Handbook 1 DESIGNING A MISSION-CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE 2 VIRTUAL APPLICATION PERFORMANCE TESTING: AN ART FORM 3 THE PROS AND CONS OF VIRTUALIZING SQL SERVER ENVIRONMENTS 4 EXCHANGE 2013 STORAGE CONSIDERATIONS WHEN VIRTUALIZING ON HYPER-V VIRTUALIZATION CLOUD APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT NETWORKING STORAGE ARCHITECTURE DATA CENTER MANAGEMENT BI/APPLICATIONS DISASTER RECOVERY/COMPLIANCE SECURITY Virtualizing Mission- Critical Applications Mission-critical applications no longer have to be confined to physical hardware. But before you virtualize the applications that keep your business running, learn how to avoid performance and availability issues.
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Handbook
1DESIGNING A MISSION-CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE
2VIRTUAL APPLICATION PERFORMANCE TESTING: AN ART FORM
3THE PROS AND CONS OF VIRTUALIZING SQL SERVER ENVIRONMENTS
4EXCHANGE 2013 STORAGE CONSIDERATIONS WHEN VIRTUALIZING ON HYPER-V
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Virtualizing Mission- Critical ApplicationsMission-critical applications no longer have to be confined to physical hardware. But before you virtualize the applications that keep your business running, learn how to avoid performance and availability issues.
Home
Editor’s Note
Designing a Mission-Critical Infrastructure
Virtual Appli-cation Perfor-
mance Testing: An Art Form
The Pros and Cons of
Virtualizing SQL Server Environ-
ments
Exchange 2013 Storage Consid-erations When Virtualizing on
Hyper-V
2 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I S S I O N - C R I T I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N S
EDITOR’S NOTE
Getting to Know Your Enterprise Apps
Many companies have moved past the question of “Why should we virtualize
our enterprise applications?” to “How should we virtualize them?” Yes, security,
performance and availability are still major concerns for these important applica-
tions, but the advantages of virtualization often outweigh those issues—which
can generally be addressed with good testing, migration and management policies.
In this handbook, Mark Vaughn offers an overview of issues concerning virtu-
alizing enterprise applications, including tier-one and mission-critical applica-
tions. By detailing the various types of applications that can be safely virtualized,
he outlines how to design a virtual architecture that will sustain even perfor-
mance-intensive apps. The trick, he says, is understanding and preparing for the
particularities of each application before migrating.
Supporting that idea of getting better acquainted with your applications, Mike
Nelson’s article discusses the important of testing virtual apps. Nelson outlines
steps for evaluating how your application will perform in a virtual environment,
but his most important point is that there’s no one approach that will work every
time in the dynamic world of virtualizing a company’s critical resources—hence
why he defines testing as more of an art form than an exact science.
Home
Editor’s Note
Designing a Mission-Critical Infrastructure
Virtual Appli-cation Perfor-
mance Testing: An Art Form
The Pros and Cons of
Virtualizing SQL Server Environ-
ments
Exchange 2013 Storage Consid-erations When Virtualizing on
Hyper-V
3 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I S S I O N - C R I T I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N S
The final articles in this handbook provide guidance for virtualizing two of the
most critical and commonly used applications. Basit Farooq takes you through the
pros and cons of virtualizing SQL Server and Serdar Yegulalp gives valuable tips
concerning storage for IT pros looking to virtualize Exchange 2013 with Hyper-V.
With their advice, you’ll find out if your organization is ready to virtualize its
applications. n
Laura Aberle
Associate Features Editor
EDITOR’S NOTE
Home
Editor’s Note
Designing a Mission-Critical Infrastructure
Virtual Appli-cation Perfor-
mance Testing: An Art Form
The Pros and Cons of
Virtualizing SQL Server Environ-
ments
Exchange 2013 Storage Consid-erations When Virtualizing on
Hyper-V
4 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I S S I O N - C R I T I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N S
1MISSION- CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
Designing a Mission-Critical Infrastructure
In IT, many users have abandoned physical servers and traveled far down the
virtualization road. As virtualization has moved from the trendy minority to the
trusted majority, those who have resisted it are considered dinosaurs clinging to
yesterday’s practices. But one has to ask, “Are they resisting the inevitable or are
they simply protecting their business?”
