Stepping out of a subway car is an entirely different matter when it's moving!

Mobility of virtual machines is a sticky wicket. As open systems infrastructure becomes increasingly virtualized, administrators and managers wish to use the technology to balance workload, ease migration, and provide better availability. Although technology is improving, actually moving virtual machines is not always a piece of cake. Let’s lay down a baseline of information so we may begin a discussion on the true nature of virtual machine mobility.

Mobility of What?

Let us consider first the question of what exactly is being moved. Systems administrators often focus on “the machine”, which encompasses the operating system and configured state of the virtual machine itself. But the true “mass” of the system is its stored data. Hypervisor vendors have come up with different techniques of moving these two essential elements, reflecting the unique characteristics of each.

• The virtual machine is an instance of an operating system along with its state and configuration. Mobility of virtual machines requires all of this to be preserved, along with any I/O channels. Live migration of virtual machine requires that any active network sessions be maintained, along with RAM content, registers and buffers, and so many other elements.
• The virtual machine image (commonly referred to as “storage”) is the static content addressed by a virtual machine. Typically a VMDK or similar virtual disc image, it must be accessible to the virtual machine at all times. Live migration of a virtual machine image is tricky, but perhaps not quite as complex as live migration of a running operating system.

VMware, Microsoft, and others recognize these 2 distinct elements to be migrated, and have come up with a variety of complementary technologies for each:

• vMotion is VMware’s virtual machine migration solution, and has continually evolved with each iteration of the hypervisor. DRS leverages vMotion to automate mobility. VMware has also created Storage vMotion and Storage DRS as complements to handle mobility of virtual machine images.
• Microsoft Hyper-V Live Migration is conceptually similar to vMotion, though newer and less full-featured. With Hyper-V 3.0, Microsoft will introduce Storage Live Migration as a complementary technology akin to Storage vMotion. Most other virtual machine managers also support some form of live migration, though live migration of storage is less common.

Mobility in What State?

One of the key benefits of virtual machine technology is the ability to “run anywhere” on dissimilar hardware. From the very beginning, hypervisors have provided the ability to create a universal virtual machine image that would run on a variety of supported platforms.

This leads to one of the key values of server virtualization in the data center: Disaster recovery. The ability to take a virtual machine image and system state and bring it online after a disaster is a true revolution for open systems IT. The benefits of the single usage of server virtualization technology easily justify the investment to many businesses.

But this sort of “cold” migration seems passé when compared to the live or “hot” migration possible with technologies like VMware vMotion. Live migration is much more difficult, since active client sessions must be preserved in activity must not be greatly interrupted.

This is the second great question that must be asked when considering virtual machine mobility: In what state will the virtual machine be moved? Will it be a cold, powered down image of the system? A suspended or paused operating system image? Or a full, running machine?

Mobility to Where?

Once we have decided whether we are discussing virtual machine migration or movement of storage resources, we must consider the scope of the movement. The ability to move a virtual machine from one member of the cluster to another has now become fairly common. But what about systems that are not related in a cluster? Or that are spread over great distances?

• The nice thing about clusters is that they share resources before and after a virtual machine is moved. It is practical to move the running virtual machine, its storage, or both independently and to expect that performance will not dramatically suffer as a result. The cluster can also preserve network connections, and even I/O state, without much impact on clients or other external elements.
• It is a bit more difficult to move systems within a data center, since one must maintain the I/O connections that might be interrupted. It is fairly trivial to configure an IP network and storage array to allow multiple machines to access the same iSCSI or NFS storage resources. It is a little more difficult to configure Fibre Channel (and, by extension, FCoE) SAN’s to handle this sort of dynamic movement, but it is not impossible. Although moving a running machine from one network port to another could cause client access to be interrupted, technologies like VXLAN allow these sessions to continue, and improved network switching technology should reduce performance impact.
• Moving the machine to a different data center is another matter entirely. Stretching a layer-2 Ethernet LAN or Fibre Channel SAN across a metro or greater distance, while possible, will always be problematic. IP routing is flexible, but it takes time for changes to propagate when live machines are moved. And it is difficult to keep storage in sync over long distances due to the amount of time it takes for information to transit. Again, all of these challenges are being addressed in various ways, but they’re still hard!

