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Citrix XenServer Success
The document discusses ensuring peak performance of critical business applications in virtualized environments. It begins by outlining some common myths around virtualization and performance management. Specifically, it notes that virtualization does not inherently make performance management easier, resource reservations do not prevent VMs from interfering with each other, and that performance issues can originate from any IT layer. It then introduces eG Innovations as a company that provides full-stack performance visibility and automated root cause diagnosis across networks, storage, servers, virtualization and applications. This helps optimize environments, reduce troubleshooting time, and ensure projects are delivered on time and on budget. The document concludes by inviting the audience to a free trial of eG Innovations' monitoring services.
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Citrix XenServer Success
- 1. Citrix XenServer Success Assuring PeakPerformance of Critical Business Applications Presenters: Mike Bursell (Citrix) Bala Vaidhinathan (eG Innovations)
- 2. Introduction to XenServer MikeBursell Senior Product Manager Citrix [email protected]
- 3. XenServer Customers Server VirtualizationCloudDesktop Server Virtualization Desktop Cloud
- 4. What is XenServer? •Free XenServer impact – >50% of Fortune 500 run XenServer • Proven with leading vendors’ technology – Trusted by demanding organizations to run the most mission critical apps • Optimized to run XenDesktop deployments • Used by the largest clouds • Validated by market thought leaders
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- 7. XenServer Pedigree • XenServeris based on the Xen hypervisor – Mature: over 10 years old – Recently became a Linux Foundation Collaboration Project • The Xen ProjectTM Powers the largest clouds in production • The Xen ProjectTM is the leading open source virtualization platform that is powering some of the largest clouds in production today. Xen powers Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Public Cloud and many hosting services. http://xenproject.org/
- 8. Magic Quadrant forx86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure Source: Gartner (June 2012) Vendor Landscape Report: Server Virtualization Source: InfoTech (2012) XenServer is OSS Server Virtualization Leader
- 9. XenServer: The Best Platformfor CloudPlatform and XenDesktop • CloudPlatform: over 86% of all customers using XS or XS and another hypervisor. • XenDesktop: XS the hypervisor of choice for over 50% of deployments. XenServer 71% VMware 5% KVM 3% XenServer/Vmware /KVM 4% XenServer/KVM 3% XenServer/VMware 11% KVM/Vmware 3%
- 10. Why Customers Virtualizewith XenServer? • 10 minutes to Xen • Installs with only 4 megabytes of storage • No single points of failure • Centrally manage hundreds of virtual servers • Enterprise-class features such as live migration, disk snap shots, high availability, dynamic memory control • Enables you to optimize resources with zero- downtime to users • Industry-leading server virtualization, free! • Extends your server consolidation savings into capital equipment, space, power and cooling costs Affordable3 Performance2 Ease of Use1
- 11. Different Workloads, DifferentMarkets • Workloads – Cloud • Traditional • Cloud workload – Server virtualization – Desktops (VDI) • Markets – Small/medium businesses – Large enterprises – Cloud
- 12. XenServer Meets AllVirtualization Needs Enterprise Data Center •High performance, resilient virtualization platform •Simple deployment and management model •Host based licensing to control CAPEX Desktop Virtualization •Optimized for high performance desktop workloads •Storage optimizations to control VDI CAPEX Cloud Infrastructure •Platform for IaaS and Cloud Service Providers •Powers the NetScaler SDX platform •Fully supports Software Defined Networking
- 13. Hypervisor Tools • Toolsfrom Citrix – XenCenter • Management tool • Some diagnostics and monitoring – APIs • Broad set of APIs • Very expressive • Absolutely not for everyone!
