Cloud Infrastructure Management - IBM VMControl

IBM Systems Director 6.3

VMControl 2.4

Thierry Huche

Topics

IBM Systems Director / VMControl intro

VMControl – Virtual Appliances, Image

management

Demo

IBM Systems Director Overview

Discover, navigate and illustrate systems on

the network, visualize detailed inventory

and relationships

Identify problematic systems and drill down

to the root cause

Update firmware, drivers, and operating

systems, and orchestrate the installation

process

Update plug-ins to add new functions to the

base capabilities

Monitor systems in real time and set critical

thresholds to notify administrators of

IBM Systems Director Overview

Topology

Three-tiered architecture

Thousands of managed nodes

Upward Integration modules supporting IBM Systems Director Agent

Managed Systems

(Servers, Desktops, Laptops, SNMP devices, CIM devices)

Management Console(s)

Web Interface

Stages of virtual resource management

Manage virtual server images

Manage virtual server images

Simplify image deployment

Simplify image deployment

Automate resource provisioning

Automate resource provisioning

OPTIMIZE

OPTIMIZE Create system pools

Create system pools

Automate workload provisioning

Automate workload provisioning

Dynamically move workloads

Dynamically move workloads

In cr ea si ng b us in es s al ig nm en t

VMControl Express Edition VMControl Express Edition

for lifecycle management for lifecycle management

VMControl Enterprise Edition VMControl Enterprise Edition

for cloud computing for cloud computing

VMControl Standard Edition VMControl Standard Edition

Power Systems Cloud Solution Positioning

Industrial strength virtualization coupled with

automated resource balancing and virtual image

management

Integrated service management platform

with automated IT service deployment, full

lifecycle management, metering & chargeback Basic cloud functions including

simple self service interface and infrastructure with automated provisioning D el iv er IT w ith ou t B ou nd ar ie s

Virtualization

Foundation

Entry Cloud

Advanced Cloud

IBM Service Delivery Manager & CloudBurst PowerVM, Systems

New in IBM Systems Director 6.3

DB2 installed by default

VMControl installed, need to be activated

New in VMControl 2.4

Multidisk support, capture & deploy virtual appliances with more

than 1disk, rootvg + other volume group – SCS only

Storage Copy Services, Fastcopy, use Flashcopy function of

storage system if available (SVC, DS8000, SV7000)

Image management capabilities for IBM i running in a PowerVM

virtual server

Support for NPIV Capture and Deploy

NPIV Options Supported in VMControl 2.4

Discovery and visualization of storage configured via NPIV

Storage end-to-end views (Client LPAR to SAN storage

device views of NPIV storage)

Virtual Server relocation in Virtual farms where the Virtual

Server storage configuration is NPIV

Delete virtual server

Capture virtual appliance for NIM and SCS

Deploy virtual appliance for NIM and SCS . . .

To existing virtual server with NPIV-attached storage

Topics

IBM Systems Director / VMControl intro

VMControl – Virtual Appliances, Image

management

Demo

What challenges does VMControl address?

Challenges of virtualization

Several interfaces to manage virtual servers across systems New workloads difficult and time consuming to implement Increase in management costs of virtual servers

Workload resiliency can degrade in a virtual environment

How VMControl address those challenges

Consolidates management to a “single pane of glass” (Systems Director) Automates the management of a virtualized infrastructure

Improves workload resiliency

This is a package that contains

A virtual server definition that meets the requirements to run it’s associated image, where the image contains the operating

system and any software

The virtual server image may contain

A supported operating system (AIX or Linux on System z) Any software applications that you wish to have run on that operating system

The Virtual Appliance is described using the methods

described in the Open Virtualization Format (OVF)

specification.