Stephen’s Stance

Moving cold virtual machine images from system to system, or even across great distances, is one of the main selling points of server virtualization. But it becomes much more difficult to manage movement of virtual machines that are still running, especially outside cluster or across WAN links. When talking about virtual machine mobility, it is important to consider what is being moved, the state it is in, and where it is going.

Note: This discussion is part of “Building Virtual Infrastructure”, my new seminar series with Truth in IT.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Virtual Machine Mobility: Of What, and to Where and in What State?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Features, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Read Announcing “Building Virtual Infrastructure”, My New Seminar Series With Truth in IT for more background!

As discussed in my previous post, Building Virtual Infrastructure begins with the promise of a truly virtualized data center: the dream of automatic provisioning and virtual machine migration without hassle. I then dive into the enabling technologies that make this possible, discussing both “clean sheet” transformation and backwards compatible technologies. The afternoon is a more free-form discussion that zeroes in on the topics and technologies of interest to the audience.

Truth in IT has scheduled my seminar in Atlanta on Tuesday, March 13. We will be in northern Atlanta/Buckhead at the Embassy Suites Atlanta – Perimeter Center - sign up!

Registration is open, so sign up now!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Building Virtual Infrastructure Seminar – Atlanta, GA
This post was categorized as Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Read Announcing “Building Virtual Infrastructure”, My New Seminar Series With Truth in IT for more background!

As discussed in my previous post, Building Virtual Infrastructure begins with the promise of a truly virtualized data center: the dream of automatic provisioning and virtual machine migration without hassle. I then dive into the enabling technologies that make this possible, discussing both “clean sheet” transformation and backwards compatible technologies. The afternoon is a more free-form discussion that zeroes in on the topics and technologies of interest to the audience.

Truth in IT has scheduled two consecutive days in Los Angeles in the first week in March.

1. Tuesday, March 6, we will be in Los Angeles at the Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City - sign up!
2. Wednesday, March 7, we will be in Orange County at the DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Anaheim Resort – Convention Center - sign up!

Registration is open, so sign up now!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2012. | Building Virtual Infrastructure Seminar – Los Angeles, CA
This post was categorized as Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Everyone dreams of a truly virtualized datacenter infrastructure, but how can we get there?

We are at a turning point in IT infrastructure. It is now possible to build a completely virtualized and abstracted data center environment, one where applications and operating systems are completely independent from server, network, and storage hardware. Join me in 2012 at a new all-day in-person seminar series as I work through the challenges of building a virtual data center.

Learn to Build a Virtual Data Center

Building an appropriate environment for virtual machines is quite different from building one for physical machines. Although some of the components are the same, many tried-and-true hardware and architecture choices are no longer optimal for virtualization. This is causing a major upheaval among enterprise hardware and software vendors, as they adapt and jockey for position and mind share.

As I wrote recently, the shocking truth of virtual machine mobility is that it is almost impossible to accomplish without a clean sheet redesign or a bowl of virtualization spaghetti interconnects. This is the core issue that we will tackle in my seminar: How can you build a virtual data center when there is no “magic bullet” technology that makes everything possible?

Join Me In Building Virtual Infrastructure

This seminar series, appropriately titled “Building Virtual Infrastructure,” starts at the end. First, we describe a state-of-the-art virtual data center, before descending into a discussion of the server, networking, and storage components that are required to make this a reality.

After lunch, we will discuss products and technologies more specifically. We’re going to keep these free-form, with the audience deciding which topics to dive into. I expect we’ll spend time on the specifics of VMware technologies like VAAI, DRS, VMotion, VXLAN, and so on.

The seminar is organized by Truth in IT and will begin in Los Angeles and Atlanta in March. Qualified end-user may attend these seminars for free. Registration will open shortly at the Truth it IT website, and I will be posting more information on those dates shortly.

Suggestions and Feedback Welcome

In the mean time, I welcome your content suggestions. Like my Storage for Virtual Environments seminar, all my slides are CC-by-SA licensed, so you can use them yourself.

