Published April 2014

VMM (Fabric) Management

and Resource Pooling
AUTHOR: MICROSOFT MVP THOMAS MAURER

Amsterdam - New York Ottawa - Dallas

www.savision.com
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Management Summary
In todays rapidly changing world, service providers and enterprise IT administrators must be able to react
quickly to the evolving needs of their customers. Administrators must be prepared to spin up new applications
and services on demand, provide additional capacity as loads increase, and contain costs by making the most
efficient use of hardware.
In this white paper, Savision and Microsoft MVP Thomas Maurer outline how fabric resources like compute,
storage and networking can be managed efficiently and explain how to use System Center Virtual Machine
Manager to build a datacenter abstraction layer.

The Shift to Cloud Computing

Cloud computing allows companies to move beyond a static infrastructure model to one where they can nimbly
scale up and down new services as needed without having to make changes to the underlying physical
hardware.
In setting out their cloud vision, Microsoft has defined the following four core attributes:
Elastic and Scalable A cloud must deliver a flexible way to allocate new resources depending on the customer
and business needs. This allows customers to quickly react to higher demand - for example peaks such as
holiday sales - and it also allows customers to go back to smaller offerings when the demand decreases.
Resources that need to scale include compute power, the number of virtual machines, or even the number of
mailboxes.
Pooled Resources Resources for the basic infrastructure such as compute, storage and networking should be
treated as homogenous collections which can be drawn upon as required. If, for example, the storage demand
increases, the service provider should be able to add new storage resources to the pool which will automatically
be made available to customers and running services.
Self-Service Provisioning Customers should be able to deploy new resources such as services, virtual
machines, mailboxes, and user accounts without requiring IT intervention.
Usage-Based Metering Resource consumption should be recorded. Metrics such as the number of minutes a
virtual machine has spent running, or how much disk space was consumed over the course of a month should
be available for reporting purposes. Service providers can use this data to charge customers for consumed
resources (known as chargeback), or simply generate showback reports.
In addition to these core attributes, cloud solutions should also offer automation, management, multi-tenancy
and security.

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The Philosophy of Datacenter Abstraction

Today we live in an application or service centric world where application and services are the most important
thing in the datacenter. Without services there wouldnt even be a need to build a datacenter, so everything we
do in the datacenter is to build and support services.
In a modern datacenter we have to allow customers to deploy services without considering the underlying
physical resources such compute, storage or networking.
The problem with traditional datacenters and environments is that they were not designed to work in such ways.
Pre-cloud applications and services have many dependences on the physical infrastructure and network
topology such as static IP addresses and storage requirements. These dependences keep existing services
from being elastic and scalable, and able to be deployed anywhere at any time.
The elimination of dependencies on the underlying physical servers by server virtualization was one of the key
concepts that allowed datacenters to transform from a traditional deployment model. However, server
virtualization was only the beginning of the move from a static to a dynamic infrastructure. Other issues still
remain such as networking and storage. Todays networking and storage environments are designed to be very
robust and reliable but this also makes them very static.
Rather than changing the concepts and static nature of the underlying fabric, software-defined datacenters can
put an extra layer between the fabric resources and the services or virtual machines to create an environment
that fulfills the core attributes of cloud computing. Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and
Windows Server can help you build that extra layer of abstraction.

Fabric Management with System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager supplies additional layers on top of your existing fabric to
transform your traditional datacenter into a dynamic, flexible and cloud-oriented service deployment platform.
System Center Virtual Machine Manager lets you manage fabric components and pool them together in clouds.
The resources in these clouds can then be associated to different customers or tenants who can make use of
them in the deployment of new virtual machines and services via self-services portals.

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Compute
Today, most enterprise companies and service providers run multiple hypervisors in their datacenters. System
Center Virtual Machine Manager is a multi-hypervisor management solution which allows you to manage not
only Microsofts own Windows Server Hyper-V but also other hypervisors such as Citrix Xen Server and
VMware ESX/ESXi from a single pane of glass.
Virtual Machine Manager builds an abstraction layer on top of the different hypervisors. For example, when a
customer or tenant deploys a new virtual machine, Virtual Machine Manager decides where the VM will be
placed depending on the requirements of the virtual machine and the resources available across the various
hypervisors.
The ability to manage multiple hypervisors from a single management solution has several benefits:

Simplicity: abstracting the hypervisor layer reduces complexity and makes it easier to manage your
heterogeneous environments. The common API allows you to build solutions, such as self-service and
reporting portals independently from your fabric.
Consistency: applications, services and virtual machines can be deployed and managed in a consistent
way across all hypervisors.
Choice: you can utilize a mix of different hypervisors if you have a multi-hypervisor strategy for your
business critical apps.
Protection: You can protect your existing investment in a hypervisor vendor without losing the flexibility
to later change it.

