Application Report: Migrating from Discrete to Virtual Servers
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Transcript of Application Report: Migrating from Discrete to Virtual Servers
Application Report
Migrating from Discrete
to Virtual Servers
Featuring
Development & QA Lab
OneConnect
HP ProLiant BL490c G7 Servers
Virtual Connect Flex-10
ESXi 5.0
Where IT perceptions are reality
Copyright 2012© IT Brand Pulse. All rights reserved. Document # APP2012001 v10 August, 2012
About
Company Overview Vonage (NYSE: VG) is a leading provider of communications services connecting individuals through broadband devices worldwide. With approximately 2.4 million subscribers, Vonage maintains and oper-ates a robust, high-quality, VoIP network that supports over six bil-lion communications per year. Through portable land-line phone re-placement and mobile calling applications, Vonage World and Vonage World Mobile plans offer unlimited calling to more than 60 countries for one low monthly rate. Vonage's service is sold on the web to customers in the U.S. (www.vonage.com), Canada (www.vonage.ca) and the United Kingdom (www.vonage.co.uk), and through regional and national retailers.
Development & QA Lab
Located at corporate headquarters in Holmdel, New Jersey, is the Vonage Development & QA Lab. It’s here that Vonage new technology and products are evaluated before they can enter a production environment. The Development & QA Lab also is where Vonage IT architects and engineers develop and certify the stand-ard hardware and software images which will be used in production systems ranging from front-end web servers to back-end database servers.
Migrating from Discrete to Virtualized Data Center
Taking advantage of technologies which will allow the company to consolidate infrastructure, reduce costs, and speed new server de-ployments, the Vonage data center in Holmdel is migrating from a mostly non-virtualized “discrete” environment, to a virtualized da-ta center. This installation features approximately 40 data center cabinets with 1,100 rack-mount servers — each dedicated to spe-cific applications. The power-hungry rack servers are connected to data center LANs and SANs by over 3,000 cables; deploying a new server takes about 2 weeks from the time a user makes a request.
Vonage is one of the largest VoIP providers
and an industry pioneer. Its name is a play on
their motto "Voice-Over-Net-AGE.”
Production servers in Holmdel, New Jersey
host a range of business-critical applications
ranging from front-end web servers to back-
end database servers.
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Reduce the space, power, cooling, and cabling needed by 1,100 rack-
mount servers. Shorten the time to deploy new application servers. Goals
Key Technologies
The combination of blade servers, server virtualiza-
tion and network virtualization, allow hundreds of
VMs to be deployed in a single cabinet.
Dense Compute Nodes
The Vonage migration from discrete data center to virtualized data center involves
many new technologies, products, and processes. Blade servers, server virtualiza-
tion and network virtualization stand out as technologies which are key to slashing
costs, while maintaining application performance and availability.
Blade Servers
Vonage is deploying HP ProLiant BL490c G7 blade servers to perform the same func-
tion as rack servers, but with far less floor space, power, cooling, and cables. By
sharing resources through a single enclosure, blade servers will also eliminate a
great deal of management complexity and overlap.
Server Virtualization
A typical application server utilizes only 1% to 5% of available CPU. Server virtualization al-
lows Vonage to fully utilize the compute power of each physical blade server by running mul-
tiple virtual machines (VMs) and applications. The result is another level of massive consoli-
dation and cost savings.
Network Virtualization
To accommodate the proliferation of VMs, the HP BladeSystems feature virtual networking capabilities which
allow server admins to configure unique virtual networks for each VM. Embedded on G7 servers used by
Vonage are dual-port integrated HP Virtual Connect 10Gb FlexFabric Adapters, which are based on Emulex
OneConnect® technology. A single HP 10Gb FlexFabric Adapter port can be configured as 4 FlexNICs, with an
option to configure one as a FlexHBA for either FC or iSCSI storage connectivity. Each FlexNIC or FlexHBA can
be configured with its own set of network policies tailored to the needs of specific VMs and applications.
One or two dual-port 10Gb HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric mez-
zanine cards can be added.
HP ProLiant BL490c G7 Server Blade
The dual-port 10Gb HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric Adapter based
on Emulex OneConnect technology is embedded on the server
blade motherboard and can be partitioned into 4 FlexNICs.
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A fully populated HP blade
system includes 16 server
blades, interconnected by a
single backplane, to LAN and
SAN switch fabrics embedded
in the chassis.
