Interrait's Solutions for Top Four Risks of Server Virtualization Projects

Interrait's Solutions for Top Four Risks of Server Virtualization Projects

And 'that none of the known project is risk-free. Things can go wrong and, unfortunately, is often poor. Identification and analysis of project risks for the subject is extensive literature. The risks that are common to all projects (general risk), and others arising from the particular characteristics of the project (special risks). So, for example, because each project is closing, which is a general risk of project is not completed on time. This article focuses on the risks are particularly server virtualization projects and special features of the general risks of virtualization projects.

Performance risk of breaking the server virtualization projects

In a draft implementation of new applications, it is very difficult for systems the size of workload, as no data are available. In contrast, a project in server virtualization has a lot of workload data. Unfortunately, there is not always the desire to collect and analyze.

There are basically three strategies to reduce the risk of undersized systems and, therefore, to take even the latency of response:

Oversizing;

Extensive testing and

Data collection and analysis.

Plus sizing is a very common strategy. The fundamental reason is that HW is so cheap that it makes little sense to spend time identifying the exact needs. But it is important to remember that if you experience or a thorough evaluation, you do not know if you are really an oversized or low-power systems. You do not even know if you are virtualizing the right programs. You can adopt an aggressive strategy, and as a result of user complaints about the performance of the system, or you can choose a conservative approach, and have a range virtual server farm is much less what might have been. Extensive experimentation is a good alternative, but expensive. Typical systems are sized according to the rule-of-thumb and generic policies (e.g., the DBMS not virtualized), and only those who are likely to have significant overhead costs are actually tested.

Simultaneous data collection, for tens or hundreds of servers.

Cleaning and analysis of data containing the workload of tens of thousands of data points.

Identification of the optimal virtual server data.

Estimated workload impact virtualization layer.

Each of these problems can be effectively treated with appropriate tools for data collection. Data collectors and analysis tools and optimization have been developed and designed exactly for this purpose.

Availability of high risk projects virtualization

On farms of virtual servers there are very few applications that are critical classified and protected by high availability (HA) groups. HA clusters can dramatically improve the availability of services from hardware and application failures are concerned. Unfortunately, they are expensive and complex to maintain. HA clusters protect servers, operating system and the lack of application, but you need to:

Shared storage (not all technologies HA requires shared storage, but more widely distributed do);

HA software:

Script or DLL, failed to identify applications and shuts down on a regular basis, and

Overall certification of the solution to get support from all the interested suppliers.

Hypervisor (Virtual Machine Monitor also known as, or virtualization layer), due to the fact that the images of virtual machines are hosted on shared storage file, you can create server farms, each of which cases the application of a server failure protection. If a server crashes, the monitoring service to detect the fault and restart the virtual machine to another server. Unfortunately, these techniques for monitoring and taking action within the hypervisor so that they offer no protection if the submission of an application or freeze. If such protection is needed for SW HA cluster can be used on the virtualization layer.

Another important point is that hypervisors, thanks to the fact that virtual machines can be moved at runtime without stopping the service (live migration), or minimal impact of planned server outages. For example, if a server must be restarted to change a faulty component, the server can first be moved to another server if the user activity is not disrupted.

Security risks on the projects server virtualization

If you search on Google for the risk of "Server Virtualization" will find dozens of articles on security risks. This shows that security is the main concern people have, with regard to the risks of virtualization project are concerned. People are generally concerned about what they do not know, because one of the key elements of human behavior is the need to get some sort of environmental control. Virtualization is no exception. In these projects, a new series of products have been introduced, and those who are already running and configured in new ways. So, be careful not only recommended mandatory.

Since there are so many articles on virtualization and security all over the web we do not get to spend some time here to go through all the security problems. We are satisfied that, unless strict control processes are virtual places on the farm is much easier to create new systems OS. It is not surprising that people, while finding a lot of virtual machines, which are created of the objectives of development and testing, and that reality is not professionally managed. They could, for example, have the latest security updates or has not been determined, the safety standards of society. Control processes can appear the strong solution, but strict controls to significantly reduce the advantage of flexibility to get through virtualization. A better option is likely to use a weaker control of the process and periodically thereafter to start the holes mapping spot potential security server space.

Costs

The project costs too often exceed expectations and there are thousands of pages written about how to manage the project so that costs do not exceed the budget. Virtualization projects have specific questions related to the licensing of SW. According to licensing rules for the proposed SW virtualization can make significant savings or cost increases. If the request is granted based on the number of physical cores, even when running on a virtual machine to control the cost likely to increase as virtual servers often have many processor cores as required by an application hosted in SW. If instead of the license application takes into account the number of cores or logical use of the system, can achieve significant cost savings.

Conclusions

There are many risks in server virtualization projects, which could replace or even exceed the benefits of the project. Careful planning and analysis are needed to reduce the risks of performance, availability and security and to ensure that the expected economic benefits are generated.

Unfortunately, the states of inches are often unreliable conditions and generic brightness of the characteristics of virtual servers. Data collection and analysis is the ideal approach. There are however several challenges.

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