Paravirtulization under the hood and more

For those of you that are hard core virtualization folks, there is an excellent couple of articles over at xen.org by George Dunlap from Citrix.

In the ESX world and Hyper-V world the virtualization is closer to the HVM type or PVHVM when the OS is enlightened.  Xen has grown from a different root and started from the paravirutalization world (true PV, it is actually kind of interesting how the VMs themselves boot in this world).

This also gives a bit of background into the terminology and options that are available.

There is a part 1: http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2012/10/23/the-paravirtualization-spectrum-part-1-the-ends-of-the-spectrum/

and part 2: http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2012/10/31/the-paravirtualization-spectrum-part-2-from-poles-to-a-spectrum/

Personally, I think it good reading for anyone working with machines as it is a history of evolution in one aspect.

At this same time we have MSFT Research working on the Library OS.  This is an interesting abstraction of applications into VM type containers, application containers.  This is more similar to the traditional Xen PV model, where (technically) there isn’t a boot kernel in there, just the runtime components of the machine and the bootstrap comes from the xen hypervisor itself.  (at least that is my impression of it).

The MSFT research project known as Drawbridge: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/drawbridge/

And a bit more: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=141071

And a Channel9 presentation for the short attention spans among us:  http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Going+Deep/Drawbridge-An-Experimental-Library-Operating-System

Other MSFT Research OS projects: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/groups/os/

Is this the future?  the Application level virtualization that was discussed many years ago.  Decoupling the application from the OS?  Not really the decoupling, but the forcing of an application into a container.  A container that it cannot get out of and affect other applications.

I look at this and think about traditional application compatibility issues going away, true application throttling, true isolation of a session (and its applications) within a Terminal Server.  That is what really makes me think about where this is all headed.  And we continue to be just at the beginning of it all.

How to ask a question in a technical forum

A friend of mine recently ran across this and forwarded it to me.

Personally, as a TechNet forum moderator, and frequent forum contributor, and as a person who handles a few forums for my employer; I find the information in this KB both lighthearted and highly useful at the same time.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

The title of the KB article:  “How to ask a question”

Please, check it out.

Thank you Daniel Petri!

Fabric is infrastructure

Azure is this platform. It is a bunch of VMs but it isn't a bunch of VMs. There are roles and instance of roles (which are technically VMs).

Then there is this mysterious thing called 'fabric'. The fabric is the secret sauce, it is the thing that makes it all work.

For those of us who have been in enterprise IT - we know all about fabric. We have built it, we have managed it, we have fixed it.

This is a term that is not Azure specific by the way - you will see it appearing in more and more places - fabric is infrastructure. Azure fabric is a bit more - but you will be seeing this fabric term more frequently in the future.

In the simplest sense, fabric is infrastructure. It is the server, the hypervisor that runs on it. It is the storage and storage management. It is the network; the load balancers, the subnet, the VLANs. It is also the management layer that brings all of these things together.

It is this management layer that provides the real keys - the orchestration of events. Provisioning of storage, a VM on a hypervisor, booting that VM, configuring its firewall and networking, installing / instantiating / injecting / inserting / configuring the application, setting the virtual interfaces of the load balancers, and verifying the "health" of your application.

All of this is what the fabric does and it is really valuable, important, and useful.

If you want to geek out (in an IT Pro sort of way) and want to learn more - here are some presentations by Mark Russinovich describing the entire thing in deep detail at PCD 2010

http://player.microsoftpdc.com/Session/18a38105-520f-486a-9e04-d956736e506d

What is the Private Cloud?

What is this “Private Cloud” thing anyway?

The simple term is that it is a pool of compute resources that runs on hardware that you own (it is in your datacenter). 

But, that just means that I am running virtual machines, right?

Not exactly.  It means that there is some type of automation framework in front of the hypervisors and the virtual machines that is providing some type of orchestration.  This could be XenServer + VMLogix or Hyper-V + SCVMM.

At the same time, virtual machines are not required – but it is easier with virtual machines.

HPC from Microsoft, the old fashioned mainframe, the Cray – these are examples of private clouds that have been around, performing massive calculations, they are orchestrated; they meet the definition.  But they require custom written applications so they work well in very specific situations.

The recent “Private Cloud” term tossed out by Microsoft I think can be summarized in this way:

• Private Cloud is owned by you.
• Private Cloud is dynamic (in some way)
• Private Cloud is at least Hyper-V (but it can be more as you need it to be).
• Private Cloud has OEM reference hardware designs (these are tested and known to work, but they are not the only option)
• Private Cloud is NOT all boxed up and sitting on a shelf somewhere. (it is not a SKU that you purchase)
• Private Cloud is not defined by a specific set of prescribed technologies.
• Private Cloud must be pieced together by you (the architect, the enterprise, the planner – you must know what your requirements are).
• Private Cloud is NOT Microsoft only technologies.

Private Cloud is your enterprise datacenter.  Enabled to be nimble and adaptive through technologies that make it dynamic.  Some of these technologies are:  Hyper-V, SCVMM, SSP, Operations Manager, Configuration Manager (basically any of the System Center group added on top of your infrastructure that happens to be running as virtual machines).

In the Citrix world I could describe the same, or I could have a mash-up of Citrix products with Systems Center products.  The end result would be the same – a Private Cloud.

This is where the big disconnect is happening and all of the confusion is currently happening.  Private Cloud is a term, a term that summarizes a conglomeration of technologies that are working together to make an IT shop more efficient, more nimble, more self-service.

