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XenServer 6.0 vs. vSphere 5.0

22 November 2011
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The new major release of Citrix’s hypervisor was released on Sep, 30 2011 (XenServer 6.0 is here! ). For more info see also the Release Notes for Citrix XenServer 6.0.

Architectural Changes:

  • The Boston release is based on the open-source Xen 4.1 hypervisor.   XenServer is another commercial product to ship with the Xen 4 hypervisor.  For those of you who like to follow the open source world, Oracle VM 3 launched a few weeks ago, and is based on the Xen 4 hypervisor.  Ubuntu Server 11.10 will soon follow with support for Xen 4, and will be the Linux distro to benefit from Xen being included in Linux 3.0.
  • The Open vSwitch (OVS) is now the default network stack for the product.  OVS was first introduced in XS 5.6 FP1 as a post-install configuration option, and is the basis for the distributed virtual networking (DVS) features like NetFlow, RSPAN and security ACLs, as well as NIC bonding improvements and Jumbo frames support.  Improvements to DVS include improved availability through the “fail-safe” option, as well various improvements based on customer feedback from XenServer 5.6 FP1.  Note that the legacy Linux bridging stack is still available via a post-install configuration option, for those that need it.
  • Support for hardware-assisted (SR-IOV) network performance optimization has been improved, particularly for use with the NetScaler VPX and SDX products.  A future version of NetScaler SDX will ship with XenServer 6.0 onboard.

Product simplification:

  • Citrix has simplified the management infrastructure requirements for features such as Workload Balancing, StorageLink, and Site Recovery.  In fact, for StorageLink and Site Recovery, no additional management infrastructure is required at all.
  • Workload Balancing (and the historical reporting features which rely on its database) is available as a Linux-based virtual appliance for easy installation and management.

Virtual Appliance and V2V improvements:

  • Virtual Appliance support.  Within XenCenter you can create multi-VM virtual appliances (vApps), with relationships between the VMs for use with the boot sequence during Site Recovery.  vApps can be easily imported and exported using the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard.
  • VMDK and VHD import functionality is integrated into XenCenter for interoperability with VMware VMDK and Microsoft VHD disk images.  Reliability of the “transfer VM” used for appliance import/export has been improved.

Guest OS support updates:

  • Formal guest support for Ubuntu 10.04
  • Updates for support of RHEL 5.6, Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.6, Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.0, CentOS 5.6, and SLES 10 SP4
  • Experimental VM templates for Ubuntu 10.10, CentOS 6.0, and Solaris
  • RHEL 6.0 and Debian Squeeze are fully supported (these are also supported with XS 5.6 SP2)

Performance Improvements:

  • XenServer 6.0 will ship on-board a future version of NetScaler SDX, which uses XenServer’s SR-IOV enhancements to drive line-speed (up to 10 Gbps) performance to virtual machines
  • Host (dom0) network throughput has been increased by 70-100%
  • Improved XenMotion performance, especially as compared to XenServer 5.6.0.

Other enhancements and improvements:

  • High Availability (HA) permits configuration of a boot sequence for recovery, as well as storage of the heartbeat disk on NFS.
  • NIC bonding improvements, including more formal support for active/passive mode

Comparison with vSphere 5.0:

XenServer 6.0
 vSphere 5.0
Max logical physical processor per host 64 160
Max RAM per host 1 TB 2 TB
Max vCPU per VM 16 vCPU 32 vCPU
Max vRAM per VM 128 GB 1 TB
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RHEV 3.0 vs vSphere 5.0

21 November 2011
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Some days ago Red Hat has announced the availability of its Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) 3.0 public beta. The first beta of RHEV 3.0 was announced in August, but was not available to the general public. You needed to have an active RHEV subscription at that time. The evaluation is immediately available to anyone with a Red Hat Network account.

About the new features and the improvements there is a specific page on RedHat site. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 includes updates such as:

  • Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager is now a Java application running on JBoss Enterprise Application Platform on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Was silly that first versions of this products required a Windows Server to run.
  • A power user portal that provides end users with a self-service interface to provision virtual machines, define templates and administer their own environments.
  • Extended multi-level administrative capabilities, allowing fine-grained resource control, Role Based Access control, delegation and hierarchical management.
  • An integrated and embedded reporting engine allowing for analysis of historic usage trends and utilization reports.

continue reading…

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Hyper-V 3.0 vs. vSphere 5.0

20 November 2011
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Some days ago, VKernel has release a post (Hyper-V 3.0: Closing the Gap With vSphere 5) that compare the new Hyper-V 3.0 with the existing vSphere 5.0.