- 14. Different Workloads, DifferentProfiles • Your workload’s profile will vary: – Application type – Time of day – Failures – Bottlenecks • Affected hardware resources include: – CPU – Memory – Storage – Network
- 15. Scale Matters • Characteristicsvary between: – A single host – A pool of hosts – Multiple singleton hosts – Multiple pools • The bottlenecks change • The trouble-shooting changes • The failure modes change
- 16. Environment Matters • Isall your hardware the same? – Network cards – Storage arrays – CPUs – Memory – Local disks • Are you sure? • Is this even a good idea? VM VM VM VM VM
- 17. Not Just TheHardware Heterogeneous Virtualization Platforms Source: Info-Tech Research Group; N = 71 1% 3% 7% 31% 58% How many server virtualization vendors are you using? 5 4 3 2 1 41% 32% 9% 9% 4% 5% What pair of vendors are you using? VMware/Citrix VMware/Microsoft VMware/Oracle Microsoft/Oracle Oracle/Red Hat Microsoft/Red Hat Many organizations leverage a combination of VMware, for advanced management of critical workloads and apps, and Citrix or Microsoft for cost savings in non-critical systems. The Benefits
- 18. Who Sees WhichLayer? • User – application • DB & strorage admin - database/storage • System admin – hypervisor/virtualisation • Networking admin– networking • Hardware admin – server 0 10000 20000 0:00:00 0:01:45 0:03:30 0:05:15 0:07:00 0:08:45 0:10:30 0:12:15 0:14:00 0:15:45 0:17:30 0:19:15 0:21:00 0:22:45 0:24:30 0:26:15 0:28:00 0:29:45 0:31:30 0:33:15 0:35:00 0:36:45 0:38:30 0:40:15 0:42:00 0:43:45 0:45:30 NFSOps NFS Ops (Non-IC) NFS Read Ops NFS Write Ops
- 19. Poll: Which ITComponents Can You See? • Desktop Layer • Application Layer • Hypervisor/virtualization Layer • Storage/Database Layer • Server/Networking Layer
- 20. You Need Cross-LayerVisibility • The entire stack – Application – Virtual Machine Operating System – Hypervisor platform – Networking – Storage – Hypervisor hardware • Complex interactions between layers
- 21. Typical Performance Management Challenges •User experience issues • Lack of visibility across silos • Complex and/or slow issue identification • Proactive problem solving • Chasing issues that originate in other IT domains
- 22. Network Web on Hyper-V ActiveDirectory SQL XenApp on XenServerZDC on VMware ESX License Server Profile Server Enterprise Apps vCenterOracle Client SAN Switch Finding The Root Cause of These Challenges is Critical
- 23. XenServer Provides thePlatform • But your infrastructure is more than the hypervisor – …different users – …different workloads – …different hardware – …different layers • Your infrastructure is complex, and so are the challenges
- 24. Poll: What AreYour Biggest Performance Management Challenges? • User experience issues • Lack of visibility across silos • Complex and/or slow issue identification • Proactive problem solving • Chasing issues that originate in other IT domains
- 25. Bala Vaidhinathan CTO eG Innovations [email protected] AssuringPeak Performance of Critical Business Applications
- 26. Myth #1 “VirtualizationMakes Performance Management Easier” • Scope for performance management remains the same • 10 servers, 30 guests => 300 virtual machines to monitor • Higher complexity because of resource sharing across VMs • Guests share CPU, memory, disk, network resources • A single malfunctioning application in a guest can impact performance of all other VMs Physical Virtual
- 27. Myth #2 “ResourceReservation Ensures That VMs Don’t Interfere With Each Other” Streaming Media App Slow Database Queries Disk Reads Excessive disk reads by the one VM slows down application within another VM Shared resources become bottlenecks: • Network • Storage • Compute • Apps • Desktop
- 28. Myth #3 “VirtualizationIs Just Another Silo That Can Be Managed Independently From Other Tiers” FIREWALL WEB SERVER USER APP SERVER DB SERVER A problem in one tier can affect all the other tiers. Is it the network, database, app server, or virtualization tier? “My application is slow!”
