The Lone Sysadmin

Heck yeah, I was approved to go to VMworld 2009 today.

In case you’re still trying to convince someone you should go, here’s the approach that has worked for me for the last three years, amidst constant budget problems and skepticism about virtual environments:

1. VMworld is the best opportunity & best value for VMware software training in the United States during the year. There are hundreds of sessions, labs, and other hands-on opportunities. You’ll learn better ways to do what you’re already doing, good ways to start doing things you want to do (like implementing vSphere 4, SRM, Lab Manager, View, etc.), and be able to talk to people who are already doing it to find out how well it really works. It’s also a great place to see what the future directions are for virtualization.

2. On top of the conference sessions itself the vendor showcase is very useful. See new product releases from vendors, learn about options for storage, networking, hardware and software to make your virtual environments even better.

3. Virtualization is the way that all future IT operations are going to be run. As such, a trip like this is an investment in your company’s IT future. Additionally, compared to the cost of hiring a consultant, a week of VMworld can be quite inexpensive. It also keeps the knowledge in-house. Not saying consultants aren’t handy, because they can be very knowledgeable and useful, but I’m always a fan of the local IT guys being the long-term experts on their own systems. VMworld helps with that.

4. The airfare is quite inexpensive from most places in the U.S., and with San Francisco there isn’t the perception of some lavish trip to exotic places to play golf. If you’re coming from outside the country the exchange rate is probably still quite favorable, too. And if your significant other wants to go, but doesn’t want to get stuck with a bunch of dorks talking about Extended VMotion Compatibility and HBA queue depths, Scott Lowe’s wife Crystal is organizing some touring, too. Plus, it’s the long Labor Day weekend, it’ll be awesome!

5. Networking with VMware staff, VMTN & Communities celebrities, and all those vExpert rock stars is handy. The virtualization community, while it’s growing rapidly, is still pretty small, and you can meet and buy beer on your expense account for all those folks whose blog and forum posts have saved your duff all year long.

Okay, #5 probably isn’t super useful in your justifications. But I do owe a lot of people beer. And there’s lots of great beer in San Francisco… Now to just find an expense account…

So get it together, people! Get registered, get your flights, and get moving!

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It’s budget season where I work. We operate on a chargeback model, so this means that I get to guesstimate what I’m going to need to spend next year, look into my crystal ball to see what I’m going to bring in, and then figure out if I can keep my chargeback rates the same or not. Infrastructure folks like me are at the bottom of the budgetary food chain, so changes to my rates have serious implications for people higher up. It’s been pretty nice to be able to drop the chargeback rates of virtual machines year after year, as hardware gets faster but the workloads remain fairly constant. Dropping your prices is definitely easier than raising them.

Something new in my budget this year is explicit funding for several people to go to VMworld. Over the last few years I’ve been able to attend as part of my organization’s training budget. With budgets shrinking I want to ensure that some folks get to go in 2009, so I’m building it into my service fees.

If you aren’t in charge of your budget you should find the person who is and lobby them now to put funding in for VMworld 2009. There are lots of good reasons they should send you.

• It’s a training opportunity, with hands-on labs where you get to use the software, learning best practices and good ways of solving problems.
• It’s an opportunity to talk to other people having the same problems and challenges as you, finding out what works and what doesn’t work before you spend a lot of time on it.
• It’s an opportunity to talk to VMware staff who can answer your questions directly, like by asking questions in sessions.
• It’s a way to see new technology, so you can be ahead of upgrade curves and be able to decide whether a particular technology, like SRM or VDI, is useful to you without starting a big in-house evaluation.
• VMworld is a great place to see all the other hardware and software vendors and the new technologies they are rolling out.
• It’s a way to get access to all the VMworld content, so you can look it up when you get home and implement all the good ideas that are presented in the various sessions, including the ones you missed because there were too many good sessions scheduled at the same time. :-)

So get going! I don’t want to hear next fall that you can’t attend. If you want to go plant the seed now in your management’s heads.