When the ability to conduct business is on the line, IT departments exercise an
abundance of caution. For some, the prospect of virtualizing mission-critical appli-
cations has been considered off-limits because, frankly, why fix what isn’t broken?
But over the past few years, this “Why fix what isn’t broken?” mentality has shifted
concerning virtualizing critical applications.
WHAT IS A MISSION-CRITICAL APPLICATION?A mission-critical application is an essential component of core business func-
tions. A failure or interruption in a mission-critical application can have a severe
impact on an organization’s ability to conduct business. The term tier-one appli-
cation is often used synonymously, though it refers to the performance needs of
Home
Editor’s Note
Designing a Mission-Critical Infrastructure
Virtual Appli-cation Perfor-
mance Testing: An Art Form
The Pros and Cons of
Virtualizing SQL Server Environ-
ments
Exchange 2013 Storage Consid-erations When Virtualizing on
Hyper-V
5 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I S S I O N - C R I T I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N S
1MISSION- CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
an application. A tier-one application requires finely tuned resources and reliable
hardware to provide the desired performance metrics. While it cannot be said that
all mission-critical applications are also tier-one applications, it is highly likely
that any tier-one applications will be mission-critical.
So, first, it may be time to revisit the “Why fix
what isn’t broken?” philosophy of deploying mission-
critical applications. Five years ago, if a physical server
used only a third of the available processing power, or
just a fraction of the available memory resources, it
would be labeled as broken. That is exactly where we
find ourselves in today’s data center. A physical server
now holds more compute resources than the average
operating system or software platform can use. In a
physical server environment, efforts are being need-
lessly replicated, valuable resources are left untapped, and power consumption is
increasing. At the same time, the value of these mission-critical applications is
constant. What was once conservative and safe is now beginning to look broken.
With the power of modern server hardware and hypervisors, you no longer
sacrifice high-end performance to gain the high-availability and resource con-
sumption benefits of virtualization. Given their ability to fully exploit the vast
amount of resources available in modern x86 servers, virtual platforms can often
A physical server now holds more compute resources than the average operating system or software plat-form can use.
Home
Editor’s Note
Designing a Mission-Critical Infrastructure
Virtual Appli-cation Perfor-
mance Testing: An Art Form
The Pros and Cons of
Virtualizing SQL Server Environ-
ments
Exchange 2013 Storage Consid-erations When Virtualizing on
Hyper-V
6 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I S S I O N - C R I T I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N S
1MISSION- CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
yield the same performance as physical servers, if not better.
A virtual server is also portable, no longer tied to a specific piece of hardware. In
terms of availability and disaster recovery, this is a significant advantage. Whereas
recovering a physical system often requires a second set of identical hardware, al-
most any x86 hardware can now be enlisted to recover a virtual server. And what
application could be more in need of a solid and efficient disaster recovery or
high-availability solution than a mission-critical application? In fact, even if an
application’s virtual performance may not match the performance in a physical
environment, availability gains could outweigh small dips in performance.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR VIRTUALIZING MISSION-CRITICAL APPSOnce the decision has been made to virtualize, you need to build appropriate
strategies for virtualizing mission-critical applications. You may need to develop
unique strategies for each. If one application has multiple components, evaluate
the benefits of affinity and anti-affinity rules, which control where virtual ma-
chines (VMs) can be located, to either keep components on the same physical host
or to force them to run from separate hosts. In some cases, you may want to run
from the same host to improve performance. Other applications may require the
resilience of spreading infrastructure components out on different hosts. You may
also need to organize hypervisor clusters or use affinity rules to adhere to licensing
Home
Editor’s Note
Designing a Mission-Critical Infrastructure
Virtual Appli-cation Perfor-
mance Testing: An Art Form
The Pros and Cons of
Virtualizing SQL Server Environ-
ments
Exchange 2013 Storage Consid-erations When Virtualizing on
Hyper-V
7 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I S S I O N - C R I T I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N S
1MISSION- CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
requirements. Though it is rare, you may also want to consider dedicating an entire
virtualization host to one VM. This is usually done for licensing or performance
reasons. Even though it does not aid in consolidation and reducing footprint, it
provides advantages in the areas of availability and recoverability.
