NPA Virtualization. By Ovidiu Bernaschi. Visual Network Systems

Transcription

1 NPA Virtualization By Ovidiu Bernaschi Visual Network Systems Dublin, 30 th September 2010

2 Agenda Introduction A short overview of available virtualization technologies Focus is on VMware producs NPA Virtualization User Story & Requirements Why Virtualize the NPA with VMware? VMware ESXi overview What we had to do? Task requirements Performance Comparison tables - real & virtual hardware IOPS benchmarking results Issues & Solutions How we made it happen? What went wrong? Description of issues and solutions Conclusions & Questions Summary of conclusions and findings Any questions are welcomed

3 Introduction Virtual Technology leaders VMware Citrix Microsoft Market leader Proven reliability Performance High HW Compatibility High Security High UNIX Performance Great Resource control High HW Compatibility Free with WS2008R2 High Windows Performance

4 NPA Virtualization with ESXi Why vsphere Hypervisor? Next generation bare metal hypervisor Proved Compatible with NPA Proven Good Performance with NPA Proven NPA Stability Basic version is free More secure than ESX Lower resource usage than ESX Built in OVF Manager Capable to run business critical applications Back up and recovery built in

5 User Story and Requirements Stage 1: Set up the base VM using the OS/HDD/CPU/RAM/parameters identified in US1778 ESXi 4.1 installed on R710 with 2x Xeon 4xCore CPUs, 12GB RAM, 6x SAS 15k rpm HDDs Stage 2 - Install and deploy NF Tracker & NPA in VM RHEL 5.5, FC13, WS2003, WS2008R2 installed and configured on ESXi. NF Tracker installed and passed testing successfully NPA installed after finding a workaround the existing bug. Passed testing successfully Stage 3: Assess NFT performance in 1VM and in 2VMs. Provide metrics and benchmarks results Performance tests show that we can run at 10K flows/sec and get most flows into some flows don't get flows/sec we can also run 2 virtual NPAs on the same R710 server with the above hardware configuration Stage4: Automate generation of new NPA build and OVF export Virtual NPA automation from Hudson achieved. Final Command: ovftool --poweroffsource --noimagefiles vi://[user]:[pass]@[ip]:[port]/[npaname] [saveas.ovf]

6 Performance

7 Issues and Solutions How we dealt with the problems Problem 1 NPA wouldn t install on any VM Fixed with a workaround by initializing the virtual drive with another OS Fixed permanently by on by adding the correct initialization code Problem 2 - OVF deployment issue due to resource config limitation DE6655 with full details. Deployment fails if we try to deploy on a server with less resources than the ones configured in the VM. If we export with less resources, upon deployment and new resource allocation, the NTF DB doesn t pick up the extra HDD space available. US completed in Sprint 4 All TCs were run, all blocking defects were dealt with Solutions for virtual functionality delivered US purpose -> OVF deployment achieved Problem 3 the NPA doesn t work on XenServer and Hyper-V Not fixed yet as there was no US for it and it was considered out of scope NF Tracker works successfully in any supported OS that installs on XenServer & Hyper-V

8 My Conclusions & Your Questions Considering Virtualization is expected to grow exponentially to a billions of Euro market, entering the virtual world and targeting cloud computing was a very good strategic move from Visual Network Systems Using VMware s latest generation leading product ESXi to deliver the vnpa to customers, was also a smart move. I expect a considerable increase in revenue in the next few years as virtualization takes off XenServer runs UNIX OSs better than VMware, it should have received a lot more attention considering the NPA is UNIX CentOS based NPA OVF should have been made compatible with XenServer. On Mac, Parallels runs a lot faster than VMware, there should have been a story for it and create compatibility with it as well Your Questions?