I don’t know if the post was written before of after the Quest acquisition, but it doesn’t matter: it’s a comparison of two products not homogeneous, because will be released probably next year and and one was released on August of this year.

But the data can still be used to see how Microsoft is working to reduce and close the gap with VMware, at least on the hypervisor part:

Here’s some other awesome additions in the upcoming Hyper-V 3.0 release:

  • Simultaneously live migrate both the VM and the VM’s disk to a new location.
  • Live migrate VMs without shared storage
  • NIC teaming with out special third-party hardware – something VMware has already been doing and also Microsoft Partners Already Implementing Hyper-V 3 Virtual Switch
  • Drag-and-drop files from one virtual machine to another to directly transfer without having to pass through the host or your workstation.
  • The ability to host virtual disks on file servers – CIFS, SMB, NFS

Since Hyper-V will also be packaged with the Windows 8 desktop OS, some kind of migration (probably cold) between desktop and server could be implemented. But Workstation 8 can already do this today.

It will be interesting to see how it matches up against vSphere in performance. In August, VMware released a third-party performance study, showing that vSphere 5.0 outperformed the current release of Hyper-V by 20%. If Hyper-V wants to compete on all levels, this is something Microsoft will most likely be addressing.

If you’re curious to dig into the upcoming Hyper-V 3.0 a bit more, here’s a couple of the better posts and articles:

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Upgrade path to vSphere 5 – Conclusions

18 November 2011
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To close the series of post on the vSphere upgrade path to version 5 I will make a few final considerations:

  • As written several time, check the hardware and software HCL before start the migration. The HCL may change from the beta release (where, for example, there was’t any SQL Express 2005 support) but also from one week to another (for example, some weeks the Dell PoverVault MD3x00/MD3x00i were not yet included).
  • Actually most additional software are already compliant with vSphere, or with new version (like View 5) or with simple patch.
  • Remember that vSphere 5 brings new features, but also a new license model, that require a minimum of initial analysis. For more info see: vSphere 5 vRAM Entitlement.
  • The vCenter Server is also available in the Linux version (but only in the virtual appliance mode). And remember that it has some limits.
  • The new Web Client could be interesting, but is not complete. If you plan to install the server part on the same machine of vCenter Server remember to increase the RAM (or vRAM). Also notice that the license report require this component.
  • The new virtual hardware 8 has some interesting benefit, but also implies a less VM portability (for example with View and local mode). Consider if you need it before upgrade the VMs.
  • As written more times, vSphere 5 has several new features but also dropped features. See: News in vSphere 5 – Who is in? Who is out?

Previous posts:

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Upgrade path to vSphere 5 – The backup part

17 November 2011
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When the vSphere infrastructure is upgraded, than also the backup part needs a check (and maybe a refresh). But, in order to avoid big issue, is better check it also before the entire upgrade, just to be sure that all remain supported. I also suggest to use this as a potential review of the the entire backup policies to find how to improve them and/or how to use different solutions (not necessary different products).

About the backup programs, most of them could still work with vSphere, because the vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) are quite compatible with old versions. But on the vStorage side there are some changes like the new VMFS5 and the datastore clusters that can create some issues, especially when SAN transport is used. For this reason the backup programs needs some fixes to support the new features.

Some considerations:

  • VCB: officially with vSphere 5 the consolidated backup’s scripts are no more supported (and not that with vSphere 4.1 there was the VCB version from vSphere 4.0). But I was just curios and I’ve tried with the VCB 1.5U2 (transport NBD) and seems that it still works also with vSphere 5, both in fullvm and file level model!
  • VDR: the new VDR has some improvements (some are described in my previous post), but I’ve found some issues related with the upgrade path of this component (in some cases the destination upgrade, after a lot of hours fails and the destination was un-usable). I suggest to avoid the upgrade, and start with a new appliance and new destinations. After some backups you can choose to remove the old appliance and his destinations. Note that seems that the VDR 1.2 can work also with vSphere 5 and the new VDR plugin (I’ve only tried to make a simple backup and restore).
  • Veeam Backup: the current version (5.0.2) works with vSphere 5, but you need a patch from support team to fix some bugs (for example to support the SAN transport mode). The new version (6) will be fully vSphere 5 compliant.
  • Quest vRanger: the new version (5.2) is certified for vSphere 5.
  • PHD Virtual Backup: new version (5.3) must be compatible, as written on the web site.
  • Symantec Backup Exec: seems that both 2010 R2 and R3 work with vSphere 5 (but I’ve tested only with R3). For more info see: Backup Exec ™ 2010, 2010 R2 and 2010 R3 Software Compatibility List (SCL)
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Upgrade path to vSphere 5 – The storage part

16 November 2011
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The storage part of a vSphere 5 upgrade path has two different steps: a firmware upgrade, that may be needed before start the vSphere upgrade (see the hardware part) and a modules/plugins/utilities upgrade, that is applied after the vSphere upgrade.

