We recently had the opportunity to listen to Charles Babcock, editor-at-large of InformationWeek, speak about the much discussed topic of cloud computing at the TeamQuest Technology Summit. Babcock reinforced a couple of themes that we have been saying all along during the advent of cloud computing.

Cloud computing is not a revolution, but as Mr. Babcock terms it, a “convergence” of several technologies used together in a unique way. When it comes right down to it, a cloud environment still consists of traditional compute fabric we all have grown accustom to in the past several years with virtualization in the forefront. The main twist to the technology of cloud computing is the method of delivery to the end user.

Listen to the Clip: Cloud Computing Evolution vs. Revolution

We need to avoid “compulsive over-provisioning,”  which is something that we have seen in a majority of IT organizations in early stages of Capacity Management Maturity. Joining the journey to becoming a mature IT organization takes time and effort and a key component is understanding the current state of capacity coupled with forecasted capacity requirements. Having strong capacity management processes in place allow you to focus on bringing value to the business versus reacting to performance problems and incidents that arise due to capacity issues.

Listen to the Clip: Compulsive Over-prosivisioning

I like the idea of using the cloud to dodge problems with over-provisioning. I should point out though, that contrary to popular belief, tapping cloud computing still requires careful performance and capacity management. To achieve IT Service Optimization using the cloud, you need to analyze the financial aspects as well as performance, capacity, and risk when determining how, how much, and when to use cloud services. Keep in mind, the cloud is more complicated than any one of the technologies that converge to comprise it. As you prepare for it, you’ll want to tap the right performance and capacity tools to ensure that cloud projects successfully deliver business value.

If you are interested in learning more from Mr. Babcock regarding cloud computing, check out his book, Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution. You might also be interested in this white paper from TeamQuest: Capacity Management Ensures Success for Enterprise Cloud Consumers.

When I read the eWeek article entitled, “How to Manage Capacity in Virtualized Environments” I finished wanting more. Actually, I finished realizing TeamQuest already has more to offer. 

Explaining the ITIL definition of Capacity Management is great, but how about expanding a bit further and drilling down into the details – from a Capacity Management perspective. Since the author, Rob Smoot, is a Group Product Marketing Manager at VMware, let’s focus on VMware.

TeamQuest offers scalable, agentless performance data collection for both VMware ESX and ESXi hypervisors and:

• vSphere 4
• AIX PowerVM, including LPARs and WPARs
• Solaris Containers, Zones, and LDOMs. 

TeamQuest Model, one tool in our suite, can predict performance in advance, help to optimize services and avoid costly bottlenecks altogether. We can find the least-expensive, best-performing configurations for P2V consolidation, ensuring that service levels will be met. IT managers can quickly determine the best way to allocate resources to VMware guests. And unlike other tools, TeamQuest Model understands response times inside virtual machines.

Take a look at a previous blog post entitled, “It’s CRAZY to Run Just One App Per Virtual Server.” Ron Potter, TeamQuest’s Manager of Best Practices outlines the benefits of running multiple applications on a virtual machine and the planning needed to ensure you have the right configuration for the right situation. In fact, Potter takes this a step further in his white paper, “Grab More Post-virtualization Savings.”

Also, check out the press release on TeamQuest’s VMware capabilities, or our website on managing a virtual environment, or for some real nitty gritty details, see our white paper entitled, “Managing a Virtual Computing Environment – How TeamQuest Supports VMware’s Virtual Machines.”

Remember virtualization is not a cure-all. Capacity Management improves your virtualization tools. It’s a discipline that, when used with the right tools, allows you to get the most from your virtualization efforts.

If you would like to further the discussion on how to truly manage capacity in virtualized environments, don’t hesitate to contact us directly or leave a comment below. We look forward to hearing from you!

Today Mike DenHartog of TeamQuest clued attendees in at CMG 2009 on the nuances of managing the performance of AIX LPARs in a PowerVM virtualized environment. Mike told the audience it’s important to know the meaning of key parameters. You need to understand what exactly the data are telling you about performance when using advanced virtualization features available for allocating resources to IBM LPARs. Based on comments from the audience, some tools out there do not report information in a sensible manner, adding to the potential confusion for people striving to understand LPAR performance.

Mike also provided some capacity planning examples using TeamQuest Model to prepare for workload consolidation and migration in an AIX environment. He showed how TeamQuest Model can be used to answer what-if questions regarding LPAR configuration parameters such as:

1. Entitled capacity
2. Capped/uncapped
3. Variable capacity weight
4. Number of processors
5. SMT on or off

The presentation included some graphs showing just how these parameters can change system performance.

This presentation included a lot of practical information and examples for folks using LPARs. As I understand it, we will have a white paper and/or video edition of this presentation available in the near future. I’ll update this blog entry as soon as I have a URL to share with you.

Guess what? TeamQuest covered virtualization at its user group yesterday. That isn’t a big surprise since the company’s latest release is pretty focused on maximizing VMware performance.

