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Best Practices SERIES / virtualization

Best Practices Getting

Virtual
virtualization
right
 for matters for

Infrastructure
maintaining strong
relationships
with business unit

Management leaders.

>>Executive summary: IT leaders determined to get the most value from


their virtualization technology investments need reliable networking infrastruc-
ture solutions that integrate easily into their existing enterprise environments. By
understanding the unique management challenges of virtualized environments
and leveraging innovative solutions to meet those challenges, they will be able
to help their organizations reap the wide range of business benefits that virtu-
alization can deliver.

T
here are two sides to virtualization. and policies as virtualized applications migrate
The positives are well known: better across devices; and efficiently report avail-
hardware utilization, faster application ability, performance and response times as
deployment and increased workload dictated by service level agreements.
mobility, all in the service of business agility. It’s critical to get the management formula
But any enterprise eager to exploit these advan- right, because the last thing IT leaders want
tages also needs to prepare for virtualization’s to do is disrupt end users’ computing experi- >> About the author:
other side: the IT management challenges that ence — especially considering that virtualization Jennifer Zaino
accompany the more dynamic, flexible and is very much about optimizing that experience writes about the
business applica-
application-centric infrastructure enabled by and accelerating application delivery to support tions of IT. She is
virtualization technology. key business goals and strategies. Yet, the very a regular contri-
Virtualization requires a paradigm shift from flexibility that virtualization enables can lead butor to TechWeb
traditional IT management models. Because to outages if network connections don’t travel and former exec-
applications are no longer tied only to physical along with VMs, or if they create unexpected utive editor of InformationWeek and
Network Computing.
ports, IT organizations must have visibility demands on physical resources for which IT
into — and be able to manage down to — the may be unprepared, thereby causing degrada-
virtual port, machine and operating system tions in user performance. “The network, if not
level. This is critical, because end-user expec- managed in conjunction with the VM environ-
tations remain high as IT departments run ment, can actually act as a bottleneck, because
multiple virtual machines (VMs) on a single networks and data centers were designed more
compute node. As a result, IT leaders must con- for static and physical devices, not mobile
tinue to support end-to-end quality of service virtual devices,” says Yankee Group senior vice
(QoS); ensure the persistence of connections president Zeus Kerravala.

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Best Practices SERIES / virtualization

Implementing an open network infra- networking infrastructure, and being able Ethernet and storage switches. By using
structure that addresses management to act on that insight, are equally impor- Virtual Access Layer (VAL) technology that is
requirements, both through built-in capa- tant to application performance in these consistently deployed across Ethernet, Fibre
bilities and coordination with existing dynamic environments. Channel and converged networking solutions,
management toolsets, helps IT avoid Federating the administration of the IT leaders can gain virtual machine-aware
these problems. In addition, it sets the distributed virtual switching that occurs and policy-aware edge-networking capabili-
stage for realizing the full benefits of vir- within servers, as well as the network- ties, as well as unified physical and virtual
tualization. Many enterprises still aren’t ing that occurs on the LAN and storage port services.
scaling virtualization technology to very side, is important to application-aware In addition, Server Application Optimi-
large environments because of concerns networking in many other respects. It zation (SAO) technology makes it possible
over virtual application sprawl without vis- provides the foundation for automat- for IT to extend QoS and other advanced
ibility into network, computing and storage ing communication and migration of networking capabilities within a Brocade
resources — and maintaining the associ- the network policies and configurations fabric out to virtual server environments
ated QoS and other service levels. This associated with applications — regard- and virtual ports. The end result is that
lack of insight makes it impossible for IT less of how those applications are IT leaders now can maintain QoS and
to guarantee the performance needed for deployed and redeployed across the vir- guaranteed performance levels for mis-
those applications to run seamlessly. tual infrastructure. sion-critical applications down to the
However, there’s great potential for Such a unified, smar t, end-to-end virtual machine level, thereby gaining
IT leaders who invest in open, virtual, networking infrastructure contributes to back the control they were accustomed to
application-savvy network infra-
structures to deliver innovations,
such as enterprise clouds, to the
business. For instance, instead of
relying on cloud resources from CIOs must prepare
managed ser vices providers, IT
leaders can exploit internal open-
for t he IT management challenges that
network infrastructure to instantly accompany dynamic, flexible,
provision assets in virtual data
centers to meet a wide range of
application-centric infrastructures.
business needs.
To avoid common pitfalls and
realize the promise of virtualization, IT greater scalability in the virtual data cen- having in the “one-application-to-one
leaders should consider the following: ter, as it enables VMs to move to faster server” world. As another example of tech-
computing nodes while transparently nology leadership in this area, Brocade
Virtual infrastructure management retaining their relevant connections, policy Data Center Fabric Manager (DCFM) pro-
requires intelligent networks. requirements and performance character- vides visibility at the virtual machine level
In the age of virtualization, networks require istics. As a result, access control lists, to enable fabricwide, application service-
greater intelligence with advanced function- virtual LAN (VLAN) identities, and encryp- level monitoring and management that
ality to unify and automate the networking tion policies that might once have been automatically reacts to changes in virtual
services that collectively exist in servers, associated with a particular physical port server workloads.
the fabric and storage. Doing so opens the will be able to follow the VM seamlessly These capabilities play a critical tech-
door to holistically assigning the spectrum throughout the virtual environment. nology role and equally help IT leaders
of resources to applications for a more Brocade® understands such require- maintain strong relationships with their
reliable and agile computing experience. ments and is enabling advanced and business unit peers. Business heads,
After all, as virtual deployments expand, automated network ser vices through after all, expect to receive the same high
IT leaders must consider more than just embedded network capabilities, as well performance they were used to when they
server resources when determining where as a common management utility that “owned” the servers that ran their orga-
to place an application or when to move it. spans ser ver connectivity products, nizations’ critical applications. If their
Gaining insight into the health of the entire adapter s for LANs and SANs, and business units must share resources with

