Read the entire article for several great points, but here is one quote as an example argument:

“The first thing to determine is whether installing virtualization on older hardware actually saves money. Today’s servers are equipped with quad- and six-core CPUs that can deliver much greater consolidation ratios that single- or dual-core models, he said. “VI3 [VMware Infrastructure 3] is licensed per socket, so you’re paying the same cost for older CPUs but you’re getting less bang for your buck.”

But if the budget for new hardware simply isn’t there, consider the age of a server and how much life it has left in it. When identifying a candidate for a virtualization host, identify a box that is three years or younger and has “had a relatively low runtime,” the systems administrator said.”

As Brian points out in his comment the customer has a multiple IBM SVC design in front of multiple storage devices.

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Last week I helped a customer resolve an issue where whenever they deployed a new VM from a template the job would fail with the error “Failed to deploy template: The virtual disk is either corrupted or not a supported format” We were troubleshooting numerous ESX servers and the problem was the same on all the hosts. The template was fine. We changed it back to a VM and turned it on without issue. The vmtools and virtual hardware were up to date.

Surprisingly the Virtual Center error message was not well indexed on Google. I was scratching my head until I stumbled across the VMware Communities thread

Creating server from template fails …. Turns out that they were running HP SIM agents on the Service Console of all the ESX hosts, and as soon as we turned the SIM agents off we were able to successfully deploy templates again. As of this writing I do not have an official resolution from HP for the customer

The VMware forum thread also links to a HP forum thread about additional issues with HP VMM (SIM is included) causing VMs to be powered off after they are backed up by VCB. One of the replies in the HP forum hints that the HP agents on the console are locking the storage resources, and that the issue has been surfacing as various different problems for about a year. The last entry in the HP forum (Feb 13, 2008) is a reply from an admin who just updated to HPSIM 5.2 and VMM 3.1 but that issues still remain.

In the example scenario three ESX hosts each have 16 GB RAM and 2 dual core 3.0 Ghz CPUs. The three hosts will all be members of the same ESX cluster.

I tried to create design names that illustrate the strategy. I am not aware of any specific resource pool design naming from VMware.

The Tug of War design

This design is simple and does not limit any VMs from any physical resources. Using the ESX shares mechanism, if two or more VMs are competing for the same physical resources the tug of war that results will be decided by the resource pool memberships of the VMs.

The ESX cluster will have three resource pools defined.

• A “High” resource pool will have no initial reservation and unlimited/expandable RAM and CPU settings. CPU and Memory shares will be set to high. This resource pool will be devoted for mission-critical VMs.
• A second “Normal” resource pool will have no initial reservation and unlimited/expandable RAM and CPU settings. CPU and Memory shares will be set to normal. Normal priority service VMs will be placed into that resource pool and the shares guarantee that VMs in this resource pool do not have priority over mission critical VMs.
• A third “Low” resource pool will have no initial reservation and unlimited/expandable RAM and CPU settings. CPU and Memory shares will be set to low. Low priority service VMs, development, and non critical VMs will be placed into this resource pool and the shares guarantee that VMs in this resource pool do not have priority over normal or high VMs.

The three resource pools configured by shares will ensure that the proper VM has priority to physical resources when a conflict occurs. Resource conflict management can take place with the full capacity of the ESX cluster’s physical resources.

The Pizza Design

updated 03.09.08

This design takes the sum total of all physical resources and slices it up across the resource pools. Although the following design only uses two resource pools, many more “slices” could be created. The most basic Pizza Design would be to reserve all memory and cpu, but the following example helps also illustrate reservations and limits.

The ESX cluster will have two resource pools defined.

• A “Critical Services” resource pool will have an initial reservation of 32GB RAM and 8GHz CPU, and unlimited/expandable RAM and CPU settings. This resource pool will be devoted for mission-critical VMs. Shares for RAM will be set to high, but shares for CPU will be set to normal.
• A second “Non Critical Services” resource pool will have no reservation and a limit of 16GB RAM and 4GHz CPU. Shares for Memory and CPU will be set to normal. Low priority service VMs will be placed into this resource pool and the limits guarantee that VMs in this resource pool do not over consume resources.
• The remaining balance of CPU is fully available to the Critical Services pool because of the expandable reservation.

This specific design example was based on a mix of VMs that were expected to contend for memory more often then cpu.

Final Thoughts

I usually start a design with the tug of war strategy. Resource Pools can be confusing, complicated, and difficult to troubleshoot if the design gets complex. Starting out simple makes sense until a specific VM performance issue is determined. On the other hand, the pizza design is a better starting point if you know you will have heavily used development VMs mixed in with your production VMs. The pizza design ensures that if a developer launches a rogue script on one of the VMs then the production system will not be impacted.

LOL! After writing this I am hungry for some pizza ….

IBM System x and BladeCenter Power Configurator

From http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/bladecenter/resources/powerconfig/index.html:

“Energy costs are top of mind in IT today. In fact, it is estimated that each year companies pay a significant part of the purchase price of a system on powering, cooling, and housing that system.

That’s why IBM is delivering new technologies that allow our blades to use less power, generate less heat, and use less energy to cool the system than the competition. Simply put, the IBM System x and BladeCenter ‘runs cooler’ to deliver greater reliability and uses as much as 37% less energy than competitive Blades¹

Take the Power Challenge using the IBM System x and BladeCenter Power Configurator, and discover the energy savings a BladeCenter can bring to your business.”

