1. IS&T Data Center Services: Virtualization Strategy & Evolution
Garry Zacheiss
Senior Manager, Enterprise Systems
Greeting.
Introduction.
Lots of activity around IS&T data centers in recent years; we’ll touch on some highlights today.
Rich Ledoux
Team Leader, Windows Server Hosting 1

2. What we’ll talk about today…
A brief history of virtualization at MIT.
Why we think it’s neat.
What’s changed since last time.
Thoughts for the future.

3. …and a sales pitch.
Find the IS&T service that let’s you leverage virtualization, IS&T’s data centers and more:
DOST Co-location.
Windows Server Hosting for managed Windows systems.
Server Operations for managed UNIX/Linux systems.
Data Center intro *before* pop to next slide. 5 major facilities: W91, OC11, E40, W92, M24.
We’ll talk most about the first 3 today.

4. Virtualization at MIT: a brief history
Began pilot offering of virtual server service in IS&T data centers in fall 2006, based on open source Xen product.
Negotiated campus-wide license for VMware desktop and data center products December 2007:
VMware Workstation/Fusion
VMware Virtual Infrastructure (now vSphere)
VMware Workstation/Fusion distributed free of charge to MIT Community, including Lincoln Laboratory, since Q
VMware Virtual Infrastructure replaced Xen service in IS&T data centers Q

5. Virtualization in the Data Center: Before…

6. …and after!
What is virtualization?

7. So, what’s new? VMware releases vSphere 4 in June 2009.
A great release!
New features: Fault Tolerance, fully supported Storage VMotion, and more.
All IS&T-managed VMware systems updated to vSphere 4 by January 2010.
If you’re still on VI3.5, you’re missing out.
MIT adds VMware Enterprise Plus to campus-wide Enterprise License Agreement.
8-way SMP, and support for up to 256GB per VM.
Support for third-party storage APIs, i.e., EMC PowerPath.
Host Profiles: rapidly clone ESX hypervisors.

8. What’s new, continued.
VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) added to MIT’s ELA.
Works in conjunction with storage replication of your choice; adapters available for all common storage vendors.
Automates disaster recovery to a remote site.
IS&T using in conjunction with EMC Mirrorview to replicate key systems.
AFS
SAP
Microsoft Exchange
Replication will be available to customers of IS&T hosting services. “Coming Soon!”

9. VMware Fault Tolerance
So cool it gets its own slide.
Allows you to run a second copy of a VM as a live “hot spare” on a second ESX hypervisor.
Machine state is kept in state across the two via a dedicated network link.
In the event of hypervisor failure, the hot spare becomes live with < 1 second of unavailability.
Currently limited to single-processor VMs only. 

10. Where are we going?
Original virtualization deployments were small LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) apps.
Virtualization moving on to enterprise apps:
Prior to 2010:
May 2010:
Q3 FY11:

11. Evolving our storage environment
Today: all VMware deployed to EMC Clariion storage: 10k RPM Fiber Channel drives via 4 Gbps Fiber Channel connection.
Fast!
Expensive!
Ongoing work to evaluate IP-based storage solutions (NAS), based on SATA drives.
NFS
CIFS (aka SMB)
Initial results indicate 75-80% of the performance as existing solution, for approximately 1/3 cost.
IS&T hopes to offer a NAS storage solution for data center customers in Q3 FY11.

12. Other Virtualization Initiatives
Desktop Virtualization/VDI: Move users’ desktops to data center-hosed virtual machines
Replace desktop PCs with thin clients, OR:
Extend life-cycle of desktops to 5+ years.
Ideal for public computing spaces: clusters, kiosks, etc.
IS&T is evaluating VMware View as a possible solution in this area.
“Virtual Co-lo”: IS&T-hosted, self-managed virtual machines.
Making virtualization benefits available to departments who don’t need to purchase managed services.
Still in exploratory phases, but let us know if this would be of interest to you or your department!

13. IS&T Server Hosting Services
Three different services depending on your needs:
Co-location: physical housing only; no system administration support.
Server Operations: managed UNIX/Linux systems.
Windows Server Hosting: managed Windows systems.

14. Server Operations Facts and Figures
500 managed systems:
227 physical
273 virtual
16% Solaris, 84% Linux.
FY10 Q2: Virtual machines outnumber physical systems for the first time!
210 TB of SAN storage
68% of managed hosts make use of SAN storage.
160 managed databases:
90 Oracle
70 MySQL

15. Our customers Over 40 non-IS&T clients: Open Courseware
Alumni Association
MIT Facilities
MIT Libraries
MIT Medical
MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science
Office of Sponsored Programs
Koch Institute
School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
and many others. You know who you are.

16. Co-Location Growth 2004-2009 35X Nodes Servers Jan ’07 Power & Cooling
upgrades started
Nodes
May ’04
Operators
moved out
35X
Servers

17. DOST Co-Location Server Hosting: facts & figures
HPC Figures
1558 nodes
Number of servers hosted: 269
19 IS&T servers
250 Admin servers.
Department breakdown:
50 Admin
7 Research
1 IS&T

18. Windows Server Hosting: facts & figures June 2009
41 managed servers
9% virtual, 81% physical.
94% Windows Server 2003, 16% Windows Server 2008.
4 servers (9%) utilize SAN storage.
Web instances managed:
8 IIS instances.
2 SharePoint instances.
2 Apache instances.
18 database instances.
8 Microsoft SQL server
2 Oracle 10g.
2 MySQL.
6 FileMaker Pro

19. Windows Server Hosting: facts & figures Today
63 managed servers
33% virtual, 67% physical.
86% Windows Server 2003, 17% Windows Server 2008.
23 servers (33%) utilize SAN storage.
Web instances managed:
13 IIS instances.
5 SharePoint instances.
3 Apache instances.
26 database instances.
13 Microsoft SQL server
2 Oracle 10g.
8 FileMaker Pro
3 MySQL.

20. Why use Managed Services???
Secure Location
Stable Environmentals
Redundant Power
100 Mbps (1 Gbps by request) switched connection to MITnet for network connectivity

21. Windows Server Hosting Team
Barry Stoelzel
Rich Ledoux
Experienced Staffing
Housing and installation of hardware and OS in a monitored environment
Maintenance of server and appropriate software
Registered Hostname and IP address
Windows System administration within win.mit.edu
Choice of 3 service levels
John Doherty
Peter Carrier

22. Pricing Based on these factors: Size of server .5 points per U (1.75”)
Age of server
0 points year 1 – 4
1 point per year 5 and over
Application support
Level of service

23. What you get. SLA-based managed system administration services.
Hardware platform selection assistance based on stated performance needs.
OS installation/upgrade maintenance support.
Database and web server configuration assistance and support.
Incident response during periods specified in SLA.

24. Replace this….

25. .… with this!

26. More information and questions
Co-location: Anne Silvester
Windows Server Hosting: Rich Ledoux
Server Operations: Garry Zacheiss
Thank you!