Another critical decision is how to move the workload from a physical
server to a virtual one. While physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversion tools may be
adequate for other applications, be careful about using them with mission-critical
applications. The settings of the OS and subsequent applications were originally
customized for a physical server, and though conversion tools are designed to find
and adjust these settings during migration to a VM, a setting can be overlooked.
When every millisecond counts in the performance and availability of an applica-
tion, you don’t want to bring over artifacts from an install that was not intended
for the virtual server.
Treat this migration like a hardware refresh. The operating system and appli-
cations should be installed fresh. Where feasible, even configuration files should
be created anew. Recognizing that manually recreating configurations may also
introduce risk, use your knowledge of the application or contact the application
vendor for advice in deciding which configurations can be safely migrated without
carrying over legacy attributes.
Since each application may require a unique approach, below are some ex-
amples of the thought process behind a few popular mission-critical workloads.
Home
Editor’s Note
Designing a Mission-Critical Infrastructure
Virtual Appli-cation Perfor-
mance Testing: An Art Form
The Pros and Cons of
Virtualizing SQL Server Environ-
ments
Exchange 2013 Storage Consid-erations When Virtualizing on
Hyper-V
8 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I S S I O N - C R I T I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N S
n Web servers. Web servers are often inexpensive resources, almost a commodity
in many organizations. They have low resource demands and are often deployed
in groups. Few organizations would consider a Web server a mission-critical
application. But an Internet presence is essential to conducting business in today’s
environment. Targeting Web servers are a win-win for virtualization. They have
a small footprint that is easy to virtualize, and they benefit greatly from the high
availability and agility offered by virtualization. Demand for Web servers can also
be closely linked to seasonal trends and business cycles, allowing them to benefit
from virtualization’s ability to rapidly deploy and decommission VMs.
The best method is to first create a virtual Web server and migrate a website to
it, as that will result in a cleaner VM. However, Web servers are generally highly
tolerant of minor imperfections in OS configurations. Though not always rec-
ommended, Web servers can also be virtualized using physical-to-virtual (P2V)
migration tools.
n Application servers. Application servers cover a range of performance profiles.
Depending on the application they host, they can be anything from a small server
hosting a simple JSP or .NET application to a large server hosting a complex
Java application. Size and complexity of application servers often have a direct
correlation to the role an application plays within a business. With a complex
Java application, the application server is both mission-critical and a tier-one
1MISSION- CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
Home
Editor’s Note
Designing a Mission-Critical Infrastructure
Virtual Appli-cation Perfor-
mance Testing: An Art Form
The Pros and Cons of
Virtualizing SQL Server Environ-
ments
Exchange 2013 Storage Consid-erations When Virtualizing on
Hyper-V
9 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I S S I O N - C R I T I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N S
1MISSION- CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
resource—and the size and complexity of the application also make it difficult to
deploy. Regardless of whether it is physical or virtual, deploying an application
server requires precision tuning of the OS and the application.
Virtualization provides several advantages here. In many cases, the underlying
infrastructure is more easily tuned in a virtual environment: This includes net-
work devices, CPU resources, memory and other key resources. After the tedious
task of tuning infrastructure, the OS and the application to achieve the desired
performance, virtualization allows you to quickly
and easily create a clone of that VM. This makes
future deployments more efficient and accurate. By
decoupling the VM from the physical hardware, it
also insulates the application server administrators
from having to reproduce this effort every time a
new hardware platform is adopted.
As application performance can be closely linked
to underlying infrastructure, do not take the task of
virtualizing an application server lightly. Though
not difficult, it can be a time-consuming task of tuning resources, measuring
performance and then adjusting resources again. Under no circumstances should
you use a P2V migration tool to virtualize a mission-critical, tier-one application
server. This brings over too many legacy settings from one hardware platform to
Never use a phys-ical-to-virtual migration tool to virtualize a mis-sion-critical app-lication server.
