardware, support, and management. This also simplifies server deployment and reduces energy consumption. To fully benefit from these benefits, stack virtualization-level management must be independent of applications or physical servers.

Fortunately, if the management is in place, it is not difficult to be independent.

Indeed, in the virtual world, server configuration management and backup have become easier. However, monitoring management, especially checking the physical resources at the bottom of the server, is more important. You must balance the type and quantity of virtual applications between physical servers, and focus on maximizing resource utilization.

If an error occurs at this stage, the execution of some or even all virtual applications running on physical servers will be severely affected.

Successful management of virtual servers means understanding that virtualization introduces a new level in the server software stack, you do not need to manage the virtual hierarchy by managing the underlying physical servers, virtual machines, or virtual machine applications.

Instead, virtualization monitoring and management must be separated from the operating system, application, or physical server layer. (Note: assume that you are using hypervisor products such as Xen or VMware. There are other virtualization products, such as Virtuozzo, that are located on top of the operating system. Although the description is slightly different, the basic principle is still the same .)

Second, you must remember that when virtual machines are independent from applications running on them, they can and will affect each other through physical servers and their available resources. All applications-to a small extent, including running on physical servers, virtual machines may behave like they are independent, which is one of the charm of virtualization. However, at the underlying layer, they all use the same resource pool on the physical server to obtain resources. Most of the work of successfully managing virtual servers is to ensure that all virtual machines obtain the resources they need as needed.

The third point is based on the first two points. Although managing virtual servers is similar to managing physical servers in many ways, so far they are not the same thing, and similar extensions are also different.

Good news

Despite a lot of warnings, users acknowledge that virtualization is successful in server management. "Virtual servers are easier to manage," said Mike Carvallho, CTO of Radiator Express Warehouse ." Most of the companies are famous for their 1-800-Radiator and one of the 200 licensed Radiator manufacturers in the United States and Canada. Carvallho manages nine Dell servers running VMware. These nine servers are distributed across two sites and support 55 virtual servers.

Not only does configuration management, capacity management, and recovery become simpler, but there are also fewer physical boxes to be processed. Carvalho said: "Once all hardware management was like a nightmare, and now this situation will disappear immediately ." In other aspects, physical servers of different vendors tend to have different characteristics, which makes patch and change management complicated and means to continuously provide a series of spare parts for old servers at any time.

When transferring to a virtual environment, many vendors take this opportunity to limit the number and type of physical servers and upgrade them to newer technologies. This allows the data center to limit the types of physical servers in the system, making it easier to maintain hardware synchronization.

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