Virtualization in the Data Center

KY Srinivasan

Distinguisted Engineer

Novell, Inc.

Clyde Griffin

Team Lead, Virtualization Development

Novell, Inc.

Data Center Issues

Key Data Center Requirements

Virtualization

Metrics To Evaluate Virtualization

Novell Virtualization Strategy

Novell Reference Architecture

Outline

Data Center Issues

Data Center Work-Load

File Sharing

CIFS

NFS

Web Hosting and E-Business

Business Intelligence (Data mining)

Line of Business Applications

Compute Intensive workloads

Simulation (Wall Street)

HPC

Problems With Deployment Scenario

Configuring and tuning the operating system is very difficult

What is optimal for one service may not be optimal for other services hosted on the platform.

A misbehaved application can potentially impact other applications on the box.

Lack of fault containment. If the shared operating system were to fail, all of the services hosted on the platform will fail

Note: System administrators have chosen to deploy services on dedicated servers leading to server proliferation and the associated management problems.

Typically hardware in a Data Center is under-utilized and over-provisioned. (20%)

Legacy Data Centers

Disparate collection of hardware resources

Resources dedicated to specific services

To enforce performance and fault-isolation

Workload management either via proprietary hardware or invasive kernel modifications

Difficult to manage

Deploying a new service typically involves physically installing a new server

Capacity and availability planning done on a per-service basis

Data Center Requirements

Server Consolidation

Dynamic Server “re-purposing”

Managed Quality Of Service

Rapid provisioning

Easy and centralized management

Support Highly Available Services

The Novell Solution

Decouple Services from physical resources (virtual machine technology)

Strict decoupling of hosted services comparable to dedicated hardware deployments

Enable capacity and availability planning leveraging all the hardware resources in the Data Center

Enable utility computing

Based on commodity components

Identity based, directory-enabled management

Support Highly Available Services

Virtualization Defined

Process of replacing a direct interface tying a resource (often hardware) and its user with an indirect, software-mediated connection

What is Virtualization?

Resource
User

Resource
User

Physical
Resource

Virtualized
Resource

Virtualization Layer

Physical
Resource

Unvirtualized

Virtualized

Virtualization Architecture

Virtual Resources:

Proxies for physical resources: same interfaces/functions, different attributes.

May be part of a physical resource or multiple physical resources.

Virtualization:

Creates virtual resources & “maps” them to physical resources.

Primarily accomplished with software and/or firmware.

Physical Resources:

Hardware components with architected interfaces/functions.

May be centralized or distributed

Examples: memory, disk drives, networks, servers.

Types of Virtualization

Virtual Memeory

Storage Virtualization

Backplane Virtualization

Virtual Machines

API Virtualization

Shared Data Clustering

Processor to RAM

Server to Physical Disk

Server to I/O Channnels

OS to Hardware

Application to OS

Application/OS to file data

Every Modern OS

IBM SAN VC, FalconStor, DataCore, Rhapsody, PolyServe

eGenera, Topspin

XEN, VMWare, Microsoft Virtual Server

Mosix, Meiosys, Qlusters

IBM Parallel Sysplex, PolyServe, VAXclusters

Name

Resource Interface is Virtalization

Example Implementation

Virtual Machines

Layer that sits between OS and hardware

Permits multiple OS instances to coexist in single server

OS instances think they are controlling the machine*

Virtualization layer mediates access to hardware resources

Even incompatible OS's can share a server

OS

OS

OS

OS

OS

VM Virtualization Layer

Hardware

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

Virtual Machine Components

Virtual machines are created by a software layer called the virtual machine monitor (VMM)

Key VMM components are:

Virtual Machine Scheduler (CPU Virtualization)

Coarse grained memory mgmt.

Facilitate I/O virtualization

OS

OS

OS

OS

OS

VM Virtualization Layer

Hardware

A

A

A

A

A

A

A

Different Forms Of Virtualization

Testing

Sharing

Aggregation

Examples: LPARs, Vms, Virtual Disks, VLANs

Physical Resources

Virtual Resources

Examples: Virtual Disks, Virtual Storage Pools

Physical Resources

Virtual Resources

Transparent Change

Examples: Spare CPU Substitution, CUoD

Physical Resources

Virtual Resources

Add or Replace

Extension

Examples: Architecture Emulators,iSCSI

Physical Resources

Virtual Resources

VMM Classification

Classification based on how the VMM is hosted:

Type 1 VMM: VMM is hosted directly on the physical hardware (IBM VM/370, Vmware ESX Server)

Type 2 VMM: VMM is hosted on top of a host operating system (UML)

Hybrid VMM: Mostly hosted on physical hardware; but use the host OS for I/O

Classification based on the interface exposed by the VMM:

Full emulation of hardware

Partial emulation of the hardware

Full Virtualization

The ablity to host unmodified guest OS binaries

Requires the need to trap and emulate all privileged instructions

Performance will be negatively impacted

Note: some processors (such as x86) cannot be fully virtualized

Virtual Machine Monitor

Platform

Virtual Machine

Operating System

Applications

Paravirtualization

A technique in which the VMM is supplemented by an API that provides an assist for certain situations