TeamQuest Engineer Scott Johnson delivered his “Business Benefits of our VMware Modeling Solution” presentation in a brief 30 minutes. He focused on a process such as IT Service Optimization, increasing IT maturity, and beginning with the end in mind.

“To be blunt,” said Johnson, “the primary benefit of capacity modeling for the VMware environment is that it will save you money.”

VMware referenced an IDC report that cited 20-30 percent lower cost-per-application savings, for example.

Other benefits of VM ware modeling cited by Johnson included:
• Better service to our customers
• Efficient use of existing resources
• Good stewardship of capital investments for the future

Johnson compared achieving the benefits of modeling VMware to hiking Angel’s Landing in Zion National Park.

Success is fraught with obstacles and risk. Companies and individuals must focus, persevere and keep the end-goal in mind.

I believe Johnson will go into more technical detail in his vendor presentation which will be covered later this week.

Many organizations have saved both time and money by converting underutilized physical servers into virtual machines and consolidating those machines onto fewer physical servers. IT folks are understandably proud of what they’ve done at that point. But if you stop there, you might be leaving money on the table. There can be plenty of additional savings to be had by consolidating virtual machines, hosting multiple applications on some of your virtual machine instances.

How can that save me money?

I recently spoke with Ron Potter, TeamQuest’s Manager of Best Practices. Ron says there are two common avenues organizations can follow to exploit virtualization. The first is one primarily motivated by cost and environmental savings. The second is one of dynamic routing of transactions and images to provide massively scalable operating environments. If your motivator is primarily cost savings and you aren’t pursuing the massively scalable environments using tools such as VMware DRS, then Ron is a proponent for consolidating virtual machine instances, i.e. running more than one app per virtual machine.

Virtual machines need administrators too. Whatever your virtual machine-to-sys admin ratio is, eliminating some of those machines will save you some admin time. That’s time that would otherwise be spent monitoring, maintaining, securing, backing up, and tuning all of those virtual machines. The fewer machine instances you have to manage, whether they are virtual or physical, the less admin time and effort will be required.

Reducing the number of virtual machine instances usually reduces operating system overhead, which will in turn cut demand for physical hardware requirements. Reducing hardware infrastructure will help trim space, power and cooling requirements too.

Ron says not to forget about software license costs. Depending on the OS you are running, you’ll have to pay for each instance, not to mention the inevitable middleware and management software that is required for each virtual machine instance. Depending on the terms of your application software license agreements, there can be big savings there as well. Generally speaking, running software on fewer operating system images will simplify and reduce license costs.

What should I watch out for?

If you have the performance tools necessary to properly plan and monitor your virtualized environment, there’s no technical reason you can’t begin a wave of virtual consolidation after your initial P2V wave of consolidation. You might, however, run into some politics. Your virtualization vendor has likely sold folks on the idea that there should be just one app per virtual machine. You’ll need a plan that can convince everyone that running more than one will still perform while saving money.

You might also see resistance from business units unwilling to share a virtual machine instance with apps from other business units. That issue is probably best settled by working with management. You might need some new chargeback functionality to keep everyone happy.

How do I make it happen?

Create a plan with goals and metrics for success, such as the number of servers decommissioned, software license reductions, or overall cost savings. Make note of service level requirements coming from the customers, departments or business units you are serving.

• Survey your virtualized environment. Take inventory of your virtual machines and the apps running on them. Measure how they are performing now.
• Select candidates for consolidation. Ron has a long list of things to watch for, but suffice it to say you want to look for apps you feel will be complementary rather than competitive when asked to coexist on the same virtual machine instance.
• Run an analytic model to predict how the consolidated environment will actually perform. Will service levels be met? If not, try different configurations or different combinations of apps. The key to fast work here is a fast tool for making accurate predictions.
• Actually commission the consolidation work to take place.
• Monitor the results. Report your success to management!

Get Real

Basically our best practices manager is saying that a lot of the same techniques you used to consolidate physical-to-virtual will work virtual-to-virtual. And you’ll get similar results: savings in hardware, software, space, power, cooling, and system administration requirements.

Ron’s ideas sound like common sense to me, and yet they run contrary to the advice that you may have heard from other vendors. I think it’s because Ron is seeing it more from the point of view of a business manager rather than as a vendor of virtualization technology.

For more detail, be sure to check out Ron’s white paper on this subject, and by all means, add your comments and observations to this blog entry.

This survey was taken at the 2009 TeamQuest Technology Summit, April 28-29. We asked attendees to choose their highest priority for 2009. And the winner… Overwhelmingly, it’s virtualization. Is that a surprise? Well, no, but I have two questions. Why is cloud computing so low with a paltry 7 percent and when will processes such as ITIL finally get their comeuppance?

Virtualization - 68%
Virtualization has been the teacher’s pet for the last couple of years. The news articles, analysts and businesses continue to sing its praises. We’ve branched out though. Instead of focusing on server virtualization, we’ve moved to desktop and application virtualization. What’s next? How else are you exploiting virtualization capabilities? Will virtualization continue to be the class favorite?

