The Trouble with Virtualization - Cranky IT Staffs

lgmac writes "A new survey on the results of Enterprise use of virtualization shows that the process is seeing wide and appreciative use. Technical hurdles are obviously the biggest problem facing corporate IT shops. Just the same, political squabbles among IT staffers fighting for turf after being forced to work together in new ways seems to be a going concern as well. 'Technical woes rank higher--to be expected when CIOs deploy a new technology such as virtualization. However, the politics pain many of you. Remember, virtualization not only asks people to cede some control over their physical server kingdoms, but also asks IT experts from different realms to work more closely together.'"

Backup problems

[r0BOT]

My companies biggest problem concerning virtualization at this point has been backing up running copies of virtual server without interruption, anyone have some insight on this?

Can't we all just get along?

[truthsearch]

Technology is continually changing. Those who adapt will be the most successful. Those who don't will eventually be pushed aside. Fighting over turf won't get you far in a corporate environment in the long term.

as a systems engineer

[sammy baby]

In my experience as a systems engineer, the biggest problem we've had with virtualization is that too many people who don't understand it well view it as a magic wand that you can wave to make all your capacity & provisioning problems disappear.

"Hey! We need a new server to run Blah version 3.0!"
"No problem! Sammy can create a new virtual server!"
"Oh wait - my bad. We actually need a whole farm."
"That's okay, he can whip up a whole batch of them!"

Ad nauseaum. About the worst I've heard was a clueless manager asking me if the resource requirements for Oracle 10g could be relaxed because we were running it on VMware. I actually found myself calling a "come to Jesus" meeting in which I explained, in as simple terms as I could, that "making the system virtual" doesn't mean that hardware requirements go away. Very, very few applications get faster when you put them on equivalent hardware, only virtualized.

I'd imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd imagine that one of the big problems with virtualization is clueless IT managers/staff who don't understand that you basically are dividing a server down into sub-servers. I've encountered a few people who seem to think that virtualization multiplies the server resources. That is, everyone using a VM basically gets the full specs of the host machine--all at once! Ugh! Maroons!

This is not a problem with virtualization

[davidwr]

This is a problem with management and/or the IT staff.

Management should run the company in a way that cooperation is rewarded not punished. Consolidation to save money shouldn't result in harm to those who are making it happen or anyone else for that matter.

The IT staff as well as all of the other employees and officers should have the attitude that if it's good for the company and not bad for anyone else it's the right thing to do.

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Re:Skirts the problem

[rwyoder]

I shudder to think of a virtualized firewall or router. Ouch.

NetScreen firewalls have had virtualization capability for a long time. Cisco routers have virtualization via commands using the "vrf" parameter.

Re:Skirts the problem

[cduffy]

That's just silly. Why would you put a physical fax card in your virtual server?

Virtualize the fax card with iaxmodem, run it over a TCP connection to a serial port on a separate box, use t38modem with the other endpoint on a dedicated piece of Cisco hardware... there are plenty of other options.

Re:Windows on LINUX? Or LINUX on Windows?

[jojo1835]

Yeah... which is why you run it under VMware 3i. No "Native" OS to worry about, just pure hypervisor goodness.

http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/esx/esx3i.html [vmware.com]

Have a great day!

Tim

My biggest IT problem with virtual machines

[Weaselmancer]

It's happened twice to me at two different companies.

Whenever I need a machine scratch-pad, I boot up a VMWare machine. Test the software or do whatever I need to do and delete it. But while it's running, it broadcasts itself on the local net. Admins really freak out when a machine named //FAKEOUT or //BOGUS suddenly shows up on their net.

I've given two different IT guys at two different companies cardiac events over it.

Sorry, fellas.

This has been wonderful

[ebvwfbw]

Where I work nearly every machine is either 100% idle or 100% busy. Not much in between. Most buttheads think they need a separate machine for their application that only gets 5 hits a day (4 from them). So I've been able to stack these suckers up. You also get around the other political BS of them having their own accounts and no other site is on their machine. Suck it up, it really is their bad application and not the apache server virtual statement. Most of us do the same job we have been doing for almost a decade and work with the same people we have worked with for a decade.

The one thing I have been able to rip from users is certain services. Like an oracle/mysql/postgress server. In the past the users felt they had to maintain it. Now we have one server and they use it as a service. The cluster handles keeping it up. This only works well with RedHat and only if you know what you are doing. Now the end users are relieved. They don't have to worry about the database, server configuration and maintenance that used to dog them with Solaris, Windows, BSD and SUSE boxes. Windows being the biggest PIA because Microsoft does things to you if you update it. Then the other issues the /. crowd is used to.

To me I have a load balancer that is managed by a gang of web servers as a clustered service so it never goes down. The web servers are highly available so I can reboot whenever I want. The database is also highly available. People just upload stuff to a virtual address and a different port and it is just there. It gets updated very quickly when a patch comes out. In short I don't have to even schedule down time anymore unless we have a power outage. Just be sure you have a place to test updates first. If something goes wrong with the clustering software, it can really go wrong. Then it is like having 100 dishes up in the air. Instead of dropping one dish, you drop 100.

The thing I hate about it is trying to explain it to end users and even guys I used to think were technical. They just don't grasp the concept of a gang of servers, virtual servers and virtual databases. They think that if someone gets a form from one machine, it must return the data to that machine. As of the server is like a logon session. Maybe it is that "logon to www.sitename" bullshit they put out there in the news. They should say "visit site www.sitename", leave "logon" out of it entirely. Anyhow, eyes gloss over and it's a bitch to get them back. Sometimes now I just tell them we are moving them off of their old machine and let it go at that. They don't have a need to know. MUCH easier that way. The only PIA is when they ask what the serial number is of "their" machine.

Still, there are some people that just don't want to give anything up. I do agree that this environment requires more cognitive abilities from the IT staff. I don't think you can be average and get by anymore. The IT staff needs to have bright people now. People that can learn. Otherwise they are left behind and it can be brutal.

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We've run into a similar problem in my workplace.

[Anonymous Coward]

Our virtualization setup is pretty simple, so it hasn't yet become a huge squabble; but what runs on top of it is looking likely to turn into a major turf war. The office that I work with is a midsize(ish) educational environment. c. 1000 desktops across 8 sites, with a bunch of servers, fiber between municipal buildings, and VOIP. Mostly Windows, with some VMware ESX on the servers. In staff terms, there is a big divide between desktop and server people. The server guys have control over the servers, the AD configuration, and the various admin tools for switches and firewalls. And they like it that way. The desktop people don't have nearly as much power; but they are the ones most directly responsible to users(they build all desktop images, and support users).
There has always been some resentment over access to the cool tools and toys; but the thin clients are set to really raise hell. With our Citrix setup, we suddenly have some hundreds of users whose desktops are determined by the server guys, not the desktop guys. Guess who still gets to support those users? The punchline, longterm, is that the server guys are going to start having to care about desktop experience, or they are going to have to give the desktop guys enough power to care for them. Not sure which it will be; but it isn't either yet.

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