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Dr. Stephen Herrod is the featured speaker of the VMworld 2008 day 2 general session. He’s the CTO & senior VP of R&D. This post will be more notes than a coherent piece. I’ll follow up with some thoughts later today.

• Goal of the infrastructure layer is to aggregate resources and be as efficient as possible.
• vCompute layer: things like FlexMigration. Focused on the VM, making it as powerful as possible. Grown from 2 vCPUs to a future 8 vCPUs, 40 Gbps, 256 GB per VM, 200000+ IOPS.
• Next generation of resource pools, up to 64 nodes in a single cluster, 4096 processor cores, 64 TB of RAM, 6 million IOPS, all running under DRS.
• Distributed Power Management continuing in development. Their VMmark exercise saved 50% of the power with DPM enabled.
• vStorage: leverage all the advanced technology of the storage in a common framework. VMFS continues forward, with enhancements to Storage VMotion. Thin provisioning will be added, and linked clones will enable better patching methods. Focus will also be on vendor management tools, enabling an API for them to interact with the VDC-OS.
• Thin provisioning is great, but also a lot of work to help with overcommittment problems. They also want to leverage hardware methods of lazy allocations, too.
• vNetwork: VMotion doesn’t preserve state between ESX servers, which is a problem for things like security. New model is the vNetwork Distributed Switch, which is a cluster-wide implementation of the virtual switch, and VMs will take their network profiles with them when they VMotion. First third-party switch is the Cisco Nexus 1000V, which is nice because network admins can interact with the virtual switches like any other Cisco equipment.
• Application vServices layer: everything will work for existing application loads, as well as new ones that we don’t know about yet.
• vApp: existing VMs can be wrapped in the vApp container. Based on OVF, encapsulates all the different VMs that make up an application, also represents SLA information which represents a contract with your VDC-OS.
• A variety of technologies to help with planned and unplanned downtime, like NIC & HBA teaming, VCB, HA, VMotion, Storage VMotion, and at a high level, Site Recovery Manager.
• Fault Tolerance: focused on unplanned downtime for an application. Idea is that a shadow copy of a VM is running somewhere else, so if something happens the other VM will be available. A demo of the FT technology by Mark Vaughn of First American Corp. FT is simple to enable with a right-click in the new vCenter client. It basically starts a VMotion to copy the running state over, and then enables vLockstep to mirror the activities of the primary VM. FT helps with a lot of human error, cords coming out, powering off the wrong box. When something happens and FT kicks in it will automatically start reprotecting itself within the same resource pool.
• Security vServices: be able to describe the services in the vApp definition. The building block for the security services is a set of APIs called VMSafe. Security software is working outside the VMs themselves. Relies heavily on the distributed network switch. This means new VMs are automatically protected. It’s “right-sized” security capacity, which grows easily with your environment.
• Management vServices: VirtualCenter becomes vCenter, and way more extensible. Partners can plug in for extensibility and also for “pane of glass” sorts of things. ConfigControl, Orchestrator, CapacityIQ, and Chargeback all new modules to do cool things with the infrastructure.
• AppSpeed helps monitor applications and work with the VDC-OS to take actions. It discovers the topology of services in a non-intrusive way. Then looks at QoS from an end-user perspective, and can deduce when things are wrong. It’s a totally new way to collect information in the virtual framework. A demo from Asaf Wexler, formerly of Beehive (now with VMware). As the application is used a map of the dependencies is created automatically. The demo vCenter plugin was built overnight by the AppSpeed team. Stats available can help identify root causes of problems. Policy engine can take actions based on stats gathered, to fix problems automatically.
• vCenter: lots of work on alarm capabilities. Getting ported to Linux, also to be shipped as a virtual appliance. Adding multi-platform client technology to run on Macs, Linux, iPhones, etc. On the iPhone, if you shake it you trigger a disaster recovery scenario (joke!). :-)
• Cloud vServices: “cloud” most abused phrase since “virtualization.” A model to quickly use resources, to pay for only what you need, accessible with standard protocols, scalable & elastic, and economies of scale. “Local cloud” exists in your own data center. Needs to be more flexible. App compatibility maintained into the cloud, without having to rewrite an app. Standardization removes complexity in apps and lowers switching costs. Last, provides multi-tenancy in a resource pool, where others can come in and be assured their security and performance needs are met.
• vCloud APIs: image management, user accounts, chargeback, mobility, all APIs needed to bridge the gap between local clouds and off-premise clouds.  Clouds are federated, and the vApp/OVF definitions help determine where an app could run, whether it can be outside a firewall, for example, or it needs to stay internal.
• VMware View: targets applications and data, following a user and not their hardware. Use mobile devices, home computers, etc. securely and with proper management. View evolves VDI, User experience changes based on where you are, whether on a WAN, LAN (richer experience), or local (with graphics cards, etc.).  New technologies to cache VMs locally. Unity in Fusion and ACE contribute to these new technologies. A very thin layer to avoid other OS software. Demo by Jerry Chen of VMware, demonstrating setup tasks using View Manager and View Composer. Linked clones saves a lot of disk space while speeding the provisioning time. New client hypervisor runs VMs locally on hardware but lets you manage the VM from View Manager. Demo of adding Google Chrome to all the desktops using ThinApp, update master image, then notifies clients to restart. Jerry Chen then rickrolled the attendees to prove that Chrome works on the clients. Thanks. :-)