- 29. Myth #4 “VirtualizationPlatforms Already Include All Tools and Metrics Needed for Performance Management” End User LAN Admin Firewall admin Server admin Virtualization admin Domain admin ERP Admin Sys admin Application Admin The server is working OK No other complaints All lights Are green We don’t see anything wrong Database Admin “My application is slow!” VMs are lightly loaded Everything Is OK Not our problem Looks fine Not mine either Talk to the other guys IT Service Manager
- 30. Myth #5 “TheHypervisor View of Virtual Machines is Sufficient to Manage VMs” • The Outside view shows the portion of physical resources used by each VM (CPU, disk, memory) • Provided by the virtualization hypervisor • Useful for capacity planning and identifying certain VM issues • Does NOT show why a VM is consuming resources ResourcesofthePhysical Machine 0 100% VM1 15% VM2 25% VM3 20% VM4 32% 0 100% ResourcesofthePhysicalMachine VM1 15%60% 10% VM2 25% 10 % 45 % 5 % 30% VM3 20%25% 60% VM4 32% 12% 20% 40% Apps inside a VM • The Inside view shows the portion of resources allocated to a VM that are used by each application and each user of the VM • Provided by the guest OS (for Windows: WMI) • Useful for user load balancing, identifying guest OS issues, misbehaving applications, and unauthorized user activities • Does show why a VM is consuming resources, accelerates fix
- 31. Myth #6 “VDIPerformance Management Can be Done Using Tools that Support Virtual Servers” Citrix XenServerMicrosoft Hyper-V Virtualization Desktop Brokers and Support Systems VDI A performance management for VDI is extremely unique as you need a solution that combines multiple different performance management methodologies
- 32. Myth #7 “Scalingis Linear…More Hardware Means More Performance” It is critical to understand the overall performance at all levels and identify the bottlenecks
- 33. What does thislead to? • High business cost of downtime • Slow applications impact productivity • Poor user experience User Frustration & Low Productivity • Wasted resources on manual, complex, lengthy diagnosis • Requires too many experts & too many tools Rising IT Support Cost & Complexity • Throwing costly hardware at problems • Oversized & inefficient environment Rising Infrastructure Cost • Delayed deployment & rollout • Performance issues & fire drills • Failed projects & initiatives Project delays, cost overruns, missed objectives
- 34. How Does eGInnovations Help?
- 35. Network Web on XenServer ActiveDirectory SQL ZDC on VMware ESX License Server Profile Server Enterprise Apps vCenterOracle Client SAN Switch Complete visibility – every layer, every tier! “My application is slow!” XenApp on VMware ESX How Does eG Enterprise Help?
- 36. Automated Diagnosis User Experience Management Right-Sizing & Capacity Planning Pre-emptive Alerting Total Performance Visibility End User Experience Storage Connection Brokers ProfileServers Network Applications Virtualization Infrastructure & App Performance Service Performance Online Banking Accounting Trading Patient records . . . eG Enterprise The eG Innovations Approach
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- 38. eG Innovations UniqueCapabilities • Complete 360o Cross-Domain Performance Visibility Get total performance visibility of all components and how they impact user experience across desktop, application, virtualization, network, storage, server, et c. • Automatic Root-Cause Diagnosis Automate and accelerate the discovery, diagnosis and resolution of performance issues in complex environments – so your highly skilled staff can be more productive. • Pre-Emptive Problem Detection & Alerting Pre-emptively monitor, detect and resolve performance issues – before users are affected. Prevent downtime, ensure exceptional performance and user satisfaction. • Capacity & Performance Analytics Right-size your virtualized IT infrastructure, maximize resource utilization and reduce hardware/software cost.