Requires hardware dependent portions of the guest OS to be modified to become aware of the virtualization layer

Allows you to avoid hard-to-virtualize processor instructions by replacing them with a procedure call that provides that functionality

Higher performance than full virtualization

Virtual Machine Monitor

Platform

Virtual Machine

Operating System

Applications

A

P

I

A

P

I

Novell's Focus On Virtualization

Aggregation - Aggregate pools of resources for allocation to users as virtual resources (aggregation of compute resources will be supported only for cluster aware applications)

Partitioning – Available system resources are shared amongst the virtual machines in a controlled way

Sharing

Aggregation

Examples: LPARs, Vms, Virtual Disks, VLANs

Physical Resources

Virtual Resources

Examples: Virtual Disks, Virtual Storage Pools

Physical Resources

Virtual Resources

Metrics For Evaluating Virtualization Technologies

Performance must be close to hosting on a comparable physical hardware

Scalability must be close to hosting on a comparable physical hardware

Extent and nature of the changes required in the hosted Linux environment. Ideally, we would like to see the Linux kernel architecture evolve towards supporting efficient virtual hosting

Hardware enforced Fault-Isolation amongst VMs.

Ability to dynamically grow and shrink hardware resources assigned to an application container

Benefits and Value Proposition

Roles/Benefits of Virtualization in the Data Center

90% of customers interviewed are considering virtualization strategies for their data centers today

Roles:

Consolidations

Dynamic provisioning/hosting

Workload management

Workload isolation

Software release migration

Mixed Production and test

Mixed OS types/releases

Reconfigurable clusters

Low-cost backup servers

Benefits:

Higher resource utilization

Greater usage flexibility

Improved workload QoS

Higher availability / security

Lower cost of availability

Lower management costs

Improved interoperability

Legacy compatibility

Investment protection

Server Virtualization Example

Virtual Servers

Virtualization

Physical Server

VM Benefits Beyond The Data Center

Security

HPC

On-demand

Next-gen game consoles

RAS

Checkpoint/restart

Client-server Security

Migration

ISV testing & certification

HW Upgrade/maintenance

OS Development

Architecture evolution

Real time OEM differentiation

Silicon IP

Grid

Virtual Machine - Customer Value Proposition

Better utilization of hardware resources

Higher physical resource utilization, Typical CPU-20%

Smaller footprint (power, space, cooling,etc)

Improved flexibility, responsiveness, and performance

Resources can be adjusted dynamically

Enables On Demand and Adaptive Enterprise operating environments

Server migration and consolidation

Simplified management (upgrades, patches)

Enabling technology for highly-available services

Each service deployed can be configured and tuned for optimally hosting the service under question

Novell's Unique Value

Open Source

Based on commodity components

Low cost of acquisition and ownership

Enhanced resource utilization

Supports dynamic re-purposing of hardware resources

Enables highly-available services

zero downtime hardware and software upgrades

Identity based secure management

Novell Virtualization Strategy

Novell Virtualization Strategy

Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) will be based on Xen technology (Xen is the open source virtualization project)

Xen has the backing of major industry players:

Intel, IBM, HP and AMD

Other major Linux distributions are backing Xen

Virtualize both of Novell Operating Systems

Host NetWare as a guest OS

Host SUSE LINUX as a guest OS

Implement a comprehensive management suite

Directory enabled

Identity based

Novell Virtual Machine Architecture

Linux Virtual Machines

NetWare Virtual Machines

Linux Services

NetWare Services

Service/Guest OS

Service/Guest OS

Linux Kernel

NetWare Kernel

Physical Drivers

Linux Kernel

Management / Host OS

IO System

IO System

VM Management Application

Hypervisor (XEN)

Physical Hardware

IO & Platform Devices

(Disk, LAN, USB, BMC, IPMI, ACPI, etc.)

Memory & CPU

(Power, x86, x86-64, EM64T, Itanium)

Memory & CPU Management

Virtual Driver

Virtual Driver

Physical Driver

Physical Driver

Management

Path

CIMOM

Agent

Internal / External

IO Path

IO Path

IO Path

IO Path

IO Path

IO

Path

Virtual Device Drivers

XEN supports Driver Domains:

Driver domains have physical access to the I/O devices

A driver domain virtualizes the I/O device for access by other guest OS instances

Multiple Guests share the same physical device

XEN also allows a guest OS to own a physical device exclusively (not shared)

This deployment scenario is particularly relevant for performance critical services

NetWare® Device Drivers

Leverage Driver Domains (Linux) supported by XEN

NetWare will have access to all of the devices supported under Linux

Device drivers need not be certified for NetWare

For performance critical deployments, physical devices (storage, Network) can be exclusively assigned to the NetWare OS instance

NetWare on 64 Bit Architectures

Virtual Machine Monitor and Driver Domains support all the 64 bit hardware architectures

NetWare will be able to run in the 32-bit mode on 64-bit processor architectures that support the x86 instruction set

This includes x86-64 and EM64T

In this mode NetWare will be fully functional as a 32-bit VM while allowing other virtual machine types such as SUSE Linux to fully benefit from the additional address space available on such architectures