In the end, irtualization is proving to be a broad problem-solver. :-)

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Considering that VMware was founded in 1998, 2008 is definitely the year when virtualization became a teenager. Announcements at VMworld are indicating a certain level of maturity in the thinking of vendors, in that they are solving problems and wrapping up a lot of the loose ends that have plagued virtual infrastructure implementations. By wrapping all those problems up it frees time to work on more interesting things, like clouds.

On stage at VMworld 2008 Paul Maritz’ outlines the VMware strategy going forward. He commented that we’re moving away from a device- and hardware-centric world to one that is information- and people-centric. We’re also starting to think of our IT infrastructure as one giant computer. This is the basis behind the new announcements from VMware about the Virtual Data Center OS. VDC-OS is intended to be “an elastic, self-managing, self-healing substrate between the hardware pool and the application workloads.” VDC-OS is strategic, and will increase infrastructure efficiency, application agility, and create business-driven IT, including predictable, viable pay-for-usage models.

VDC-OS is one of the three prongs in VMware’s current strategy. The other two are vCloud and vClient. vCloud is a partnership with over 100+ vendors, federating the internal clouds IT departments build in their own data centers with the vast resources available from external cloud vendors. New features of vCenter will enable businesses to automatically instantiate a new server instance in a vendor’s cloud when needed. This should be really interesting, as businesses can rent capacity on-demand and manage it through the same framework they manage their local capacity.

vClient continues VMware’s efforts in desktop virtualization, but also takes it to a new level by acknowledging that people want their information abstracted from the hardware. They want to have their desktop wherever they are, whether it’s their actual desktop PC, a laptop, a thin desktop client, or even a PDA they carry around with them. This is good for workers and for IT departments, who can stop worrying about hardware as much. Broke your laptop? Here’s a new one. Bye.

Other notes I took from the keynote include:

• “Predictions are hard, especially about the future.” – Yogi Berra quote referenced by Maritz when he was displaying the SEC disclaimers.
• Intel Xeon 7400s are available, tying up a big loose end with FlexMigration.
• VMware is introducing vApps, new model for describing a collection of virtual appliances, as well as capturing metadata about QoS terms.
• External cloud providers can scale better but traditionally are not compatible with enterprise IT or the apps they need to run.
• The new AppSpeed product announced as part of the VDC-OS has the ability to learn about an application, rather than needing to instrument the app.
• VDI 3.0 will have excellent 3D graphics support, and the demo of the LEGO Indiana Jones game was a good one.
  

Overall the keynote was evolutionary, not revolutionary, but good nonetheless. Tomorrow Dr. Stephen Herrod will speak more about the technology. I hope we get to see some good demos. :-)

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Wondering if that other person in the elevator with you is a VMworld attendee? There are lots of clues:

1. Have they forgotten to take their conference badge off? A dead giveaway, for sure.

2. Are they carrying their blue & black VMworld bag? Also a dead giveaway.

3. Are they holding a folded piece of paper, twirling it around as if they are trying to find ‘north’ on a map? While IT folks like myself are usually used to not being able to see the sun the lack of right angles in the Venetian interior sometimes confuses us.

