On May 14th we held our first seminar on virtualization and how it can be implemented as a vehicle for savings. This event was well attended, and for those that did make it out, let me first say “Thank You!” For those of you who did not get the opportunity to attend let me give you a brief recap of the event.

The Scouting Report; Virtualization Stats and Overview: Frank Gesino, our VP of Professional Services, led off the event with an introduction to server virtualization. This discussion outlined what server virtualization is and how it is delivered to a client. Frank outlined designing a virtual environment and showed the scale of server consolidation a company can benefit from (often a 10:1 ratio) in this architecture.

Frank also highlighted that savings come, not only in the reduction of servers needed to support your company, but also through increased productivity and reduced downtime achieved by utilizing high availability capabilities found in properly configured virtual environments.

Spring Training; Real-time Virtualization Demo: Joe Bucceri, our CTO, and Mike Conigliaro, our Virtualization Specialist, gave a live demo of virtualization in action. This was the highlight of the event as the duo demonstrated how a virtual Windows server can be built for use on your network in less than 20 minutes!

They also showed the power of the higher availability that can be achieved in this architecture. Mike was working with standard applications on a Citrix server that was part of the VM environment. At the same time, Joe moved his Citrix server from one physical box to another, without any interruption to Mike’s user session.

Regular Season; Integrating Servers and Storage: Bryan Canfield, a Systems Engineer for NetApp, our primary storage partner, presented on the relationship between storage and virtualization. Bryan went over how server virtualization only provides you one component of the high availability architecture and how virtualization of the data store completes the solution. He explained that the image of the virtual server is stored on the server and available for any server in the pool to run, thus allowing that image to be moved in the event of a hardware failure.

Leveraging de-duplication strategies to reduce the overall cost of storage was another highlighted benefit. NetApp’s storage servers have the ability to read data at the block level, and if the server sees that multiple copies of the same file are being stored, it retains only a single copy of that file and makes it available for all necessary services or users. Think of that PowerPoint document that has been emailed to 5-10 employees at 10 MB a person, which is now saved as a single document that can be accessed by all those users; saving the storage for use by other users. This allows data to grow at a more manageable pace, reducing both support and hardware costs.

For those that attended, you will also remember that NetApp can support all virtualization (Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware, and Citrix Xenserver) platforms.

MVP Performance Review; Saving with Virtualization: John Boyd, President of Fandotech, closed out the event, demonstrating how virtualization can save companies cash. In his presentation, John was able to demonstrate that a company with 6 servers today and 50% growth expectancy over the next 36 months would save in excess of $12,000 in power and cooling costs alone and $28,000 in server avoidance costs (cost of hardware, installation, and support).

These numbers illustrate that virtualization is not just for the big companies with hundreds of servers, but that all companies with multiple servers could reduce costs with this technology.

Virtualization can also be a component of a company’s “green” strategy. By moving to a virtualized environment the sample company illustrated above can annually provide CO2 emissions savings equal to three autos, two homes, or the preservation of forty trees.

Contact an Account Manager today for an assessment of how virtualization can help your organization!

Brian Doyle

All of those programs you use—the ones that annoy you and frustrate you—have alternatives. Quite often, you can find a leaner, meaner alternative program, and often at a 100% reduction in cost. The Internet is filled with programs that have been designed from the ground up by passionate people that aren’t necessarily driven by profit (although a free program can turn a profit, believe it or not).

The one factor when looking for an alternative to what you’re used to is compatibility. If your organization uses specific software for business purposes, you might need to have Adobe Reader at your disposal instead of one of the alternatives. I’d say most alternatives I’m going to list would be easier to try for personal use. A lot of commonly used programs out there can be expensive, but there are quite often free ones that do just as good (and sometimes better) of a job as the pricey ones.

Microsoft Office > OpenOffice
The first thing to bear in mind is that OpenOffice isn’t a “complete” replacement for the programs in Microsoft Office. For instance, there’s no email client, and therefore no alternative in the suite for Microsoft Outlook (but there are other email clients). Nevertheless, this program by Sun Microsystems is free, and has come a long way in terms of compatibility. It actually gives you the ability to save documents in an MS Office format so that you can open them with MS Office if need be. There’s OO Writer, which is the equivalent of MS Word, OO Spreadsheet, which is the alternative to Excel, and OO Presentation, which is the alternative to MS PowerPoint. There are other Programs in the OpenOffice suite, but those are generally the three mostly used programs in Microsoft Office. It’s a little different to use them; but I have found that they have a lot of the same features that work the same way. Since it’s free, it’s worth trying out (http://www.openoffice.org).

