sanbolic white paper
Configuration Guide
www.sanbolic.com
Managing Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 using System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Melio Clustered File System
Melio FS simplifies storage management and virtual machine migration by enabling all virtual machine images to be store on a single shared LUN while utilizing all functionality of VMM
sanbolic white paper
Overview
Microsoft® System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides a comprehensive management solution for the virtualized data center that enables increased physical server utilization and centralized management of virtual machine infrastructure. The central console is built on the familiar System Center Operations Manager interface and provides centralized monitoring and management of virtual machines and physical hosts as well as centralized provisioning of new virtual machines. Virtual Machine Manager greatly simplifies the task of converting physical server or VMware virtual machines to Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 machines. The management and migration of the virtual machine images is greatly enhanced by maintaining all images on a shared SAN. Sanbolic’s Melio clustered file system and LaScala clustered volume manager are designed to provide multiple Windows servers with concurrent access to shared data on a Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN. Melio FS provides similar functionality to VMFS in VMware’s Infrastructure 3 management suite. Large numbers of host servers (up to 64) can be given concurrent access to all .VHD files on a shared SAN LUN. There is no need to provision a separate LUN for each .VHD file, and no need to copy files or remap the connection to the LUN when migrating virtual machines. Virtual machines can be easily migrated across physical hosts using the VMM central console in less than 30 seconds. Melio FS is a fully featured enterprise-class clustered file system and LaScala is a clustered volume manager. The products are easy to install but are designed to provide high performance, highly available shared access to SAN storage. In addition, Sanbolic’s products provides a range of features not supported by VMware’s VMFS including unlimited volume and file sizes, multilayer checkdisk, and full support for most Windows technologies including security ACLs and Active Directory. In addition to enabling virtual machine migration, Sanbolic’s products allow central assignment of application data volumes for virtual machines or physical serves on a SAN, allowing application data to be quickly reassigned when a Windows Server running on a virtual machine is moved across physical hosts, or when a workload is moved from a physical to a virtual server. This guide provides an overview of the configuration of System Center Virtual Machine Manager with Melio FS.
Hardware and Software Requirements
The installation assumes the following software and hardware has already been installed (this paper describes a configuration with two physical hosts, but multiple hosts can be configured in the same way):
Host servers running Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN configured with a shared LUN available to both servers GigE Network between host servers Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 Virtual Machine Manager 2007 RTM (only one instance needed i.e. Server 2) Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP1 (only one instance needed i.e. Server 1) Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 & 3.0 Windows Remote Management (WinRM) Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) 6.0 Windows Server Internet Information Services (IIS) Windows PowerShell 1.0 Sanbolic Melio FS and LaScala Volume Manager
sanbolic white paper
This paper does not describe in detail the installation of Melio and LaScala on the Storage Servers, or the process of configuring a shared volume. However, the installation and configuration takes only a few minutes once the hardware is set up. A detailed description can be found at http://www.sanbolic.com/pdfs/LaScala_manual.pdf http://www.sanbolic.com/pdfs/MelioFS_Installation_Guide.pdf Once the shared volume is created it will be visible to both hosts, and will appear as a local drive. For this example several virtual machines have been created on the shared volume. (Figure 1) Figure 1
Configuration
After installing the Microsoft and Sanbolic software as described above, the Virtual Machine Manager administrative console can be accessed from any host and will appear as in figure 2. For this example there are two host servers 2k3R2srv2.sanbolic.main and 2k3r2srv1.sanbolic.main.
sanbolic white paper
Figure 2
In order to utilize Melio File System with Virtual Machine Manager, each of the .VHD’s that reside on the Melio formatted volume need to be registered with each of the host servers. To do this we select a server, right click and select the “Properties” option, then select the VM’s tab. Then select “x:” volume and select the test VHD’s, as shown in Figure 3. Figure 3
sanbolic white paper
After all of the VHD’s have been registered with the VMM, they become available to both servers . By selecting the “Virtual Machine” on the bottom left, the currently available VHD’s, are presented. In the host status window (figure 4), we can see that all VHD’s are available on both servers. Each VHD physically resides on the Melio FS formatted shared volume i.e. “x:\” utilizing a single LUN, which is concurrently for both servers. Because both host servers have concurrent access to the .VHDs, the migration process for virtual machines is greatly simplified. There is no need to copy of remap the LUN containing the VHD.-If multiple host servers are being used, Melio FS allows all hosts to have concurrent access to the LUN where the VHDs reside. Figure 4
Migrating Virtual Machines Across Hosts
On the bottom right are the controls of the VHD, where we can Start, Stop, Save State etc. Here we have VHD named “Tets_1_srv1” running on host 2k3R2srv2 i.e. server 2. (Figure 5)
sanbolic white paper
Figure 5
To migrate between physical machines, the VHD’s- need to be in a stopped or saved state. We save the state on physical server “2k3R2srv2” using test VHD’s “Test_1_srv1”, then we recover the state of that VHD just by starting it on server “2k3r2srv1”. No physical migration of the VHD is needed as it resides on the same MelioFS formatted volume “x:\” on the same LUN. The virtual machine can be migrated to the second server within 30 second depending on the hardware used Figure 6 Saving state…
sanbolic white paper
Figure 7. Starting machine on the second host
PowerShell Scripting
The location and state of the VHD’s across the available physical servers can also be controlled by Power shell scripts which makes the administration even simpler. First we connect to any physical serve by issuing “Get-VMMServer “Name of the server” ” command (Figure 8)
Figure 8
sanbolic white paper
Once connected to a Virtual Machine Server the following control commands are available:
Start-VM Stop-VM Refresh-VM Resume-VM Shutdown-VM Suspend-VM SaveState-VM DiscardSavedState-VM
Sample script commands: Save State the VM on the current server: Get-VM -Name 'Test_1_srv1' | Where {$_.HostName -eq '2k3r2srv1'} | SaveState-VM
Resume the VM on the Destination server: Get-VM -Name 'Test_1_srv1' | Where {$_.HostName -eq '2k3r2srv2'} | Start-VM
Summary
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Sanbolic’s Melio Clustered File System add important new management and migration capability to Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 (which is currently available as a no cost download), as well as future Windows Virtualization tools that will be a component of the new Windows Server 2008 OS. Sanbolic’s product are designed for ease of use and integration with Windows platforms, and provide enhanced virtualization and storage management capability for customers building virtualized data centers using Windows Server and Microsoft System Center as their platform.
All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.
Sanbolic Inc. 304 Pleasant Street, 2nd Floor Watertown, MA 02472 phone: 617 833 4242 fax: 617 926 2808 url: www.sanbolic.com email: sales@sanbolic.com