IT@Intel Data Center Blog

Testing Live Migration with Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration

sudip.chahal@intel.com — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:24:10 GMT

Live migration is an essential technology for an agile, dynamic data center environment based on server virtualization. Until now, it has not been possible, however, to perform successful live migration between servers based on different generations of processors, each with different instruction sets - this limited our ability to implement large resource pools, creating islands of servers and hindering the implementation of advanced data center capabilities.

Combined, Intel VT FlexMigration assist and Enhanced VMotion are designed to overcome this limitation by enabling all servers to expose the same instruction set to applications, even if they are based on different processor generations from a single CPU supplier.

Intel IT and Intel’s Digital Enterprise Group, End User Platform Integration, conducted proof-of-concept (PoC) testing of live migration using Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration (Intel® VT FlexMigration) assist and the Enhanced VMotion feature of VMware ESX 3.5U2*. All migrations completed without problems and our testing demonstrated that we can use Intel VT FlexMigration assist for live migration of Intel IT business applications in a mixed production environment. As a result, we can create resource pools that combine servers from multiple generations, eliminating incompatible islands of servers and allowing full implementation of advanced data center capabilities. Accordingly, we expect to standardize on systems with Intel VT FlexMigration assist in the future.

Our recently published IT@Intel white paper: Testing Live Migration with Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration' documents the details pertaining to our tests – the types of systems tested, the workloads used, different scenarios examined and the results.

The paper can be downloaded at Testing Live Migration with Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration

On behalf of our team, I’d like to invite you to view this whitepaper and comment about how you are using or intending to use these technologies in your datacenters and your experiences to-date with these capabilities.

Free Cooling for Data Centers - video and whitepaper

don.c.atwood@intel.com — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:20:06 GMT

Hi I’m Don Atwood, author of the newly released white paper and video that discusses our proof of concept (PoC) that tested cooling our Data Center with outside air. The topic of humidity control and if this would work in an ultra high humid climate keeps coming up. Most OEM spec’s allow for a wide range of humidity and it’s our belief that this cooling methodology could be used almost everywhere globally. Our only uncertainty comes around trying this near the ocean with high levels of salty corrosive wet air. We know it would negatively affect the servers at some point but the question is how quickly and is it within our refresh timetable. During a trip to ASIA last week I discussed trying a small scale “near the ocean” PoC to test this theory.. Does anyone thing this would add value to your company?

Intel IT Deploys Virtualization - How we did it!

bill.s.sunderland@intel.com — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:58:16 GMT

As this is my first blog on this forum, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Bill Sunderland and I have been working at Intel for 12 years primarily working on Server Hardware Engineering and the last three years of which I have focused my efforts on Program Managing the Virtualization Engineering release for Intel IT. I have recently published a WP demonstrating the methodology used as described below.

Intel IT planned, engineered, and has begun deploying a virtualized business-computing production environment at several data centers, a rollout that will continue through 2008. Our initiative has already confirmed anticipated virtualization benefits such as faster, more automated deployment. We are initially consolidating older servers running applications that are not mission-critical; we see opportunities to achieve 16:1 consolidation ratios.

Click here to read the WP: Implementing Virtualization in a Global Business-Computing Environment

I would be interested in hearing your experiences and/or questions regarding virtualizing IT environments!

Comparing Two- and Four-socket Platforms for Server Virtualization

sudip.chahal@intel.com — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:39:46 GMT

The relative positioning of 2 and 4-socket servers for server virtualization has been an open question for a long time - a question that has stumped the most astute of IT professionals time and again. In fact it might not be an exaggeration to say that this open question is almost in the same class as the famous Riemann's hypothesis that has remained unsolved for over a century! (If you accept that premise, then there's some real estate on the moon that I'd like to bring to your attention as well). Although advocates for either class of servers have been emphatic in their respective positions, compelling data-points supporting their positions have been few and far between.

To remedy this sorry state of affairs, an Intel IT team conducted in-depth tests and analysis using current quad-core processor based 2 and 4-socket servers in a virtualized environment. This effort culminated in a comprehensive framework for comparing server platforms for virtualization. This comparative framework encompasses the majority of common deployment scenarios and usage models and answers - once and for all - the long unanswered question "which server is more appropriate for my virtualization project?"

The whitepaper detailing the findings can be found here Comparing Two- and Four-Socket Platforms for Server Virtualization. If time is short, click on the icon below for a short video overview.

Part II: What if you invested a dollar and it returned 10?

laurie.g.buczek@intel.com — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:54:36 GMT

Doug Garday continues his podcast series with part II, which continues the discussion around a heat recovery system to reduce the total cost of ownership. In this podcast, Doug plugs in numbers that show potential energy cost savings.

http://www.podtech.net/home/5079/roi-of-data-center-heat-recovery

To listen to Part I go to What if you invested a dollar and it returned 10?. View the full brief at Data Center Heat Recovery Helps Intel Create Green Facility.