Internet Explorer > Mozilla Firefox
The browser market has long been dominated by Internet Explorer. However, Mozilla Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com) has slowly been creeping up in market share, reaching more than 20% for the first time at the end of 2008. Firefox is a very fast, safe, and customizable alternative to IE. It has many of the same features and also has lots of extremely useful and just plain fun add-ons that make it a great browser to use. The best part is that it’s very feasible to simply use both of them, as web browsers aren’t large programs. It’s actually a good idea to use both of them, as there are still a lot of websites that will only function properly on Mozilla Firefox. I have both installed at home and switch between them when needed. Mozilla can import all your favorites from IE, and you can set it to be the default browser for Windows (in other words, links will automatically open in Firefox) or just leave it as IE.

Any instant messaging program > Pidgin
The reason I say “any instant messaging program” is because Pidgin is literally compatible with any IM service out there. It can do AOL Instant Messenger, MSN, ICQ, etc. The list is huge. It’s a small, free program with all the functionality you’d need. You can have multiple accounts all on one ‘buddy list.’ It’s similar to the popular Trillian program, but free (Trillian has a lackluster free version) and has more compatibility (http://pidgin.im)
There’s more! I used those three examples because I have a lot of experience. A few more that are worth checking out:

• Adobe Reader > Foxit (http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/) or PDF XChange Viewer (http://www.docu-track.com/home/prod_user/PDF-XChange_Tools/pdfx_viewer)
• Microsoft Outlook > Mozilla Thunderbird (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/)
• Windows Media Player > VLC Media Player (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)
• Windows Copy/Paste > Teracopy (http://www.codesector.com/teracopy.php)

All of those have good reputations and are viable alternatives that I believe are worth considering as alternatives. Just remember to keep any programs you’re currently using until you’re confident you want to switch.

Corey Slack

Remember Netscape? For the real old-schoolers, remember Mosaic? Browsers have come and gone during the relatively brief history of the World Wide Web. This is a round-up of today’s noteworthy browsers.

Internet Explorer 7+, the most common web browser on this list by far, is nicely done by Microsoft and a valuable addition to your software arsenal. Every Windows system produced in the last ten years or so comes with a free copy of IE as its default browser, so it’s no wonder this thing is everywhere! (Update your old version for security, performance, and usability reasons.) This browser, in various incarnations, has been around since 1995. The under-the-hood layout engine for IE is called Trident, and is shared by a number of lesser browser shells, such as AOL Explorer, Avant Browser, MSN Explorer, NeoPlanet, and others.

Mozilla Firefox 3, the second most common web browser on this list, and my personal favorite, is highly customizable and many free add-ons are available from the Mozilla site. Stability and performance are excellent, so this browser is another must-have for your software collection. At home, this browser is my default and I use it for almost everything. Firefox has been around in its various versions since only 2004. The underlying layout engine for Firefox is called Gecko, and is also shared by a few lesser browsers, such as Epiphany and Camino (for Macs).

Google Chrome 1 is the newest addition to this list. It probably wouldn’t be so notable were it not for its maker, Google. This is one fast browser, though, let me tell you. It’s faster rendering a webpage than either IE7 or Firefox. It should work fine for most websites, but may not work for all of them, so you’d need to have access to IE or Firefox just in case. Chrome has only been around since August of 2008, so it’s really new. This browser’s underlying layout engine is called WebKit, and is shared by a few other browsers, notably Apple Safari.

Apple Safari is a Windows web browser from the folks at Apple. Like Google Chrome, it’s fast. The reason why is the underlying layout engine called WebKit, which was developed by Apple (and is used by Google’s browser). I feel about the same for this browser as I do Google Chrome (keep your IE or Firefox handy). Safari has been around since 2003.

Opera is another web browser with a long history. It’s been around since 1996, almost as long as IE! Fairly quick and secure, it’s a decent browser. It’s just that not too many people use it. Its underlying layout engine is called Presto and is shared by a couple lesser browsers you’ve never heard of.

If I missed your favorite browser, chances are it’s a flavor of one of these on the list. Otherwise, it’s just forgettable, sorry. In the end, I’d recommend downloading and installing Firefox as a companion to Internet Explorer. Save the rest for a boring rainy day.

Craig Samson

Every company should be asking itself if it’s ready for the unthinkable. Do you have a strategy, a Disaster Recovery Plan or even better, a Business Continuance Plan?

Where do you even start? Start by thinking of the worst case scenario. Now, think of how your business would fare in this scenario. Do you have a plan? If so, do you know it will work?

The reality is that we almost never get it right. We plan for what we see as a “realistic” foreseeable scenario and something completely different and unexpected happens that doesn’t fit our mold. These short-lived, unpredictable and uncontrollable events usually inflict the greatest monetary pain.