I also welcome contact from interested sponsors. Each date gives sponsors a chance to tell the audience about their relevant products, and there’s a networking break for attendees and sponsors, too. We’ll also have some give-aways and such to keep it fun.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Announcing “Building Virtual Infrastructure”, My New Seminar Series With Truth in IT
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Features, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I'll be presenting at two private events and one public webinar this week!

I’ve been quite busy lately recording webinars, writing articles, and setting up speaking events. This week, I’m in Boston and New York for private speaking engagements. I’ll also be recording a webinar with an exciting new storage/virtualization company, Nutanix, and I urge you to tune in to that one!

Nutanix is Truly Innovative

Watch Nutanix present at Tech Field Day 8

It’s rare to come across a truly innovative idea in enterprise IT, but that’s exactly what Nutanix is. They’ve taken the scale-out Google Filesystem and ran with it, applying it to the core issues of sever and desktop virtualization.

My webinar with Nutanix is little bit different from the typical “give them an excuse to go through their slide deck” event. We’ve organized it as a discussion between me, Tiffany To of Nutanix, and a customer of the company. Tiffany will have a set of slides as backup, but we won’t walk through them one by one.

I’m glad to be able to shake things up a little bit, since the old webinar formula is getting pretty stale. We were able to do this thanks to the third party involved in this production: Truth in IT. They have put together an excellent webinar platform and are eager to try new ideas.

If you would like to view the recording, it is now available. You can register to view this webinar at the TruthinIT website.

Speaking Engagements in the Northeast

I’m also speaking on a couple of interesting topics this week. Today, I’m giving an overview of enterprise storage industry trends to an investment banking firm. I often get this sort of request, and am happy to develop a customized presentation. In this case, the event was initiated by an attendee at my Storage for Virtual Environments seminar.

On Thursday, I’ll be speaking at a private event in New York City sponsored by Dell and Symantec. This time, the topic is the divergent paths of performance and capacity in enterprise storage. This is another topic I’ve spoken and written about in the past, but developed some new content just for this CIO audience. I will probably be delivering similar evening speeches and events next year.

Sadly, my Storage for Virtual Environments seminar in San Diego next week has just been canceled by the organizer. I was really looking forward to this, my final seminar of the year. But I’ll be in San Diego regardless, and look forward to meeting up with some of my friends who are planning to attend. If you are around next week, drop me a line.

Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance

I’ve also recorded a webinar with Oracle last week. We talk about my favorite Oracle product: The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance. This hasn’t been posted yet, but I’ll link to it here when it appears!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Two Online Events You Should Attend (And Two More That You Can’t)
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

I'm updating my slides and preparing for another seminar!

The next date in my Storage for Virtual Environments seminar series is rapidly approaching, and I hope to see my Pacific Northwest readers there! I’ve made even more changes to the seminar content, adding more about vSphere 5 and including new VAAI and partition alignment info. There’s never enough time for everything I want to cover, of course.

As always, I’ll be presenting three one-hour sessions:

1. The first hour focuses on virtualization and hypervisors in general, including a discussion of storage features in VMware and Microsoft’s products
2. The second hour dives into these hypervisor features, including storage presentation, thin provisioning, and VAAI
3. The final hour is all about storage outside the hypervisor, including protocols (iSCSI, NFS, and FC/FCoE), convergence on Ethernet, SSD, and specialized storage for virtualization

I’ll be tweeting live from the seminar using the #VirtualStorage hashtag, including “virtual footnotes” providing additional details on what I’m covering.

If you’re in the area, you can probably still get into the event. Head over to the TechTarget site to register, or just show up at the Westin Seattle. But beware: TechTarget only allows end-users to attend and have been known to turn away vendors and consultants at the door!

Notes From Cleveland

One of the most interesting topics of conversation in Cleveland was the “layer cake” of storage virtualization present in VMware environments. In other words, since the hypervisor is a storage array and the storage array is (of course) a storage array, where do you manage storage? It seems to break down to a simple choice:

1. Users of homogenous “all virtualized” infrastructure likely want to remove the storage array from the equation altogether. They would be better served buying automated but simple storage and managing everything in the hypervisor or above.
2. More diverse environments, especially those that are not fully virtualized, are likely to be more interested in moving intelligence into the storage array. They like automation and integration functions like VAAI but are less enthusiastic about thin provisioning and storage DRS in the hypervisor.