4. Are they wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts? IT folks live in climate controlled environments and this 100 degree weather, while cool by Nevada standards, is not cool by ours. If it ain’t 67 degrees and 50% humidity we melt or dry up.

5. Do they have three electronic devices on their belt? Are they talking on one, emailing on another, and cursing wireless connectivity in some way?

If the other person meets any of these criteria it’s likely that they, too, are a VMworld attendee. You should definitely introduce yourself.

In other news I’m having fun so far. Not a ton for me to do right now but as the day goes on I will be finding more and more people. It also looks like there’s a VMware Communities Meetup tonight at the V-Bar. I’ll probably go after finding Marc Farley from StorageRap. Stay tuned!

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Three days until VMworld starts! Heck yeah! I’m looking forward to blogging from the conference. I am also working with TechTarget to judge the Best of VMworld 2008 awards. That should be great, there’s a lot of new stuff being announced.

I’m in Tonopah, NV right now. If you look at the map the big gray spot south of us is Area 51. We traveled down the Extraterrestrial Highway (NV Highway 375) last night, but all we saw was a closed Little Ale’Inn, some deer, and a bunch of hares. No aliens. :-(

Today’s agenda: back to Vegas via Death Valley, and the Pioneer Saloon in Jean, NV. Photos to come shortly.

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As of 10:50 AM CDT I have a flight to Las Vegas for VMworld 2008. This means I’m completely registered and ready to go, waiting only for the course reservations to open up and the date to arrive.

This should be fun, especially since I’ve never been to Vegas before. I’m not really a gambler, so I’ll have to find other ways of amusing myself. Anybody have any suggestions for things I shouldn’t miss? And what else are people up to during the week?

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Mendel Rosenblum is one of the founders of VMware, chief scientist, and husband of VMware CEO Diane Greene. As such he’s got a lot of pull, getting his continuing vision of virtualization and systems management made reality.

He’ll be speaking in a few minutes out at VMworld 2007 in San Francisco. I’ll be liveblogging it in this post, so keep refreshing and I’ll keep posting.

8:30 AM – General session hall, Moscone Center halls B & C. Pop music playing, green and blue lights and graphics. As with the other liveblogging sessions a big thanks goes out to the VMware Community team for setting up tables, Ethernet connections, and power for us bloggers. Those guys are great and have really taken care of guys like myself. Thanks John, Robert, Brian, Anders, Cindy,

8:36 AM – A video of people at VMworld asking for virtualization in real life. “I’d like to snapshot conversations with my wife. That way when I say something stupid I can roll it back.” Hah! Awesome. Also talking about current wishes for VMware products.

8:39 AM – Karthis Rau, MC. Thanking folks for the party. Long tradition for VMworld to spend the last day on the future. Mendel Rosenblum on using mobility to transform your infrastructure, adding agility.

8:41 AM – Mendel Rosenblum. Going to talk about the state of virtualization, do some demos of stuff from VMware Engineering, and then we can predict for ourselves the future of virtualization.

Virtualization described as magic data center pixie dust. Not a helpful description. It’s more about complex machines interfacing with each other. You find an interface between them to interpose virtualization. As long as it still works like the old system you can get away with it. Adding levels of indirection, in CS terms. “All problems in CS can be solved by adding a level of indirection.”

(Funny, he’s nervous, got stuck, told a joke to break up the mental block. Awesome to see the human side of corporate leaders).

The first solution for the new layer of indirection was to cram more OSes on each physical piece of hardware. Second, because there is total control over where things are mapped we can do resource management and VMotion. Totally decouple them from the hardware to drive it as efficiently as possible.

Now we just adds pools of resources. The infrastructure makes the decision about how to use that pool most efficiently. Treat hardware as something you drop in.