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Best Practices SERIES / virtualization

other divisions, they want to be confident Indeed, this may be one way to solve the taking place at the compute layer. But for
that their requirements don’t suffer in the complexity problem, but it hardly seems the long term, he thinks such a solution
process of technology change. a realistic solution to these challenges — limits enterprise choice and flexibility
especially considering that it can lock IT around computing platforms, network
Virtual infrastructure management leaders into proprietary virtual switching infrastructure and storage.
requires open platforms. technology and force them to toss out The whole point of virtualization is to
As IT leaders look to implement virtual existing software assets. Moreover, most respond to business changes more quickly
application-aware networking across SANs modern data center environments tend and to deploy services anywhere at any
and LANs, they hope to avoid a rip-and- to be characterized by multiple hypervi- time, Kerravala says. IT leaders who build
replace scenario as it relates to their sors, management tools, servers, storage their infrastructures on products that aren’t
existing infrastructure toolsets, both to and networks from a variety of vendors. IT open and standards based may find that
they’re not able to respond
quickly enough. Both open-
ness and adherence to

CIOs who invest in standards are required to


enable the whole ecosystem
open, virtual application-savvy network of applications, computing,

infrastructures set themselves up to deliver networks and vendors to


interoperate, he says.
innovations, such as private enterprise clouds. To help IT leaders avoid
these types of issues, the
Brocade network infrastruc-
ture–as-a-service concept
avoid unnecessary disruption and to pro- leaders would be hard pressed to bypass focuses on integrating with existing man-
tect existing investments. Toward that end, the best-in-class technologies they already agement frameworks for managing storage,
they should embrace the idea of deliver- have in place. Delivering network infra- servers, network connections and VMs.
ing network infrastructure as a service. structure as a service enables CIOs to One example of the vendor’s integration
Under that model, IT can leverage a set continue to use the solutions they have with other management frameworks is
of network and application programming long relied on, while keeping open their the Microsoft Management Pack plug-
interfaces (APIs) to connect to the various options for new server, storage and other in for Microsoft System Center Virtual
orchestration frameworks and to the virtual- technology purchases. Machine Manager. This interface enables a
ization software that is typically deployed in In addition to the vendor lock-in and
modern, heterogeneous data centers. A set expense of implementing such a vertical
of standard APIs presents information out architecture, IT leaders must consider the BEST PRACTICES
of the network to third-party orchestration additional costs and disruptions involved FOR VIRTUALIZATION
tools, and then acts on the instructions from in retraining IT staff to learn new business