Just a few weeks ago, we had a real-life example of “the uncontrollable event”. Relive it with me…Twenty miles from our facilities, very early in the morning, a water main breaks and floods I-91 North of Hartford, CT. This has absolutely no effect on our facilities and their ability to operate for our clients. That is until our workforce for the shift change, who live on the other side of this incident, are delayed in interminable traffic and cannot arrive for work at their primary office location.

I see dollar signs. This would cost the company six person-days of labor, production commitments would be delayed for our clients, and our Technical Assistance Center (TAC) would be covered with management answering the phone?! Most companies would have simply fumbled through the day and made due.

That would have been our fate but for the fact that we had created a virtual office and setup TAC resources in our West Springfield, MA location. All we had to do was simply re-route our six people there to work and answer phones for the day. They had complete access to their required resources. Catastrophe averted!

How did we do it? Technology, properly engineered and implemented before the unexpected occurred, allowed us to use VoIP and virtual desktops to “hot seat” our team without re-configuring our network or impacting our customers’ schedules.

As an industry we are nearly always wrong when we plan for a specific failure scenario. The Event surprises us in its nature and it often takes too long to make the decision to declare “an Event” and set the wheels in motion. The fear is always that the Event will be over before the alternate site is even operational. But when we set up an infrastructure that allows for the normal workings of our company from virtual facilities… well then, we can ease the pain of those uncontrollable situations.

John W. Boyd, Jr.

In my last article, I talked about automated v.s. manual P2V, and why manual P2V may be worth the extra effort in some situations. But when you have a lot of machines to virtualize, automated p2V is probably your only option. In this article, I’m going to talk a little about some of the automated P2V tools that we’ve been using here at Fandotech.

Citrix XenConvert

Having been a Citrix partner for years, Citrix XenServer was our logical first step into the world of server virtualization. XenConvert is Citrix’s free tool for converting from either a physical machine, or from another type of virtual machine, to a XenServer virtual machine. The software itself is pretty straightforward. To convert a Windows machine, you simply install the software on the source machine, run the XenConvert wizard, and follow the prompts. This can be done while the source machine is running, so you don’t necessarily have to reboot. Conversion of a Linux machine is slightly different (and technically, not even handled by XenConvert). Instead of installing a program on the source machine, you need to boot the source machine from the XenServer installation CD. You will then be presented with an option to do the conversion (assuming your distribution is supported).

Unfortunately, we’ve found that although it works well enough (when it works), there are quite a few caveats to using this software, including, but not limited to the following:

• XenConvert will only convert your system partition (i.e. the c: drive). If you have additional partitions, you’ll need to copy them over through other means (e.g. robocopy).
• Conversion of Windows dynamic disks is not yet supported.
• Before running XenConvert, several manual steps are required, including enabling automount and stopping anti-virus services. Manual steps are really annoying when you want to convert several machines.
• If you have a static IP address asigned to a NIC on your physical machine, the NIC will be hidden in the virtual machine, but it will keep all of its settings. This means you may not be able to assign the same IP address on a NIC in your virtual machine (without jumping through a few hoops first).
• Windows conversions cannot be done through an RDP session. Unless you have VNC installed, you need to be on the physical console.
• XenConvert will not copy files that are in use. This problem is especially apparent when trying to convert an Active Directory Domain Controller. Since it’s hard to know exactly which files will be locked by running services, your best bet is to run the conversion while the machine is in safe mode.
• Since the Linux conversion utility requires you to boot off a cd, physical access to the machine is required, as well as an outage window to do the conversion.

VMware vCenter Converter

vCenter Converter is VMWare’s free P2V tool, and it basically does everything XenConvert does and more. You can download a standalone version that can be installed and run directly on the source machine (like XenConvert), but it also comes integrated with ESX server. The nice thing about the integrated version is that you can access it from the “consolidation” tab within the VMWare Infrastructure Client. This allows you to run a scan of your network and do a conversion of many Windows machines at once, without having to log in to any of them (Linux conversions require the standalone version). There’s also an “analysis” function that will track the average load on your source machines and figure out how to distribute their loads evenly among your physical ESX servers.

I admit that I have a lot more experience with XenServer and XenConvert at the moment, so I can’t really go into a lot of details, but my initial impression of vCenter Converter is that it’s exactly what automated P2V should be — truly automated!

Conclusion

It’s no surprise that vCenter Converter is a more mature and streamlined product. This makes complete sense for a tool that’s been around a lot longer. But to Citrix’s credit, it’s no small feat how far they’ve taken XenServer in just a couple of short years. At the rate they’re going, I have no doubt that it wont be long until their P2V tools are at par with VMWare’s offerings. But until then, those of us who work in XenServer shops may have to admit that we’re just a tiny bit jealous. =)

Mike Conigliaro