Month: August 2008

I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to automate builds of Hyper-V servers in a Hyper-V cluster.  There’s lots of options now – I can create an image and sysprep it.  If I use diskless servers then I can snapshot that LUN in the SAN or I can use Ghost, ImageX or WDS to capture the image and deploy it.  Alternatively I can build up an unattended install using WAIK and scripts to slipstream the Hyper-V update and configure it.

We’re starting to see some posts hit the net on the subject now.  These 3 are interesting reads:

Why do I prefer Hyper-V, a version 1.0 hypervisor, over the more mature VMware ESX?  It’s quite simple; management.  This is where the "religious" VMware nutters scream about Virtual Center and ESXi web consoles – hold on to your hats, girls, this ones gonna be a bone shaker!

I am a "laxy admin".  I do not like to be poking and prodding in machines and consoles on a constant basis to do repetitive work.  There’s better things that I can be doing such as actual engineering projects or working on the business side of things.  I also like to know when something has gone wrong, either before it happens or before the customer calls us up.  The traditional solution seems to be to have lots of management consoles all over the place.  Honestly, that doesn’t work.  Once server and application crawl takes over, there’s too much fire fighting involved in working with lots of management solutions.

Here’s why I like HP (Dell play nice too AFAIK) and Hyper-V.  The fit in nicely with the concept of Optimised Infrastructure by being very manageable, more than their competition.  The idea is that you design your network, servers and applications so that they are easy to manage.  This means using integration and automation so there is less manual work to be done, the service is fault tolerant and reliable, you can focus on developing/enabling the business and the service that IT provides can be counted on.  We also reduce our operating costs.  Understanding these concepts and being able to use them is the difference between employing 15 IT staff and 77 IT staff (based on a real-world example).

So back on point … what’s all this got to do with Hyper-V?  MS’s System Center family of products are an integrated set of management tools to designed to build that automation and expertise into your network.  Yes, in the past they were MS centric but partners did expand them to include 3rd party solutions, e.g. *NIX and Cisco.  Now, MS is even doing this themselves.  One of the core products they sell is OpsMgr 2007, the monitoring solution.  Using an OpsMgr agent with management packs, I have expertise on different products that knows what to monitor, what is acceptable, what faults to watch for, best practices, etc.  I can even extend this or tweak it with exceptions.  This allows me to sit back and know that someone … or something … is watching my hardware, OS and applications. 

Here’s the fun bit.  There’s soon going to be a management pack for Hyper-V.  That means we get in-depth expertise for monitoring the health and performance of the virtualisation platform using the same single pane of glass that I use to monitor everything else.

So those VMware marketing types who try to sell ESXi off as being equal to Hyper-V, answer me this?  Where do I install an agent on a machine with no OS?  I’ve heard that I can monitor the hardware using cards in the server; what good is that for monitoring the hypervisor?  You answer me that the hypervisor has a web console.  Fantastic!  Do I really want to log into lots of little web consoles?  Ah … Virtual Center … so now I need to use it and my console that manages everything else?  Virtualisation is meant to be good for a lazy admin like me … you know .. less work, put my feet up, more time for playing games, etc. 

Microsoft’s answer to Virtual Center is Virtual Machine Manager 2008 which is being launched on September 8th.  VMM 2008 gives us management over the VM’s on our Hyper-V servers or cluster.  It includes the ability to audit physical machines to see if they’re candidates for virtualisation (don’t even have to pay for that agent license!) and a P2V conversion tool.  VMM 2008 integrates with OpsMgr 2007 SP1 via PRO or Performance and Resource Optimization.  You can read much more about that here.  The idea is simple.  OpsMgr monitors performance/health and understands the relationship between VM’s and hosts.  VMM 2008 manages VM creation and placement.  PRO links the two to share that knowledge and act on it.  What’s really cool is that we’re getting cradle-grave management of hosts and VM’s.  But not only at the hypervisor, but all the way through the "stack" from the hardware, the host virtualisation, the VM and the VM’s OS and applications.

That means I have a single integrated management solution for my entire network.  I’m a big believer in infrastructure optimisation.  I’ve witnessed it working and making my life easier.  I’ve also witnessed the opposite where there was no management despite there being lots of junkware being installed to "manage" points of the infrastructure.  Automation, expertise and integration are the keys to success.  For me, that’s why I like HP servers/storage and Hyper-V because they can be easily managed using Microsoft System Center.

The Windows Server 2008 User Group (Ireland) will be running an event on Hyper-V and System Center VMM 2008.  There will be 3 sessions:

• Dave Northey (Microsoft): Hyper-V – we can get a little deeper on this topic now that the product has been released.
• Aidan Finn (ME) (C Infinity): Lessons I’ve learned about Hyper-V – Aidan will share his experiences with the product and things you should be aware of when setting up a lab or production environment.
• Mark Gibson (Microsoft): Virtual Machine Manager 2008 – System Center VMM2008 is due to be released in Q3 2008.  It is Microsoft’s answer to VMware’s Virtual Center and will be an essential tool for managing production Hyper-V deployments.

Attending The Event

The session is free to attend for members of the Windows Server 2008 Users Group.  Membership and joining the group are free.  Once you are joined, we will send an invite out to you – assuming there are places still free. 

Places are limited to 20 so book now while you can.