Storage
The same challenge we have with hypervisors also applies to storage. Many companies use multiple storage
devices which are all managed separately. The challenge for building cloud solutions is to bring the different
storage arrays under a common abstraction layer that can be made visible to services.

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System Center Virtual Machine Manager s storage integration allows you to manage several different storage
solutions such as block based SAN, file based 3rd Party NAS devices, or the new Scale-Out Fileserver (SOFS)
solution built into Windows Server. Virtual Machine Manager uses the Windows Server integrated Windows
Storage Management API (SMAPI). SMAPI allows the management of directly attached storage and external
storage arrays. SMAPI is combined with a Storage Management Provider (SMP), or the Microsoft StandardsBased Storage Management Service and an SMI-S (Storage Management Initiative Specification) provider. To
make use of this features Storage Vendors have to integrate SMI-S providers into their storage devices.
Virtual Machine Manager can automatically discover local and remote storage such as storage arrays, pools,
logical units like volumes and LUNs, disks, volumes, and virtual disks - allowing fabric administrators to
provision and decommission storage resources directly from the Virtual Machine Manager console. For
example, you can create new logical units from available capacity on the storage array and provision them
directly to Hyper-V servers or clusters. If you are using file based storage for Hyper-V over SMB, you can
directly deploy new file shares on the Windows-based file servers or NAS devices and Virtual Machine Manager
will automatically set the right permissions on the file shares for the Hyper-V hosts. Virtual Machine Manager
also integrates with Storage Spaces and allows you to create new virtual disks on a Microsoft Storage Spaces
solution.
To build an abstraction layer between storage and virtual machines, Virtual Machine Manager uses the concept
of classifications. This allows LUNs or file shares to be classified into groups such as gold or silver according to
their performance and other characteristics.These groups or classifications can then be used by services and
virtual machines without regard to the underlying storage fabric.

Networking
One of the most difficult challenges in terms of abstraction is networking. Traditional datacenter networks are
architected as large, robust, and static IP networks. This design was perfect when applications did not move
from one place to another while they were in use. However, in todays modern datacenter, customers need to
be able to communicate with an application or service no matter where it is. One day the service may be
running in location A and several days later in location B, but its externally visible IP address cannot change.
Customers may also wish to create short-lived ad-hoc networks that are torn down only hours after being set up.

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To allow application and services to be deployed, moved, and scaled on demand, a dynamic overlay network is
required atop the static physical network. Software-defined networking (SDN) solutions build an overlay and
service abstraction on top of the underlying network and move data across the datacenter quickly and efficiently
without requiring changes to the applications, servers or storage.

Microsofts software-defined networking solution is based on an open standard called NVGRE, and is integrated
into Windows Server. This is the same technology that Microsoft uses to power Windows Azure.
Virtual Machine Manager partitions the network into two abstraction layers. The underlying network is called the
provider address space (PA) and is a logical network with an IP address pool. Virtual Machine Manager will
automatically assign IP addresses from the provider address space to the virtual switches running in the HyperV hosts.

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Overlay networks known as the customer address space (CA) can then be created using the underlying
provider address space. Administrators or customers can simply create new virtual machine networks on top of
the logical network and Virtual Machine Manager will handle the IP address bookkeeping as virtual machines
are created or moved from one host to another.
To connect to the physical network from a virtual network using Hyper-V network virtualization a gateway is
needed. Microsoft provides a network virtualization gateway in Windows Server 2012 R2 but there are also third
party solutions and appliances. Network virtualization gateways are just one of the many network Services that
can be connected to Virtual Machine Manager. There are other network services such as Windows Server IP
Address Management, network load balancing and third party services which can be integrated in Virtual
Machine Manager. For example, Cisco provides their own software defined network that may be leveraged.

Clouds and Tenants

One of the biggest challenges in the shift to cloud computing is the move from a single tenant to a multi-tenant
infrastructure solution. In this new paradigm, multiple tenants may be making use of the same underlying fabric
resources at the same time. This adds new complexities to management, configuration, and security.

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System Center Virtual Machine Manager aggregates fabric resources - such as compute, networking and
storage -into clouds or resource pools. These pooled resources or clouds may be assigned to different user
roles such as tenants and application administrators. Tenant administrators and application administrators are
user roles to which permissions may be assigned. Permissions include the ability to deploy or remove virtual
machines, to configure virtual machines through either Virtual Machine Manager or a self-service portal such as
Windows Azure Pack, and to deploy new services into the cloud.

VM and Service Templates

Virtual Machine Manager provides the service designer to build and architect new services which are distributed
across many virtual machines. Consider, for example, a simple online store. The store is built with a 3-tier
design - a web tier, an application tier and a database tier - each of which may require multiple virtual machines
for redundancy and load balancing reasons.