Home
Editor’s Note
Designing a Mission-Critical Infrastructure
Virtual Appli-cation Perfor-
mance Testing: An Art Form
The Pros and Cons of
Virtualizing SQL Server Environ-
ments
Exchange 2013 Storage Consid-erations When Virtualizing on
Hyper-V
1 0 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I S S I O N - C R I T I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N S
1MISSION- CRITICAL
INFRASTRUCTURE
another, and overcomplicates the configuration tasks required to create a stable
environment.
n Database servers. Unlike Web servers and application servers, database servers
are rarely configured to spread production workloads across multiple resources.
More often, databases are deployed in an active/passive cluster as a single stand-
alone resource. Database servers can be even more complex and sensitive to OS
configurations than application servers, and significantly more resource-intensive.
All these attributes should indicate a flashing caution sign for any virtualiza-
tion administrator who wants to virtualize a database server workload. But even
the biggest and most complicated database servers
can benefit from virtualization. Granted, some da-
tabases may require 100% of a virtualization host’s
resources, but the high-availability and portability
features provided may justify the effort.
Many databases can exploit software cluster-
ing features to provide a rapid recovery of database
services in the event of a hardware failure. Unfor-
tunately, these features can also require expensive
licensing and result in a very complex configuration. The more complex a con-
figuration, the more likely it is to experience issues from human error. In contrast,
The more complex a con figuration, the more likely it is to experience issues from human error.
Exchange 2013 Storage Consid-erations When Virtualizing on
Hyper-V
2 5 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I S S I O N - C R I T I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N S
4EXCHANGE SERVER
they should still prove useful. That said, any plans devised under earlier edi-
tions of Exchange Server should be revamped, especially if you’re performing
a physical-to-virtual migration.
FINAL THOUGHTSThe points discussed above indicate a number of possible future changes for how
Exchange 2013 storage will be handled when virtualized on Hyper-V. The most
important takeaway here is how Hyper-V could be made application-aware to al-
low snapshotting of Exchange instances.
That said, the scenarios where this functionality would be useful don’t involve
Exchange itself but are experiments involving Exchange indirectly. For example,
think of multiple iterations of the same setup to gauge differences between them.
Right now, Hyper-V supports more than enough of the functionality you need
to create and maintain a solid instance of Exchange 2013, as long as you keep in
mind the rules for allocating storage for both the hypervisor and Exchange Server
itself. —Serdar Yegulalp
Home
Editor’s Note
Designing a Mission-Critical Infrastructure
Virtual Appli-cation Perfor-
mance Testing: An Art Form
The Pros and Cons of
Virtualizing SQL Server Environ-
ments
Exchange 2013 Storage Consid-erations When Virtualizing on
Hyper-V
2 6 V I RTUA L I Z I N G M I S S I O N - C R I T I CA L A P P L I CAT I O N S
ABOUTTHE
AUTHORS MARK VAUGHN (MBA, VCP, BEA-CA) serves as an enterprise architect for a multinational corpo-ration. Vaughn has more than 14 years of experi-ence in IT as a Unix administrator, developer, Web hosting administrator, IT manager and enterprise architect. Vaughn is a recipient of the 2009 vExpert award and has delivered several presentations at VMworld and BEAWorld confer-ences in the U.S. and Europe. Read his blog at http://blog.mvaughn.us.
MIKE NELSON has been in IT for more than 20 years, with exposure to a diverse field of technolo-gies and solutions. He has devoted more than half a decade to virtualization and server-based com-puting. Currently, Nelson is a senior analyst at a Fortune 100 company in the U.S. Midwest.
BASIT FAROOQ is a lead database administrator, trainer and technical author. He has more than a decade of IT experience in development, technical training and database administration on Micro-soft SQL Server platforms. Farooq has authored numerous SQL Server technical articles. He has also developed and implemented many successful database infrastructure, data warehouse and busi-ness intelligence projects.
SERDAR YEGULALP has been writing about per-sonal computing and IT for more than 15 years for a variety of publications, including Windows Magazine, InformationWeek and the TechTar-get family of sites.
Virtualizing Mission-Critical Applications is a SearchServerVirtualization.com
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