Thanks again for the feedback, and I look forward to meeting you all at future seminars!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Storage for Virtual Environments Seminar, Seattle, WA
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

The view from my Toronto hotel was awesome, but not as great as the conversation with the seminar attendees

The next date in my Storage for Virtual Environments seminar series is rapidly approaching, and I hope to see my Ohio readers there! I’ve made major changes to the seminar content recently, updating it with vSphere 5 news and rearranging the whole thing. I still feel like there’s not enough time to get to everything, but it’s a start!

As always, I’ll be presenting three one-hour sessions:

1. The first hour focuses on virtualization and hypervisors in general, including a discussion of storage features in VMware and Microsoft’s products
2. The second hour dives into these hypervisor features, including storage presentation, thin provisioning, and VAAI
3. The final hour is all about storage outside the hypervisor, including protocols (iSCSI, NFS, and FC/FCoE), convergence on Ethernet, SSD, and specialized storage for virtualization

I’ll be tweeting live from the seminar using the #VirtualStorage hashtag, including “virtual footnotes” providing additional details on what I’m covering.

If you’re in the area, you can probably still get into the event. Head over to the TechTarget site to register, or just show up at the Ritz-Carlton. But beware: TechTarget only allows end-users to attend and have been known to turn away vendors and consultants at the door! Happily, the Avengers movie shoot shouldn’t interfere with getting to the Terminal Tower.

Notes From Toronto and Denver

The last two weeks have been seriously busy. In addition to Tech Field Day in Austin, I presented this same content in Denver, CO and Toronto, ON. These sessions generated some great questions and comments!

• Lots of discussion in Denver about partition alignment. I’ll be adding content to the seminar about this, but am not sure if it’ll make Cleveland. In the mean time, read this whitepaper and this blog post.
• I got great feedback from the Denver audience (Rated 4.92 out of 5.0? Seriously? Thanks!) but some wanted better slide colors (including me!), more time (me too!), and more focus on alignment and dedupe. Thanks for the feedback!
• Toronto discussion dove a bit into the VMware VSA in more detail, and we also talked a bit about best practices for justifying consolidation generally. How do you justify putting all your eggs in one basket?

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Seminar: Storage for Virtual Environments, Cleveland OH
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

Deletion of data is not a high priority for most IT shops, but this ought to change

When was the last time you deleted data? Even at home, where we have autonomy and authority over our own data, many of us are digital pack rats. But at work? Never! No one ever deletes anything! Let’s talk about why this is.

Retention vs. Deletion

Just about everything we do in IT infrastructure is focused on retention. We back up our data and implement other data protection tools like snapshots and mirrors. We might also archive data so that the General Counsel can place legal hold on it, as well as perform data discovery during litigation. And then there’s the whole field of data security, focused on locking people out of data, keeping it intact and un-viewed.

But what about deletion? Almost no effort is put towards removing data, though the rapid growth of storage might lead one to think this is a key area for IT. We certainly could put some effort on revision control, and especially deleting drafts and outdated data. We could easily expire content that was no longer needed, if only we had some way to know that. And we’ve talked a lot about secure deletion, even though we hardly ever actually perform that task except when moving to new physical storage hardware.

The greatest challenge for deletion is a simple question: What should we delete and when?

IT can not answer these questions. They must be put to the business people who really own the data. Without permission and buy-in, IT is in serious legal peril when it comes to deleting data: Any deletion must be in accordance with policy and must be legal, that is there is no legal or regulatory hold on it. And there is no way most IT staff feel empowered to do that!

Some Data Should Be Deleted

Certainly, not all data should be saved. There is “low-hanging fruit” in every storage estate that can and should be deleted:

• Ephemeral copies – Drafts, temporary data, working copies
• Time-limited projects – Third-party or client data, test and development
• Expired data – Retention policies that are expired and no legal hold remains
• Legally required – Data that isn’t yours, or that legal demands deleted

Tackling these data sets is much easier to tackle than cleaning out primary data stores, since it doesn’t require as much sifting and sorting: These data sets can often be identified programmatically! If you have data sets like these, this is the ideal place to start a deletion effort.