VHD CSV CORE and RDS article updates

Every now and then the individual teams at MSFT put out some really useful blog articles.

What are VHDs?

http://blogs.technet.com/windows_vpc/archive/2009/11/24/virtual-hard-disks-vhds-in-windows-virtual-pc.aspx

 

Creating a Virtual Machine to be stored on a Cluster Shared Volume

http://blogs.technet.com/askcore/archive/2009/11/30/creating-a-virtual-machine-to-be-stored-on-a-cluster-shared-volume.aspx

Windows Server 2008 R2 Live Migration – “The devil may be in the networking details.”

http://blogs.technet.com/askcore/archive/2009/12/10/windows-server-2008-r2-live-migration-the-devil-may-be-in-the-networking-details.aspx

 

The “CORE” configurator:

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2009/12/03/core-configurator-2-0.aspx

 

Remote Desktop Services Script Center

http://blogs.msdn.com/rds/archive/2009/11/04/announcing-the-launch-of-remote-desktop-services-script-center-to-ease-management.aspx

IT needs a language

I constantly struggle with writing documentation and also communicating concepts to many IT folks in writing. 

This is one of the reasons that has driven me to producing videos and capture sessions over the past couple years (I can say far more, more accurately with combined speech and visuals than attempt to accurately convey in writing).

My work as a moderator of the Hyper-V TechNet forum also speaks to this.  I spend a great deal of time describing concepts in forum posts – that end up being incredibly long.  Each time I write it a bit differently, still trying to convey a concept.

The reason for this post?  Accuracy.  Accurate conveyance of information.

This all started with a recent trip to the doctor.  20 minutes of discussing things with my doctor was summarized into a single paragraph of Latin.  The use of the common language of Latin to describe symptoms, and convey that description from doctor to doctor.

I am not proposing that Latin be revived in IT.  However, to use commonly understood grammatical structure to describe concepts, or installations, or topology, or systems architecture.

This gets even more complex as we move into the virtual workload world.  Where we describe physical characteristics in a non-physical way.

A virtual appliance for example.  In its most common representation today, this is a virtual machine – installed within that virtual machine is an operating system and some application.  The application and OS have dependencies – DNS, networking, Active Directory authentication for example.  The machine has dependencies – two virtual NICs, one public facing, one that faces a private subnet that connects to the database server.  Oh, and now we have an external entity of a database server.  Where does it all end – I don’t know of a single workload that exists in an enterprise as a single entity.

The struggle is:  How do we describe this in a universal way so that no matter where you take that appliance the environment knows what to do with it?  How to configure it.  How to connect it.  Where to connect it.

This is the role of a Standards Body – in this case the DMTF is attempting to build this common term framework.  But this is a framework, it is not universal terms – it is simply items or entities.  So at least we begin with common items – however describing them in different languages by vendor.

Now, how do I take that DMTF developed structure and tern it into words.  One set of words that can be used in association with a NIC to describe its network connection and then the attachment and VPN attributes.

Or, throw that idea out the window and focus on describing the interactions between the workloads only.  Don’t describe the physical topology in any way – simply describe the dependencies between workloads or appliance entities.

Most IT folks would never see this description language – but integrators would find it useful, documentation folks would find it useful, and even developers would find it useful.

Thinking in Workloads with OVF

Many of you realize that I am pretty close to the Citrix Project Kensho OVF Tool.

Frankly, I find it as a very useful tool with some very useful features.

First of all – let me mention a bit about OVF again.  OVF is NOT a method of converting virtual machines.  OVF is a way to describe a virtual appliance using standardized XML tags, so that various platforms can consume and use that virtual appliance as it was defined.

A virtual appliance has traditionally been though of as a single virtual machine (thank you VMware).  However, a virtual appliance is actually a “workload.”

Many of you might realize that an enterprise application is rarely a simple single .exe file that simply runs on a desktop.  A very simple reporting application might be an executable, a SQL database, and even a document archiving system.  All of these entities grouped together is the workload.

It takes all of these pieces working together for the application to be fully functional and feature rich.  The Application Workload would be a better way to describe this.

In the same light there is a component that might participate in multiple workloads – the SQL server can serve databases to multiple front-end and back-end applications.  It would have the most complex relationship in this example.

This brings me pack to the virtual appliance – the OVF is a description of the workload.  This example has that defined as two servers and one client.

If you are the person creating the package, you might leave the client out of the package, or only deliver the client executable as a component of the package, but it is not imported to a virtualization host as a virtual machine.

Some might call this creative thinking, but really it is just taking what the OVF allows and applying that to real situations.

The OVF standard (VMAN at the DMTF) is still evolving and changing.  And vendors are still working on compatibility and pushing those standards to ever complex designs.

It is because of this that not all vendors support each other.  They have to choose to allow for consumption of other implementations of the OVF standard.  Yes, this gets very complex and interwoven and creates a bummer for some folks that see OVF as the answer to virtual machine portability – when that portability has far more to do with the applications and operating systems within the virtual appliance themselves than it does in the depths of an XML file.

Hyper-V terminology

For anyone that really wants to get a handle on the terminology behind Hyper-V you need to read this post by Ben Armstrong. It really goes through the MSFT terminology and how they refer to things in Hyper-V.

It also covers some basic concepts and is a good overall primer worth everyone's review, especially if you are thinking of going whole hog with Hyper-V.