An industry standard representation of a virtual server that

contains a configured, tested operating system and middleware and software applications, along with the metadata that

describes the virtual server

meta-data SW OS

Virtual Appliance

Group virtual servers that contribute to an application workload or service

Summarize health and status of the composition of virtual servers Aggregated monitoring

A workload is created when you deploy a Virtual Appliance

Workload

VMControl Images Repository

For AIX, you have two options:

NIM image repositories

VIOS image repositories (SCS)

NIM Image Repository

VIOS images repository Storage Copy services

Introduction

to VMControl Storage Copy Services (SCS)

The Common Repository (CR) is

A SAN Storage Pool created for SCS use

Created in VMControl and associates the Storage Pool with an Image Control Point (VIOS)

The CR Storage Pool contains only the “raw” binary OS images (not mksysb or OVF) OVF information associated with each image/volume in the Storage Pool is kept on the SD Server and also on the Image Control Point

The CR “Image Control Point” (ICP)

Is a VIO Server that has Systems Director CAS and CR Subagent installed Is a VIOS that is associated with a Common Repository

Contains OVF information (duplicated from SD) associated with each raw image in the CR

Introduction to VMControl Storage Copy Services (SCS)

Storage Copy Service (SCS) based provisioning is

A new plugin feature introduced in VMControl 2.3.1 Standard Edition A faster method of capturing and deploying Virtual Appliances

A provisioning service that allocates Virtual Servers, SAN resources, and copies OS images via VIOS “dd” copy or SVC/V7000/DS8000 Fast Copy (for both deploy and capture)

A provisioning service that uses VMControl Common Repository to manage and deploy AIX/SUSE/RHEL “raw” images

A method that uses VIOS as the “Image Control Point” for the CR repository

SCS Common Repository Setup and Configuration

Basic Steps

Install & Activate Common Agent Services (CAS) on VIOS Discover the VIOS OS in Systems Director

Install Common Repository Subagent on VIOS

SCS VMControl 2.4 Activation Engine

Customization information from UI (ip configuration) is built into an OVF “Environment Document” ovf.env.xml

A virtual optical drive is created and attached to new virtual server and ovf.env.xml document file is loaded into drive.

Allows the document to be accessible to the activation engine when the new virtual server boots up

Requires at least one VIOS OS be discovered and have access on the host system where new virtual server is deployed

SMI-S providers for IBM Systems Director

A

SMI-S provider

is a vendor-specific module that is used so that

independent management software, such as IBM Systems Director,

can manage a vendor device using a standard interface based on

the Common Information Model (CIM) protocol.

VMControl and external Storage example

IBM Systems Director Server 6..2.1 IBM Systems Director VMControl 2.3.1 HMC

Managed System

SMI-S Provider

For SAN FC switch SAN Fibre

Channel switch

Dynamic LUN attachment

Discover, unlock, inventory

Deploying a Virtual Server Image

The VS image meta-data is used to create VS container, allocating the required platform resources.

Storage is dynamically allocated and attached to the virtual server.

The VS is dynamically attached to the appropriate networks and VLANs.

The virtual server is started from the bootable disk image and customized as part of its initial boot.

Managing Virtual Server Images

Virtualization

Compute Memory

Capture a Virtual Server

The bootable disk image is copied into the image repository.

Image meta-data describing the VS container is captured and included as part of the virtual appliance.

Import/Export a VS Image

A VS image may be imported to the image repository and cataloged by VMControl.

A VS image can be exported from a repository and easily distributed to other systems and environments.

Comparison times taken from Our Lab environment

Operation NIM Based SCS CR – DD Copy SCS CR - FastCopy

Capture (~5 GB Image) 8 Minutes 2.5 Minutes 15 Seconds

Topics

IBM Systems Director / VMControl intro

VMControl – Virtual Appliances, Image

management

Demo

Topics

IBM Systems Director / VMControl intro

VMControl – Virtual Appliances, Image

management

Demo

The Evolution of the Platform

Managing a pool of system resources with single systems simplicity

Compute Memory Storage _Network Operating System

Software

Virtualization

Compute Memory Storage _Network Virtual Server OS SW Virtual Server OS SW Virtual Server OS SW