A Virtual Machine Manager service template includes information about the virtual machines that are deployed
as part of the service, which applications and features need to be installed on the virtual machines, and the
configuration of the network including load balancers. By making use of the versioning features one may have
multiple versions of the same service and may easily switch existing services to a newer version or back to an
older version if needed. Virtual Machine Manager will take care of all maintenance and scaling required by the
service including updating applications and deploying new virtual machines.

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Self-Service and Reporting

With System Center App Controller and Windows Azure Pack, Microsoft offers two web-based self-service
solutions for managing services and virtual machines.

With the 2012 release of System Center, System Center App Controller replaced the Virtual Machine Manager
Self-Service Portal and allows users to connect to multiple Virtual Machine Manager instances, Microsoft Azure
subscriptions, and other hosting providers. As such, users can manage all their virtual machines and services
from a single console, whether they are running in a private or public cloud.

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Windows Azure Pack was released with System Center 2012 R2 and is not only a self-service portal but a
collection of Microsoft Azure technologies, available to Microsoft customers at no additional cost for installation
into their own data center. Windows Azure Pack runs on top of Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center
2012 R2 and enables providers to offer a rich, self-service, multi-tenant cloud, consistent with the public
Microsoft Azure experience.

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To ensure that the underlying fabric is properly configured and tuned, Savision has built a Virtual Machine
Manager Add-In that compares your cloud configuration against best practices recommended by Microsoft and
Microsoft MVPs. Savisions Cloud Advisor also includes capacity predictions based on Virtual Machine Manager
data collection.
Savisions Cloud Advisor looks for problems and makes recommendations like:
Virtual Machine Appears to be Unused
Prediction: All Available Memory Will Be Consumed By
Virtual Guest Services Are Not Installed
Starting Memory Is Too High
Low Disk Space On Cluster Shared Volume
Dynamic Memory is not enabled
Cloud Advisor is a great, free tool for fabric administrators to tune their environment in an easy and simple way.
For administrators requiring deeper knowledge of their fabric and the ability to right-size resource allocations,
Savision also offers their Cloud Reporter solution based on Virtual Machine Manager and System Center
Operations Manager.

Summary
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides an abstraction layer over existing fabric resources
to transform a traditional datacenter into a dynamic and flexible cloud services infrastructure. With the
extensibility provided by add-ins, it is possible for vendors like Savision to deliver high-class extensions that can

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help fabric administrators tune and configure their cloud infrastructure and focus on delivering a platform for the
deployment of elastic and scalable services.

About Thomas Maurer

Thomas Maurer works as a Cloud Architect at itnetx gmbh, a consulting and engineering company located in
Bern/Switzerland. Thomas is focused on Microsoft technologies, especially Microsoft Cloud Solutions based on
Microsoft System Center, Microsoft Virtualization and Microsoft Azure. This includes Microsoft Hyper-V,
Windows Server, Storage, Networking and Windows Azure Pack as well as Service Management Automation.
Before Thomas joined itnetx he worked as Head of Microsoft Engineering for a service provider where he was
responsible for planning and implementing public cloud solutions based on Microsoft technology.
In 2012 Thomas Maurer was awarded the first time by Microsoft with the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable
Professional) Award for his expertise in Hyper-V.
Thomas works closely with Microsoft and partners to promote Microsoft Technology as speaker for Microsoft
and other Technical events such as Microsoft TechDays or System Center Universe.
More on www.thomasmaurer.ch

About itnetx gmbh

itnetx is located in Switzerland/Europe and is focused on IT infrastructure solutions. As one of the premier Cloud
& Datacenter partners in the country we help customers to plan, implement and operate solutions based on
Windows operating systems, Microsoft System Center, Microsoft Hyper-V, Windows Azure Pack and Windows
Azure. We are a Microsoft Gold Partner and three-times in-a-row Microsoft Switzerland partner of the year for
the "Datacenter" area.
Details can be found on www.itnetx.ch.

About Savision
Savision is the market leader in business service and cloud management solutions for Microsoft System Center.
The companys monitoring and visualizing capabilities bridge the gap between IT and business, by transforming
IT data into predictive, actionable and relevant information about the entire cloud and datacenter infrastructure.
Savision's intuitive and customizable dashboards provide context for each business service, increasing
organizational efficiency, reducing IT operational costs up to 20%, and preventing IT-related problems and
business downtime.
Savisions solutions scale from small and medium businesses and government bodies to Fortune 500
companies operating in different fields and have been adopted by over 650 organizations worldwide.
Savision is headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and has offices in Dallas and Ottawa.
For more information, visit www.savision.com

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