8:50 AM – Rest of the industry really embracing this technology. An example: new hardware compatibility problems (making VMotion impossible to use). Causes partitions in the resource pool, makes life hard. Intel and AMD added capabilities to their CPUs to handle this, lie to the VM about the capabilities of the CPU so it remains backwards-compatible.

Talks about them asking for this compatibility early on. Asked the CPU guys to do this, they said “eliminate all the new features in the CPUs? What? No way!” And now we have it.

What sort of games can we play with this abstraction? Why can’t we move the storage around underneath the VM now? (my comment: SWEET, finally a public demo to confirm all those rumors out there). A demo of an ESX host with two data stores, unbalanced. Uses a script to connect to VirtualCenter and initiate storage VMotion. Graphs of the I/O to the data stores in real time showing the decline on one datastore and increase on the other. Relocation is complete. (applause!)

What does this get us? Leased storage is now easy to deal with. Capacity problems can be dealt with easily. Agnostic look at storage, you can move something from fibre channel SAN to a NAS device, no big deal. Excited about all these smart people working on placement problems for VMs. Now they can work on storage placement, too, optimizing that.

Next thing: virtual appliances. A review of the concept of virtual appliances, putting a stack of software together and building a “box” that you can download to do something specific, like CRM for your business. Gets rid of some of the traditional problems you see in an environment.

What about a marketplace for appliances? Appliances are really big, take a long time to download. What if you speed it up by adding “instant on” capabilities, so that you can stream a VM. Second demo, an engineer named Bruce showing the instant on appliances.

410 MB browser appliance, comparing the traditional download method to the streaming method. Starts a download on the traditional one, then goes to streaming one. “VMware OnDemand” the new product name, and a new stream manager built in. It’s prefetching what it needs, prioritize the blocks in the appliance that it’ll need. The appliance recorder analyzes the VM as you boot it and run some things, and then it orders the blocks appropriately.

Uses: marketplace, testing, ISVs, all sorts of things (my comment: ACE). Works with VDI, one of the big use cases.

9:03 AM – Software delivery models. Traditional (local only), SaaS (software as a service), hybrid (server-side management but local execution). See all of these models coexisting into the future.

Switches gears. High Availability. Describes a VM problem such that the infrastructure can notice the death of a VM and act on it, restart it. With the virtualization layer you can record the execution of the VM inexpensively, then take the log of execution and replay it to see where things went wrong. Present in Workstation now.

What if that is combined with HA to do Continuous Availability? Running a log of execution, sending it to a secondary VM to be replayed. (my comment: SWEET. Here’s my general DR solution. Plus, in a single stroke they killed a number of third-party products.). If there’s a problem with the primary VM or host the secondary can be activated seamlessly.

Demo from Dan from Engineering. An MS Exchange VM running LoadSim. Shows two VMs mirroring each other through the Continuous Availability feature. Mendel asks “If I pull the plug it’ll continue to run?” and goes looking around for the plug. Laughter. Plus the plug, the first VM dies, and in about five seconds the secondary takes over.

9:11 AM – Into the future. What are the hard IT problems to solve? Can take care of CPU & memory management now. New DR products now to manage site failures. New storage management tools. New hardware fault tolerance features. Can we guess what’s next?

Another thing to talk about is how the virtualization layer is responsible for the optimization of hardware. How do you do this in the most efficient way? In the future we can fine tune this process. We’re really conservative now, but as the algorithms get better we can do more. Power efficiency is a good area to tune for.

We’ve only scratched the surface with virtualization. Not much deployment, really, but as people see it the deployment tends to be rapid. Real bump up in efficiency. But it’s compatible with the way things are, so you can just slip it into your data center. Then you get opportunities to do new cool things.

9:16 AM – Thanks everybody. Karthik Rau again. Virtualization driving a complete refresh of the data center.

VMworld Europe 2008 is Feb 27-28 in Cannes, France. VMworld US 2008 is in Las Vegas. Powerpoint and audio for each session will be online.

Thanks all of us for coming. Safe travels.

(My comments: I won’t beat the pundits to the analysis but this is groundbreaking. More later).

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