HP Server Virtualisation

There are several key benefits to using server consolidation and virtualization analysis solutions, including operational efficiency, better resource allocation, and enhanced security. You'll learn more about these and other business advantages of virtualization throughout this guide.

Find out how virtualization technology can help you allocate resources more efficiently, meet business demands, and save money over the long term.

A virtualized infrastructure can benefit companies and organizations of all sizes. Virtualization greatly simplifies a physical IT infrastructure to provide greater centralized management over your technology assets and better flexibility over the allocation of your computing resources. This enables your business to focus resources when and where they're needed most, without the limitations imposed by the traditional "one computer per box" model.

What does it all mean? In the computing realm, the term virtualization refers to presenting a single physical resource as many individual logical resources (such as platform virtualization), as well as making many physical resources appear to function as a singular logical unit (such as resource virtualization). A virtualized environment may include servers and storage units, network connectivity and appliances, virtualization software, management software, and user applications.

What's a virtualized server? Basically, a virtual server, or VM, is an instance of some operating system platform running on any given configuration of server hardware, centrally managed by a virtual machine manager, or hypervisor, and consolidated management tools.

Note: The software providing the virtualization is called the VMM (virtual machine monitor) or hypervisor.
A hypervisor can run on bare hardware (native VM) or on top of an operating system (hosted VM).

A single instance may operate in isolation or share resources with several other instances of the same (or separate) server platforms. VMware and Microsoft provide a few of the most popular virtualization software products, although open source solutions are also available.

What are the primary benefits of using virtualization software? Virtualization software enables you to create VMs that share hardware resources and transparently function as individual entities on the network. Consolidating servers as VMs on a small number of physical computers can save money on hardware costs and make centralized server management easier. Server virtualization also makes backup and disaster recovery simpler and faster, providing for a high level of business continuity. In addition, virtual environments are ideal for testing new operating systems, service packs, applications, and configurations before rolling them out on a production network.

Note: Some companies even deploy virtualization of call centers or help desks, greatly reducing costs for those services

You should perform a formal assessment of your existing and planned resources and virtualization needs before acquiring a virtualization solution. Capacity planning determines how VMs will be distributed across physical computers for best performance and ease of management.

Your assessment should address the following questions:
• How many servers do you have?
• Which roles do they serve: application, database, web, and so on?
• How many servers do you need?
• How many users do you serve?
• Are you experiencing any issues with your current servers?
• Do you want to streamline any processes?
• Which server utilization trends do you observe?
• What percentage of your resources are underutilized and for how long, on average?
• Which usage patterns would you prefer to see?
• How much of your existing infrastructure can you virtualize?

After you identify which servers and software to virtualize, it's time to select the physical components on which the virtualization software will run and the virtualization software itself. Then you can deploy and configure the virtualization software and migrate your server operating systems and applications to the VMs.

Selection and deployment

If you need to purchase new server hardware, carefully compare vendors' server specifications to ensure you're purchasing the proper capacity based on your IT environment evaluation and inventory. Many small to medium-size environments find bladed servers offer maximum flexibility. A bladed server lets you quickly add or remove server blades from an enclosure, independent of storage and network connections.

Many popular virtualization software packages come in server and workstation versions. However, HP offers elemental and integrated virtualization solutions, which give you control over individual or entire components within your IT infrastructure:

• Elemental virtualization: Handles individual entities that include HP ProLiant servers operating VMware or Microsoft platforms, HP StorageWorks data-retention solutions, HP BladeSystem workstations, and infrastructure or virtualization services.

• Integrated virtualization: Encompasses a range of high-end capabilities from the HP VSE (Virtual Server Environment) to BladeSystem, HP Integrity NonStop servers, and StorageWorks virtualization systems, all with a centralized form of control.

Once the virtualized environment is established, you use management tools to control and monitor virtual servers. Using HP SIM (Systems Insight Manager) and the HP ProLiant Essentials Virtual Machine Management Pack, for example, you can monitor both virtual and physical servers simultaneously from a single, centralized interface. You may also easily transition existing VMs to other server platforms. In addition, HP Storage Virtualization System helps you pool and share your storage assets, simplifying resource management and increasing utilization.

Other management tools and their uses are described as follows:

• HP Integrity ECA (Essentials Capacity Advisor): Uses trending capabilities to simulate future usage patterns, which is helpful when planning upcoming consolidations.
• HP Performance Agent: Enables you to track workloads as they move through a server pool and plan consolidations from legacy servers.
• HP Global Workload Manager: Specifies workloads that may automatically access spare capacity while maintaining service levels for key business applications.
• HP Global Instant Capacity: Transfers usage rights from offline servers during planned and unplanned downtimes.


Securing virtual environments
VMs are subject to some of the same vulnerabilities as physical machines, as well as some security issues peculiar to the virtualized environment. You enforce VM access using user and group permissions just as you do with physical servers. Depending on your environment, you might be able to integrate your VM access scheme into your existing directory or authentication services.
Be sure to address the following security issues in your virtualized infrastructure:

• Ensure all remote users authenticate when attempting to connect to a server.
• Check your server's security settings, which dictate security for network traffic to and from a host server.
• Because three or more TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) ports may be used for access, configure the firewall to allow access to one or more of these ports.

By design, a VMM memory management scheme and virtual device firewalls a VM from accessing or acting on data belonging to other virtual machines. All processes, memory, storage, and networking are treated as individual and separate entities, even on the same physical set of resources.