1.
those orchestration tools. service administration and orchestration
Bring intelligence to the
This open approach differs significantly tools. This might include major revisions to network to unify and automate
from other virtual infrastructure manage- rework any customized applications built on the networking services that
ment philosophies. Some, for example, top of existing business services suites. collectively exist in servers,
would argue that the complexity of manag- Ripping and replacing technology isn’t the fabric and storage,
ing VMs requires a vertically integrated going to work, says Kerravala of the move
solution incorporating a narrow subset
of available technologies. Such a sys-
to network-enabled computing. “Open is
the key here.” Very vertically integrated 2. Take an open platform
approach to deliver network
infrastructure as a service,
tem would bundle together a hypervisor, and tightly coupled solutions may have
networking switches, adapters, storage,
an orchestration framework and even an
entirely new server from a single vendor. It’s
some short-term advantages, he says,
now that computing infrastructures are
highly dependent on events happening at
3. Access expertise to help
scale virtualization throughout
the data center.
not surprising that any such set of capabili- the network level. And the network simi-
ties is likely to come at a premium price. larly must be very responsive to what’s

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Best Practices SERIES / virtualization

management view into the health of a SAN, errors, with disastrous consequences. IT provided their specific network, server and
information that gets reported back to the staff may not have accounted for the pos- storage technology. In addition to helping
Microsoft System Center, so that the latter sibility, for example, that the VM would organizations create reliable and scalable
can make decisions about moving virtual automatically migrate to a new node that virtual infrastructures, Brocade also provides
services such as continuous
monitoring of these environ-
ments to ensure that network

in the age of virtualization, and application performance


meets SLAs, to avoid down-
time and to increase resource
networks must be infused with utilization.

greater intelligence. Clearly, the move to ever-


more virtual environments
introduces new management
challenges for IT leadership.
applications based on the health of the happens to be on a different VLAN and, in But it is equally clear that those challenges
storage network and not solely on server doing so, lose connectivity to everything that can be addressed by:
assets. This leads to increased business was on the network. When the application
continuity for applications running on goes down and the complaints start flood-  Making the network infrastructure
Microsoft’s Hyper-V. Brocade has similar ing in, IT realizes that it has literally lost virtualization-aware, automating many of
integration technology with other leading IT the application, since staffers have no idea the parameters that ensure the seamless
providers, including VMware, IBM, EMC, HP, which server the application has migrated to. deployment and movement of VMs
Dell and Hitachi Data Systems. Or imagine the frustration that can  Supplying a new set of interfaces to
occur when there is no direct way to caus- deliver information to and take direction
Virtual infrastructure management ben- ally link the dramatic slowdown in one from existing external management frame-
efits from expert guidance. virtual application to the introduction of works
Virtualization, done right, has much to offer another VM on the same computer node  Leveraging the experience and expertise
both the business at large and IT specifically. that is accessing the same storage infra- of subject matter experts who know the
Many IT leaders are working hard to get their structure — and has reserved the same details of migrating from the “one appli-
staff up to speed with virtualization, but I/O resources on the array that the initial cation-one server” environment to highly
because there’s still complexity related to application had been using. virtualized infrastructures
deploying and managing virtual infrastruc- These examples are just some of the
tures, many organizations rely on external complex management problems that IT By understanding these key principles and
expertise to help them optimize these envi- leaders may face as they scale up their using open network infrastructure solu-
ronments. “It’s not hard for an IT person to virtual infrastructures. Many vendors are tions, IT leaders can go a long way toward
take VMware and put it on one server and working hard on the management tools ensuring that their organizations will reap
then have two servers. They can do that at and solving some of the subtle problems the wide range of business benefits that
home,” says Kerravala. “But how to broaden around managing I/O and debugging end- virtualization delivers.
that and apply those principles across the to-end links to ensure quality of service, For more information about how
data center? That’s where [outside experts] especially in complex and mission-critical Brocade can assist your IT organization,
can help. The more upfront work you do, the environments. But there’s still much work visit www.brocade.com.
easier the deployment and scale will be.” to be done, which is why experience and
Consider what would seem to be the expertise matter.
TechWeb Marketing Services:
simple task of setting up a virtual machine The professional services organization
Pamala McGlinchey: Vice President, Marketing Operations
for a mission-critical application to auto- at Brocade has handled thousands of large-
Elliot Kass: Vice President, Content Services
matically migrate to a new computing node scale VMware implementations across Lisa Broscritto: Director, Integrated Marketing Programs
when it consumes a certain percentage of heterogeneous data center and network- Gene Fedele: Vice President, Corporate Creative Director
CPU resources. The plan may look good on ing infrastructures. This gives organizations
© 2009 TechWeb, a Division of
paper, but inexperience in managing virtual the confidence to trust Brocade regardless United Business Media LLC.
infrastructures could lead to configuration of which vendor or business partner actually All Rights Reserved.

SEPTEMBER 09 4

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