HP BladeSystem Power Sizer

From http://h71019.www7.hp.com/ActiveAnswers/cache/347628-0-0-0-121.html:

“The HP BladeSystem Power Sizer assists facilities teams and IT staff in sizing their power infrastructure to meet the needs of an HP BladeSystem solution. Based on actual component level power measurements of a system stressed to maximum capability the BladeSystem Power Sizer enables the facilities team to effectively plan for the power consumption and heat load of an HP BladeSystem.

The sizer allows a customer to select the type and number of components within each Blade Server and Blade Enclosure and see the effect of the changes on the power consumption and heat loading.

Values obtained from the BladeSystem Sizer tool are measured with all components stressed to 100% load and is intended for facilities planning purposes only. Actual power consumption will vary with application type, application utilization and ambient temperature.

c-Class BladeSystem solutions are now supported in the BladeSystem Power Sizer.

Check out Aaron’s posts:

IBM Power Calculator and HP BladeSystem Power Sizer

I entered 200 servers in the calculator and received the following results (click on the screen shot to see a larger image):

Saving the World with VMware by

• saving 2,250 tons of CO2
• planting 9,900 trees
• offsetting the effects of 974 cow emissions
• offsetting the effects of 500 car emissions

Saving your business with VMware by

• reducing server hardware from 200 to 20 saving $900,000
• saving $307,476 in server related power costs
• saving on labor costs
• saving on rack space and data center real estate

Check out Oriel’s virtualization calculator here.

Internally, Partner Channel Managers have reduced their accounts and are focusing on building better relationships with a smaller group of partners. Externally VMware has announced some exciting new benefits for members of the Partner Program. VMware Unveils Major Program Enhancements for its Nearly 10,000 Virtualization Channel Partners was a news release last week from VMware that promises better profitability, training, marketing and support. From the release:

VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the data center, today announced major enhancements to the VMware VIP Partner Program, which includes nearly 10,000
partners worldwide. The enhancements, effective immediately, help make it easier for partners to quickly establish or expand their virtualization practices and offer their customers increased value
through VMware’s market-leading virtualization solutions. The enhancements include benefit enhancements for partners participating in the “advantage +” program, additional training options to build their
VMware virtualization expertise, and new and improved marketing tools to expand their VMware virtualization opportunities and meet the needs of customers of all sizes.

VMware also recently acquired New Hampshire based partner and service provider Foedus in order to help partners leverage their expertise in application and desktop virtualization. Announced briefly at the end of the release titled VMware to Expand Desktop Virtualization Solution with Acquisition of Thinstall, the Foedus acquisition is another example of VMware’s realization that their partners will ultimately help them stay the virtualization market leader.

To understand the Capacity Planner tool let’s first back up and understand the Capacity Analysis services project. When you start to consider how to migrate your data center to VI:

• You need to size server hardware which will become ESX hosts, and you need to know how many ESX hosts you’ll deploy.
• You’d like to explore different vendor hardware platform scenarios for your ESX hosts.
• You need to understand which of your physical servers will consolidate well and which ones are not good virtualization canidates.
• You’d like to figure out a good VM to Host consolidation ratio.
• You need to estimate your total disk storage for the VI solution.

Capacity Planner helps you

A typical Capacity Analysis project is 4 weeks. It’s 4 weeks because you want to understand when your servers are the busiest, like at the end of the month when all reports are run, and when your servers are idle. During the project the performance data is uploaded to VMware’s database where your data is analysed and then presented to the VMware partner for use in generating consolidation scenarios. The consolidation scenarios are finally delivered to the customer in a report. The most common format of the delivered report these days is the Basic Consolidation Estimate .ppt, or BCE.

VMware’s Capacity Planner Overview web page describes it best:

Gain insight into IT resource utilization and develop a virtualization roadmap for server containment and consolidation with VMware Capacity Planner. Professional services based on VMware Capacity Planner can help you:

• Assess the current state of your IT infrastructure with comprehensive performance metrics
• Plan for capacity optimization through detailed utilization analysis and benchmarks
• Design an optimal solution with scenario modeling

VMware Capacity Planner – VMware

The following is from an email I received. I also have created a Promos page with this info.

Have you recently purchased Microsoft Office, SQL or Windows Server? If so, keep reading as you may have some free services to claim.

Microsoft has 3 separate promotions going on right now that allows customers who purchase certain Microsoft licenses through the Open License program (no Select or Enterprise Agreements) to get “subsidy $$” back from Microsoft that can be used to pay for purchases of services or products provided by a partner who is a member of the Microsoft Partner Program, like Optimus Solutions.

EVEN IF YOU DID NOT BUY SOFTWARE FROM OPTIMUS SOLUTIONS – you can still get free services from Optimus. You may have purchased software from a non-Microsoft partner, or from a website, like CDW.

Products Included in this Promo:
* Microsoft Office Small Business, Enterprise or Professional Plus license and/or license+Software Assurance
- purchased after 8/1/07
- up to $30,000 in subsidy
- http://www.microsoftincentives.com/officepromo/default.aspx

* Microsoft SQL Server license + SA
- purchased after 8/1/07
- up to $55,000 in subsidy
- http://www.microsoftincentives.com/sqlpromo/default.aspx

* Microsoft Windows Server license + SA
- purchased after 4/1/07
- up to $10,000 in subsidy
- http://www.microsoftincentives.com/winserverpromo/default.aspx

There are limitations and restrictions, so make sure you read the Terms and Conditions of each promotion before submitting a claim. Remember to choose “Optimus Solutions” when you are making your claim.

If you have any questions, contact me at rbrambley[at]optimussolutions[dot]com.