- 39. eG Innovations Multi-PlatformSupport Virtualization Platforms Operating systems VDI Technologies Application Technologies vSphere Hyper—V LPARs Solaris Zones and LDOMs XenServer XenDesktop View
- 40. eG Enterprise Architecture TRENDS ANALYSIS AUTO DISCOVERY DATAANALYSIS MULTI-PHASE CORRELATION SERVICE LEVEL AUDITS SERVICE MONITORING REAL-TIME ALERTS SINGLE CLICK DIAGNOSIS MULTI-LEVEL DIAGNOSIS 100% WEB INTERFACE AUTO THRESHOLDING PROBLEM MANAGEMENT eG Manager PERSONALIZED VIEWS CENTRAL CONFIGURATION ANY WHERE MONITORING NMS INTEGRATION eG Console ADVANCED REPORTING CONFIG CHANGE CONTROL ACTIONS INTEGRATION CONSOLE eG Plugins Services, Systems, Applications and Networks AGENTLESS MONITORING MULTI-LOCATION TESTING eG Monitoring SINGLE AGENT MONITORING
- 41. The ROI ofeG Innovations • Reduce downtime • Increase application availability • Boost user experience Boost User Satisfaction & Productivity • Simplify, automate & accelerate diagnosis & troubleshooting • Optimize staffing levels & reduce OPEX Reduce IT Support Cost & Complexity • Increase hardware utilization • Leverage investment in software • Right-size & optimize environment Reduce Infrastructure Cost & Avoid Cost Overruns • Accelerate deployments & rollout • Reduce risk, deliver successful projects & peace of mind Deliver Projects on Time, on Budget, on Target
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- 43. Visit eG Innovations Booth417 Become a Citrix Performance Hero Visit eG Innovations Booth 417
- 44. Free Trial Offer FREE30-day Trial eG on Tap Monitoring Service Contact eG Innovations to Sign Up [email protected] http://www.eginnovations.com (866) 526 6700
Editor's Notes
- #6 Over 1,000,000 downloads of XenServer
- #7 Customer types and usage150,000 unique companies of all sizesStrongest in NA and EMEA¼ Desktop; ½ Server; ¼ Cloud (public & private) On average 2,500 employees150 servers<30% virtual today; expect to get to >60%95% are satisfied or very satisfied and recommend the product to peers90% plan to expand their footprint in next year1/3rd plan to move to a premium edition
- #9 XenServer in 2012 InfoTech ‘Champions’ quadrant, and Gartner 2012 MQ ‘leaders quadrant’.It’s clear from the analysts report that XenServer is, and always has been, the Open Source Server Virtualization Leader. Citrix’s strategy for XenServer is to retain and strengthen this position, expanding XenServer’s footprint and functionality as a platform for server virtualization, desktop virtualization, networking and cloud.Key strengths that the analysts picked out:XenServer offers rich product capabilities for relatively low costVision of becoming “open” alternative for virtualization through to cloud computingCompatibility of XenServer with XenDesktop and other Citrix productsCitrix offers mature functionality for managing XenServerXenServer now has over 100,000 unique customers, and is still showing strong growth.
- #11 XenServer is designed to be simple, intuitive and easy to use. It can be installed and running in 10 minutes with only 4 megabytes of storage. It’s unique management architecture and console eliminates single points of failure so you can centrally manage hundreds of virtual servers.The free version of XenServer comes with enterprise class features including centralized management, disk snapshotting, and live virtual machine migration which enables organizations to manage their environment easily and intelligently while optimizing resources with zero-downtime to users. The premium editions of XenServer are conveniently priced per server and contain enhanced management and automation features such as high availability, dynamic memory control, workload balancing and distributed virtual network switch.Much simpler – "10 minutes to Xen"Far fewer "VMware Patch Tuesday" headachesDesigned to run on virtually any x86 hardwareOptimized for XenDesktop (e.g. IntelliCache)Equally matched to VMware in "green field" opportunities
- #13 XenServer is designed to address the virtualization needs of three critical markets.Within the Enterprise Data Center, XenServer solves the traditional server virtualization objectives of server consolidation, hardware independence while providing a high performance platform with a very straight forward management model.Since XenServer is a Citrix product, it only stands to reason that it can draw upon the vast experience Citrix has in optimizing the desktop experience and provide optimizations specific to desktop workloads.Lastly, with the emergence of mainstream cloud infrastructures, XenServer can draw upon the heritage of Amazon Web Services and Rackspace to provide a highly optimized platform for cloud deployments of any scale.
- #18 More and more organizations are choosing to host different workloads on different hypervisors enabling them not only better overall performance of their environment by also better utilizing their budget. Over 40% of companies in a recent Info-Tech study said they were using 2 or more server virtualization vendors within their datacenter, with almost half of these using Citrix and VMware together. The major challenge of this model is day to day management tasks, such as live migration, that you ideally want to complete through one management console. Currently both Citrix and Microsoft can manage each others VMs as well as VMware. VMware is beginning to offer management of Microsoft VMs.
- #23 Give examples of challenges – in most environments, there is little visibilityDifferent layers have different challengesMust look at all layers and find what is the root cause of the service problem?Network? VMware? AD? SQL? Storage? Profile Server?
- #35 10 min
- #38 10 min
- #39 10 min