Support for 64-bit NetWare is not planned at this point

Managing the Virtual Data Center

Management of VMM and Guest OS will be CIM based:

Local or remote management consoles

CIM based management will allow for a variety of management consoles from a number of vendors to be used

Allow for differentiation

Novell will not lock management vendors out

CIM based provides will enable virtual machine management

Startup and shutdown

Live migration

Policy Based Utility Computing

Strategy: Directory enabled, policy based, utility computing

Directory Enabled

Store virtual machine objects in the directory

Cluster Objects, VMs, Physical Nodes, Resource templates, Preconfigured OS configurations

Policy engines to monitor and manage workload

Virtual storage to enable fluid computing within the virtual data center

Novell Reference Architecture

Fiber Channel

Storage

Cluster(s)

Computing

Cluster(s)

VS Virtual Storage

VM Virtual Machines

IM Identity Management

RM Resource Management

Figure 1: Novell Data Center Reference Architecture

Commodity off-the-shelf computing (VM), storage (VS), management (RM) and identity servers (IM).

Benefits of Novell Virtual Machine

Business Agility: Available hardware resources can be rapidly configured to match the changing business needs.

Lower TCO: Server/Storage consolidation coupled with centralized management will lower the total cost of ownership.

High-Availability: The ability to migrate virtual servers (and the hosted applications) enables planned hardware/software maintenance with zero application downtime.

Managed Quality Of Service: Physical resources can be assigned to Virtual Machines to manage the quality of service.

Secure Application Hosting: Virtual Machines execute in hardware protected address spaces

Integration......

This presentation was developed for the Novell Users Group International. It's based on a general Novell and Linux but it's refocused to contain messages especially targeted to long-time dedicated Novell customers.

What are the factors driving Linux into deep into the enterprise?

- Ultimately it's all about reducing the cost of ownership

- Proprietary Unix environments are expensive. It's not just the cost of maintaining the hardware and software, but it's also the cost of creating an infrastructure that supports high availability. Adding another high priced Unix box for redundancy can be expensive.

What are the factors driving Linux into deep into the enterprise?

- Ultimately it's all about reducing the cost of ownership

- Proprietary Unix environments are expensive. It's not just the cost of maintaining the hardware and software, but it's also the cost of creating an infrastructure that supports high availability. Adding another high priced Unix box for redundancy can be expensive.

What are the factors driving Linux into deep into the enterprise?

- Ultimately it's all about reducing the cost of ownership

- Proprietary Unix environments are expensive. It's not just the cost of maintaining the hardware and software, but it's also the cost of creating an infrastructure that supports high availability. Adding another high priced Unix box for redundancy can be expensive.

XEN takes a Paravirutalization approach

Making the hypervisor layer (XEN) and guest operating systems aware of each other.

Make direct API calls to the hypervisor instead of performing hardware emulation tricks

Performance Benefits

Expensive hardware virtualization/emulation schemes are avoided.

Guest OS and hypervisor can be “tuned” to work well with each other.

Presentation

The view of virtual resources is separate from the view of physical resources

Aggregate pools of resources for allocation to users as physical resources

Use Cases:

Virtualization of servers, storage and networks is widely used today

Customer benefits are of two basic kinds

Reduced hardware costs:

Higher physical resource utilization

Smaller footprint (power, space, cooling, etc.)

Improved flexibility and responsiveness

Resources can be adjusted dynamically

Enables utility computing operating environments

Current trend is toward commoditization and fragmentation

. Limits the industry’s ability to fully exploit the value proposition

Virtualization provides a layer of abstraction that allows broad simplification, reduces development costs and increases freedom for differentiation

A open and widely supported/accepted virtualization model for Linux® will enable and catalyze new designs for both the software and hardware platforms

What are the factors driving Linux into deep into the enterprise?

- Ultimately it's all about reducing the cost of ownership

- Proprietary Unix environments are expensive. It's not just the cost of maintaining the hardware and software, but it's also the cost of creating an infrastructure that supports high availability. Adding another high priced Unix box for redundancy can be expensive.

What are the factors driving Linux into deep into the enterprise?

- Ultimately it's all about reducing the cost of ownership

- Proprietary Unix environments are expensive. It's not just the cost of maintaining the hardware and software, but it's also the cost of creating an infrastructure that supports high availability. Adding another high priced Unix box for redundancy can be expensive.

What are the factors driving Linux into deep into the enterprise?

- Ultimately it's all about reducing the cost of ownership

- Proprietary Unix environments are expensive. It's not just the cost of maintaining the hardware and software, but it's also the cost of creating an infrastructure that supports high availability. Adding another high priced Unix box for redundancy can be expensive.

What are the factors driving Linux into deep into the enterprise?

- Ultimately it's all about reducing the cost of ownership

- Proprietary Unix environments are expensive. It's not just the cost of maintaining the hardware and software, but it's also the cost of creating an infrastructure that supports high availability. Adding another high priced Unix box for redundancy can be expensive.

Christa Hoyal

2002-04-05T16:15:15