vSphere

Virtualization is key to any efficient datacenter deployed today.  The days of one-server one-application are gone.  We've virtualized workloads for years with the next wave being the *cloud*.

At the physical level, there have been several innovations that make cloud computing a reality.  First the ability to move workloads seamlessly across machines, with technology like VMware's VMotion.  Then there is the ability to move storage pools with Storage VMotion as an example from VMware.  These technologies allow the movement of applications and storage between machines, but what about the I/O ?

That's where Xsigo fits.  Using a single Host Channel Adapter (HCA) you can connect one cable to the host and define as many as 64 virtual HBAs and NICs.  Xsigo is virtual I/O. 

When I was first introduced to the Xsigo solution I thought, "Ohh great another proprietary fat pipe solution".  Once I was able to see the Xsigo Director in action with VMware, it made more sense.  "Ahhh, I just cable one time then I can create and move I/O around my virtualization cluster as I see fit". I also learned that it was not proprietary, but built on industry standards.

With Xsigo, as I move my workload around the virtualization cluster I can add more I/O resources dynamically, adding performance as my applications demand it.

See a demo of our Xsigo unit in the Dell TechCenter lab.

VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance (FT) is one of the new features in vSphere 4.0. FT provides continuous availability for applications by creating a secondary, live shadow instance of a virtual machine (VM) that is in virtual lockstep with the primary VM instance. It builds upon VMware High Availability (HA) so if you have HA in working order, you are only a few mouse clicks away from enabling FT. But be aware if you run into errors, some of the error messages can be cryptic and searching for answers can lead you to suggestions that may worsen your situation. When in doubt, roll back to HA and make sure that it works. This will eliminate the most troublesome issues which are usually related to networking.

Please visit the Dell TechCenter wiki page on VMware vSphere Fault Tolerance.  There is also a Dell TechCenter wiki page that shows step by step screen captures of FT and the failover test against an FT-protected VM.

The Dell TechCenter team is hosting a web chat today at 3PM CST on Microsoft Exchange 2007 on VMware vSphere 4.0. The TechCenter team will be joined by Todd Muirhead, VMware Staff Performance engineer, as he discusses the results of his soon to be published whitepaper. The infrastructure consisted of Dell blade servers attached to Dell | EqualLogic PS series storage arrays. Please join us as we open the discussion on the features of vSphere 4.0 and how they further benefit Microsoft Exchange 2007 deployments on Dell hardware.

Please join the Dell TechCenter on June 16th at 3PM CST as we host a chat on vSphere 4 performance.  Our featured guests include three VMware staff engineers, the lead engineer of Dell's performance team, and a design lead engineer from Dell's Virtualization Solutions Engineering team.