Document # APP2012001 v10, August, 2012
Killer App
Getting Started The 1,100 rack servers which form the Vonage discrete production environment are highly tuned for maximum performance and availability. The Vonage IT team was skeptical a mass migration to virtual servers could be accomplished without compromising one or both. Therefore the first step was to pilot the technology with a single blade system chassis and 2 server blades. It took about six weeks for Vonage architects to learn how to efficiently configure a physical server with VMware ESXi, and HP VirtualConnect Flex-10. Then, one application at a time, the number of VMs in the Development & QA lab grew to 900. The confidence of the IT team also grew as applications running in the lab demonstrated the perfor-mance needed in a production environment.
Live Migrations Emerge as a Killer App for On-board 10GbE Usage in the Development & QA Lab also demonstrated the
benefits of automated server performance optimization
and maintenance. With VMware Distributed Resource
Scheduler (DRS), scheduling server downtime to move ap-
plications to less utilized servers was no longer needed.
Without anyone knowing, DRS was automatically moving
VMs when servers became hot.
This made quick evacuation of VMs during vMotions a killer
application for the 10Gb HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric
Adapters onboard the G7 server blades. Vonage engineers
provisioned 4Gb FlexNICs to minimize the time required to
move hundreds of gigabytes of data involved in live migra-
tions, and quickly found the vMotions over-running the 4Gb
bandwidth.
Based on their experience in the lab, Vonage system architects decided to use 10Gb FlexNICs in production so
that ESXi has available the full bandwidth of the FlexFabric Adapter for live migrations.
A utility which allows ESXi admins to define the rules for manual or
automatic allocation of physical resources among VMs. DRS
Each of 1,100 rack servers
has its own power &
cabling system.
Maintaining application performance during live migrations
means moving hundreds of gigabytes of data as fast as possi-
ble — a killer application for the 10GbE FlexFabric adapters.
The migration project started with
a pilot using 2 server blades.
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Results & Lessons Learned
Mission Accomplished Today Vonage is implementing dense compute nodes consisting of blade servers, serv-
er virtualization, and network virtualization technology. As a result, the company will
consolidate 1,100 rack-mount servers, 40 cabinets and 3,000 cables into only 2 cabi-
nets, 4 blade server chassis, and a handful of cables. Along the way, Vonage architects
have identified a best practice for configuring I/O for live migrations, and a killer appli-
cation for 10GbE.
Lessons Learned The following are a few lessons the Vonage staff want to share with their peers:
Share your system designs with your vendors—Vonage architects discovered that
HP technical staff were aware of issues they encountered and would gladly have
reviewed their system design.
It takes a while to learn how the virtualization layers work together—It took six
weeks to learn how to use the server and network virtualization tools efficiently.
However, after learning proper configuration techniques, profiles can be cloned by
level 1 operators for rapid VM deployment.
One step at a time—18 months ago there was not a single VM in the Holmdel
Development & QA Lab. Starting with a couple of server blades, Vonage archi-
tects slowly added application workloads which allowed the rest of the IT team to
build confidence in the ability of VMs to perform.
vMotions can use an entire 10Gb Link—Testing showed that vMotions were sat-
urating the 4Gb FlexNICs provisioned in the lab.
Before virtualization—40 cabinets, 27.5 servers per cabinet. After virtual-
ization—2 cabinets, 2 blade server chassis per cabinet, 16 blade servers
per chassis, 17.2 VMs per blade server, 550 VMs per cabinet.
Results
Before—Each of 1,100 rack
servers has its own power
and cabling system.
After—Power and cabling
for one chassis supports 16
server blades and 550 VMs.
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Resources
Related Links To learn more about the companies, technologies, and products mentioned in this report, visit the following web pages: HP FlexFabric Adapters Provided by Emulex HP BladeSystem HP VirtualConnect Technology IT Brand Pulse VMware ESXi 5.0 VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Manager Vonage
About the Author
Frank Berry is founder and senior analyst for IT Brand Pulse, a trusted source of data and analysis about IT infrastructure, including servers, storage and networking. As for-mer vice president of product marketing and corporate marketing for QLogic, and vice president of worldwide marketing for the automated tape library (ATL) division of Quan-tum, Mr. Berry has over 30 years experience in the development and marketing of IT infrastructure. If you have any questions or comments about this report, contact [email protected].
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