Servers

Virtual Servers

System Pools

Mobility

Optimized for …. • Availability • Performance • Energy

PowerVM Systems Pools with VMControl Enterprise Edition

Simplifying the management of Power Systems

Integration with the IBM Systems Director dashboard

Dynamic Virtual Server Placement / Mobility Workload Resilience (PFA)

Support for P5, P6 and P7 Systems

New systems or available capacity from existing systems

Support for NIM and SCS Image Repositories

Capture, Search, Version and Deploy AIX / Linux Images

Discovery of existing mksysb images

Dynamic allocation of SAN storage

VIOS managed volume groups Non-IBM storage via SVC and TPC Storage System Pools

Power System Pool

Image Repository IBM Systems Director

VMControl

AIX NIM

VMControl Server System Pool

Groups similar hosts with the goals of

better resource

usage

and

workload resilience

Consists of:

Multiple hosts (managed systems) Associated virtual servers

Attached shared storage

Can be used for:

Deploying virtual appliances

The target host is selected automatically

Once a host is assigned to a server pool, you cannot deploy directly to that host

Relocating virtual servers from one host to another host in the pool

Manual relocation

Automatic relocation using the resilience policy Automatic relocation using command automation

Viewing server system pool status using a dashboard

Hosts

Virtual Servers

Supporting Existing Systems and Workloads

System Pools can be defined from a combination of new and existing system within the data center.

– For new systems, all of the systems capacity is added

and managed as part of the pool.

– For existing systems, all of the remaining capacity is

added and managed as part of the pool.

– Any pre-existing workloads are recognized, however

not managed within the systems pool.

Existing workloads can be migrated to a system pool.

– Capture existing workload

– Deploy workload to System Pools

System Pool

SW OS meta-data SW OS meta-data meta-data

Deploying a Virtual Appliance to a System Pool

Image Library

SW OS meta-data

A VA representing a multi-tiered applications workload is selected for deployment*

Intelligent placement of the virtual servers within the pool of systems provides simplification and

optimizations.

Understanding of the composition

Server Pools provide Workload Resilience

One of the major goals of server system pools is to provide

resilience for your virtual servers and the applications running on

them

Resilience is provided by relocating one or more virtual servers

to another host

Relocation Using VMControl Server Pools

Live relocation only

Manual relocation

VMControl chooses the target; user can accept or cancel the relocation

Automatic relocation using resiliency policy

Assign hosts to a server system pool; set resilience policy for the pool VMControl monitors host(s) in the workload for a predicted hardware failure

If a failure is predicted, VMControl will relocate affected virtual servers to another host in the pool

Workload automation policy = Advise; user must approve/disapprove the relocation

Workload automation policy = Automate; relocation performed automatically

Automatic relocation using an event automation plan

Relocate Virtual Servers between Hosts within the Pool

Determine best host placement within the pool Supports single virtual servers and host evacuation

Move virtual servers away from a failing host system

Automate relocation and placement of virtual servers in response to predicted host system failures with no disruption.

Resilience policy associated with the workload

Provide workload resilience – yes/no

Enables host system monitoring for failures and predictive failures Automates recovery action based on desire level of automation Users can add automation for custom thresholds

Automation policy associated with the workload

Automate = Require Approval / Automate

Require Approval– VMControl recommends actions and requires approval

Automate– VMControl automates actions

System Pool

System Server Pools Optimization

Before and After with VMControl Enterprise Edition

Power Systems virtualization

Micropartitioning Uncapped partitions VIOS

Partition Mobility AMS, AME, etc.

However:

Manual LPAR/VM creation Manual SAN provisioning Manual VIOS configuration

Management of individual Power servers

Long provisioning time for new VMs

Enhancements:

Single-wizard LPAR deployment Image versioning

Automated SAN provisioning Automated VIOS configuration