VM /ETC

Steven Kishi – Product Manager – VLA

What is VLA? Questions and notes from session

Shared VM library

• stores vm configurations in state as a unit
• uses a fraction of the storage normally required – 16 mb files called differencing disks
• runs identical copies of vms simultaneously on the same network
• leverages central pool of virtualization resources

Does VLA need VC2? – not today, but next version will use VC2

Rapid provisioning

• deploy as needed
• web based

transient configured infrastructure

• software dev and test
• tech support & demos
• patch testing

Stage Manager is a new product that will take a dev machine in VLA to production

VLA uses separate ESX servers today then the production ESX servers. In the next release VLA will manage resource pools and integrate with production ESX servers.

VLA layout:

deveolpers use their workstations

VLA runs on it own MS windows server

Image Storage Library can be shared storage on FC, iSCSI, or NAS

VLA does not currently use DRS. They do distribute the creation of new VMs across ESX hosts but do not move VMs if the resource usage changes.

VLA does not use round robin. VLA queries the ESX hosts for available memory and cpu at time of deployment and intelligently places new VM differencing disks on hosts.

New feature – Storage Lease

• default lease is 7 days and is configurable via drop down.
• user notified when lease will expire and vm released back to library

You can RDP to fenced VMs – RDP to external IP assigned – NAT is autoconfigured via Lab Manager and a predefined pool of ips. NAT is running as a VM on the ESX server

VLA uses SOAP API and can be customized as needed

VLA Adoption Patterns

Basic

developer requests to provision server for testing on ESX

Intermediate

developer opens VLA and checkout environment

Advanced

completely automated dev test & qa process using VLA

VLA Features

Linked Clones – copy VM in seconds – whole vm in 16 mb initially

Saved State – never wait for vm to boot

Fencing – users can use benefits of linked clones and saved state simultaneously

• fencing uses virtual networking (switch) and bi-directional NAT-ing
• A VM router appliance is created for each fenced deployment – very small footprint and small memory usage

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