Is the Data Center Green or is it Efficient?

brently.davis@intel.com — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:03:32 GMT

I won't go into a long dissertation, but I would like to hear what the masses are thinking about Green or Efficient efforts for the Data Center landscape.

As you all know Green is taking off -- our world is becoming concerned with the legacy we'll leave for our children and their children. I admire that because it identifies how we're a caring nation in the U.S. as well as a compassionate world.

But I believe we're mixing the messages down at the lower levels; In my opinion, "Green" means giving something back to mother earth. It means offsetting your carbon impact by planting trees (as I learned from one of the earlier companies I worked for ), or it means buying energy from alternative means such as wind power -- the direction Intel and other companies are moving towards. Those are green efforts from my point of view. However "Efficiency," is defined by Encarta's North America dictionary as this.. "The ability to do something well or achieve a desired result without wasted energy or effort."

Those are two different directions as I see them, and companies running programs to enable more efficient Data Centers must understand how to correctly identify their approach.

So, what does everyone else thing about Green vs. Efficient?

Share your opinion Greening Data Centers or Make 'em Efficient?

The Role of Abstraction in Data Center Transformation

alan.d.ross@intel.com — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 21:17:31 GMT

Most data centers have a very long history with the enterprises they provide services for. Data centers grew up around the users they provide services to and are generally located within a close proximity to the user base. As LAN capabilities improved, performance of local applications became less of an issue for enterprises but new capabilities were generally landed in existing facilities. As the enterprise grew through mergers and acquisitions, additional data center capacity was generally co-located with the new users.

When availability was the key metric for measuring performance of applications, it became customary for each new application that the enterprise was rolling out (whether developed or purchased) to have its own dedicated hardware, to protect the integrity of the application and improve stability. Over time this has led to data centers around the world that are full of hardware that operates at a fraction of what it's capable of! Application owners were loathe to consider the idea of ‘stacking' applications on the same server, looking to avoid potential conflicts that arise in a shared resource environment.

We now have multiple vectors for driving efficiency into our data centers: energy efficiency, sustainability and cost are some that are moving organizations toward initiatives that will transform the way we provide services from the data center and how we support those services going forward. Driving efficiency is a painful but necessary step in the overall transformation.

Transformation can mean many things to the enterprise but part of a data center transformation generally involves consolidation of data center facilities and compute resources that provide services to the enterprise. This can cause some amount of nervousness on the part of the end users, application developers and administrators who have grown accustomed to unfettered access to resources over time.

Why is this abstraction of resources from users, developers and administrators necessary? A primary driver is to standardize facilities, network, compute and storage resources so the operations staff is sustaining a small number of standard offerings, which provides them with a very predictable environment that they can become expert is sustaining. By centralizing to fewer facilities and driving toward higher utilization of existing resources (i.e. network, servers and storage) the enterprise can obtain more work out of their data centers for less energy and therefore less cost.

Removing the users, developers and administrators from the data center is a process and mindset change that will take resolve and ultimately executive support. So many IT pros feel they need to ‘touch' their environment but this leads to custom configurations, unknown/undocumented changes and instability in an environment that we're trying to standardize. Building the competency within the operations group will facilitate a change in the way excursions and outages are dealt with and will form the basis of a much more predictable environment that the operations team will feel proud to own. This is one piece of the transformation that cannot be overlooked when considering the evolution of the enterprise data center.

Data Center Efficiency

alan.d.ross@intel.com — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 17:26:00 GMT

Hello All, my name is Alan Ross and I'm a Principal Engineer in Intel's Information Technology division and currently leading our Data Center Architecture initiative. Our mission is to transform the way we do enterprise computing, which is easier said than done because there is a lot of history in this domain. Over the next several months I will be expanding on these ideas and providing insight into our approach to this transformation. To start things off, here is a short video where I speak about the topic of data center efficiency:

http://www.podtech.net/home/4660/virtualization-and-enterprise-architecture-the-security-architect

Here are the guiding principles that are being used to help us define the "To-Be" reference architecture for the data center:

1. Evolve our corporate data centers based on architectural governance and capability maturity-based methodologies

2. Enable a multi-tier service management and service delivery operational framework

3. Enable a service-oriented data center architecture

4. Enable a high-performance computing mindset for application environments

5. Design and build DC facilities modularity for flexibility, scalability and managed capital investment

6. Keep Intel legal and secure

7. Transform enterprise operations and scale TCO through innovation

8. Continuously optimize TCO and unit cost

9. Provide an environmentally friendly foundation

I would appreciate any input, feedback or questions you have and am looking forward to the discussions.