ITIL - 14% 
Ahhh yes. The processes that work well for IT, but have yet to translate to or get buy-in from the business side. ITIL is a tricky one for me. I see its value. ITIL isn’t easy. ITIL can demand a cultural shift and buy-in from IT staff. ITIL has several processes with just as many starting points. What are you to do?

With the mantra “do more with less” being trumpeted about companies and IT staff, one would think more businesses would welcome some sort of process to improve the delivery of services. Those of you who have had success incorporating an ITIL process or two should share your secrets with other readers. How do you get buy in from the business side?

Green IT - 11%
It’s good to see Green computing working its way up as a priority, but there’s more we in IT can do. I’m talking more than server consolidation. Ron Potter has a few ideas for data center and systems management professionals.

Cloud Computing - 7%
Cloud computing has captured the interest of the IT world in much the same way as virtual servers. It’s a great conversation piece, but its priority seems to be pretty low. Why is that? Is it due to security reasons? Are organizations concerned with someone else being in control?

Craig

I’m here at the Gartner DataCenter conference in Las Vegas. It is well attended this year. The top attendee groups appear to be Government, Services, Financial and Healthcare.

The first three keynote presentations were great. In the first, Thomas Bittman discussed The Future of Infrastructure and Operations, specifically oriented towards cloud computing. Bittman made a strong argument that the current migration towards virtualization will ultimately drive processing towards cloud computing. He also made a strong case that virtualization has changed computing as we know it, moving us from a component oriented architecture to one of layers, then on to business. He indicated that non-traditional vendors, such as Amazon and Google, will be providing cloud services. He stated that although they are able to provide economies of scale for small and medium businesses, they do not have the quality of service management disciplines that internal companies enjoy. Ultimately he sees these merging.

For more information on his presentation, visit Rich Miller’s take from Data Center Knowledge.

The second presentation covered data center architecture of the future and was presented by Donna Scott and Paul McGucken. They cover such areas as resiliency, location, and management.  Again, they looked at strategy more as an architecture within which we need to operate. I thought it was a great presentation.

The final morning session was delivered by world renowned author Jason Jennings. He discussed the four traits of the best performing business leaders. It was a great presentation and revealed some surprising (to me) results. The four traits are:

• Turning what they do into a cause
• Let go
• Get everyone in the organization to think and act like owners
• Great leaders are stewards

After listening to him speak, I need to buy his books. He has some valuable information to share.

More to come Later.

Ron

The benefits of server virtualization are great. We’ve heard most of it before - cost reduction, flexibility, etc. What IT professional wouldn’t be interested in consolidating under-utilized servers, reducing energy consumption or reducing the physical size of the data center?  Is there more we’re missing?

I believe Dan Kusnetzky brings up a good point: What’s next after server virtualization? We’re now getting into how do we understand and manage the virtual environment. I agree with Kusnetzky’s assessment, and I believe many organizations are missing one complementary discipline - Capacity Management. 

It’s the key to optimizing virtual environments. The constant flux and variables affecting services can affect IT resource allocation which makes Capacity Management important in virtual environments and to the business. How does IT know the impact of planned consolidation activities or understand what the application is doing inside the virtual machine?

In a step toward improving the management of virtual systems, we set out to findhow IT managers are utilizing virtualization in their organizations. It wasn’t surprising that respondents mentioned that proper planning is key for successful virtualization efforts. Forty percent of respondents noted that bottlenecks (events that impacted performance or end-user needs) are one of the top three challenges in deploying virtual systems. Fortunately, the survey also points out the effectiveness of tools to monitor and manage virtual systems as well as how organizations are measuring their efforts.  

You might be interested in more on the virtualization study. 

The Ovum survey results reinforce the point that up front Capacity Management is necessary to mitigate risk and maximize the ROI of virtualization efforts.  Take a look at this story from writer Denise Dubie called “7 tips for succeeding with virtualization.”  If you have any thoughts, success stories, or tips for those working on virtualization projects, feel free to post comments on the TeamQuest Blog.  

There is a lot of promise in the use of virtualization, but it’s rare to hear vendors mention the complexities associated with its use.

They understand it, work hard to hide it, and have ambitious plans to manage it. Media such as Computerworld, SearchDataCenter.com and eWeek have devoted time to discussing the complexities associated with managing virtual environments. We’ve all heard the benefits of virtualization. For example, you can deploy multiple operating system technologies on a single hardware platform.  

However, we all know and appreciate that when any system becomes congested it will slow and potentially fail. To unclog bottlenecks, we need to know where they are in the system.

As we know, virtualization’s promise is to make things easier by hiding complexities. We also know that virtualization is more complex and harder to understand when it fails. Visibility or transparency into the system is paramount to remediating problems with the system.

What do you need to effectively manage your virtual environment? What’s missing from the current management tools for server virtualization, as an example?

With whatever virtualization solutions you are looking at, encourage your vendor to put in the instrumentation and telemetry so that when the system is suffering – and it will eventually – you can remediate quickly.