Delete on Demand

Regardless of the type, however, IT should not delete data without direction. It is perilous in today’s legal environment to destroy data without a policy directing that action. So we should continue to focus on retention for most data, while we work with legal to determine which data can be deleted and come up with a process for approval.

But it’s important to start offer a deletion-friendly environment for certain data types. Such a storage system would reduce the difficulties associated with data deletion. Really, only an integrated solution can truly delete data:

• It must maintain custody of data from start to end and not allow it to leak all over the organization
• It must be accessible since any restrictions tempt users to create “working copies”, thus thwarting deletion
• It must be secure – Data must always be encrypted to avoid remnants on media
• It must be protected so data will not spread to external systems and sites

Stephen’s Stance

Data deletion is a real problem for most IT shops. I’m just getting my head around the ramifications, and continue to look for an ideal deletion-friendly storage solution.

If you’re interested in the topic of data deletion, I recommend joining me for a webinar on the topic on Wednesday, April 13. Sponsored by Nasuni, I will discuss the dilemma of deletion and CEO Andres Rodriguez will weigh in about the capabilities of his cloud storage solution. Register now!

Note: Nasuni is sponsoring this webinar, but the content was created by me. This blog post is intended to engage my audience in discussion of the subject, and is not a paid promotion or advertisement.

Image credit: “Delete” by blmurch

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | The Deletion Dilemma
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

• My writing:
  • My thoughts concerning HDS following their “blogger day” in London
  • My good friend W. Curtis Preston announced more Backup Central Live! dates; you really ought to go see him!
• Other great stuff:
  • Intel Announces New Xeon 4 Socket CPU (E7); Dell, HP and IBM Slated to Refresh Blades
  • Awesome! Free Microsoft iSCSI Target!
  • Anatomy of an Attack is a forthright and honest statement from an RSA blogger
  • The Impossible Project -new- PX 680 Film is amazing. Just amazing!
  • The Iomega StorCenter ix2-200 Network Storage, Cloud Edition is out
  • Jeff Fry shares his impression of Drobo

Subscribe to my Google Reader feed or follow me on Twitter to see these in real-time.

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, April 8, 2011
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

W. Curtis Preston launched his own series of Backup Central Live! seminars for 2011

My friend W. Curtis Preston kicked off his Backup Central Live! event series earlier this year, and I was pleased to be able to attend in Santa Clara. Curtis has spent years educating IT pros about data protection, and let me tell you, although I’ve seen him present dozens of times, Curtis was really in his element here. He held the packed room enthralled, and the vendor sponsors I talked to were very pleased about the event!

Introducing Backup Central Live!

The Backup Central Live! series are day-long seminars across the USA in 2011. Each event includes over 3 hours of content from “Mr. Backup”, W. Curtis Preston, as well as presentations from Jacob Farmer and the sponsoring vendors. The seminars are free for qualified end-users, which includes most of the readers of this blog!

Curtis and company will cover the challenges of backing up and recovering data in a variety of settings:

• Virtualized servers (e.g. VMware, Hyper-V, Xen)
• Very large servers and data centers
• Remote offices and laptops
• Data retained for multiple years

The session also includes technical detail about key products and technologies:

• Cloud Backup Services
• Deduplication
• Continuous data protection (CDP) and near-CDP
• Archive software
• Tape and its proper role

Attendees even get free breakfast and lunch, which was of a good hotel caterer quality in my opinion.

Stephen’s Stance

The Backup Central Live! crew does a great job putting together a professional event

I knew Curtis could put together quality backup content, but the crew deserves credit for such a professional and successful event. They attracted some great sponsors, too, and Jacob Farmer’s involvement was a pleasant surprise: I’ve always enjoyed the deep technical conversations I’ve had with him!

If you enjoyed my own backup, archiving, and storage seminars in the past, I know you’ll love this event. The next Backup Central Live! cities are as follows. If you’ll be around, you really ought to attend!

• Raleigh, NC, Apr 26, Register Now!
• Boston, MA, Apr 28, Register Now!
• Philadelphia, PA, May 17, Register Now!
• Dallas, TX, May 19, Register Now!
• Minneapolis, MN, May 24, Register Now!

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2011. | W. Curtis Preston Announces More Backup Central Live!
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.