In my case, for an EqualLogic array, the minimum firmware version compatible with ESXi 5 is the 4.3 release (but I’ve tried also with a firmware 4.0.6 and it works), but you will need at least the 5.0 series in order to support VAAI and VASA (see vStorage API). New firmware works also with vSphere 4.1, so I suggest to apply the firmware upgrade before the vSphere upgrade, also if you have a supported firmware.

About the version, actually there are the 5.0.8 and the 5.1.2 versions. Both could be fine, but VMware HCL suggest the 5.1.x series and if you have a new EqualLogic model you will have this by default. Also if you add a new model in an existing group you must plan to upgrade all members to the 5.1.x versions.

If you are using the MEM multipath modules (provided by Dell) remember to disable it before the upgrade because the 1.0.x version is not compatible with ESXi 5. Some days ago, Dell has released the Version 1.1 Early Production Access (EPA) of MEM that is now compatible with ESXi 5, so after the upgrade you may choose to use this version (of course, you can have other multipath modules only with Enterprise and Enterprise+ editions). About the recommended multipath policy the HCL suggest the fixed policy, the Dell documentations the round robin… IMHO I suggest to use the fixed that is more conservative and build some Equallogic Volumes (to have different paths on different volumes). Also seems that with firmware 5.0.x some people have got some performance issue with the round robin policy.

For the VASA integration, it is provided by the new version of the Dell Host Integration Tools for VMware® (as described in a previous post) now update at the 3.1.1 version. This virtual appliance provide also a nice integration into vCenter Server to handle the Equallogic Volumes, the storage snapshots, the replicas, …

Finally I suggest to upgrade also the Dell SAN HeadQuarters utility (SAN HQ) to the latest version (2.2.0) in order to monitor the group and have nice information (this new version as also a simple capacity estimator feature that could be really useful).

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Upgrade path to vSphere 5 – The VM part

15 November 2011
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As written in the previous post, the VM upgrade (after a vSphere upgrade) require first the upgrade of the VMware Tools and then (if needed) the upgrade of virtual hardware. But there are also more considerations to do.

Some days ago, I was involved in a upgrade path a little unusual: from VI 3.5 (and also quite old, only U2) to vSphere 5. For hosts and vCenter Server was simple: just a re-installation and re-configuration. But there where more issues  in the VMs upgrade.

Here some of my considerations:

  • Seems obvious, but a VM check before start the upgrade could be really important: see if some service does not start, that there is enough space free in the system disk, …
  • Both VMware Tools and virtual hardware upgrade can be orchestrated by VUM, but I suggest to use a manual upgrade for the first VMs (better with different type of VMs and guest OS).
  • From the GUI the virtual hardware upgrade is only to version 8, so for an upgrade from VI 3.x it means go from v4 (that can be played without issue also on vSphere 5) directly to v8.
  • The virtual hardware from v4 cause a virtual PCI slots reorder (this because from v7 they support the hot-add)… so, if you have more storage controller and/or more vNIC you can find them in a different order (this could be a problem with dual homed VMs).
  • New VMware Tools are compatible with vSphere 4.x, but with VI 3.x? Seems yes, but I’ve found a random issue (on some VMs) where the flexible vNIC was not working… the fastest solution was change it with a new vNIC.
  • For a big upgrade (from VI 3.x) I suggest to use (if possible) an interactive upgrade of the VMware Tools.
  • The KB1012259 (VMware KB: msvcp71.dll is removed after uninstalling ESX/ESXi 3.5) is also valid for vSphere 5! Check if you have the file, save it before the upgrade and restore it. For example I’ve found that the issue on with VMs with SQL 2000, but not with SQL 2005 and later.
  • For Linux VMs I use a different order: first the virtual hardware (that require a shutdown) and then (when the VM is powered-on) the VMware Tools (this operation, on Linux, does not require any reboot).
  • For View, see the previous post.
  • Remember to check and test the VMs also after the upgrade!
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