© 2007 Jupitermedia Corporation Using ITIL to Manage Virtualization February 22, 2007 2:00pm EST,...

© 2007 Jupitermedia Corporation

Using ITIL to Manage Virtualization

February 22, 20072:00pm EST, 11:00am PST

George Spafford, Principal ConsultantPepperweed Consulting, LLC“Optimizing The Business Value of IT”www.pepperweed.com


Housekeeping

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a question” section located on lower left-hand side of your console.

– Questions about presentation content will be answered during 10 minute Q&A session at end of webcast.

• Technical difficulties?– Click on “Help” button– Use “Ask a question” interface


Main Presentation


Agenda

• Virtualization Overview• How a "service" mindset helps manage

offerings • The importance of process design • The impacts to ITIL process areas

Note: This presentation is available by either emailing:George at [email protected] at [email protected]


What Is Virtualization

• “Virtualization broadly describes the separation of a resource or request for a service from the underlying physical delivery of that service.” – vmware

• It’s definitely not new. Virtualization began on mainframes in the 1960s


Why Does Virtualization Matter?

• Average 10-30% system utilization on Windows and Unix production systems!– Address “Server Sprawl”

• Improved Production Agility• Test and Development Host Optimization• Reduction in variation and complexity

– Servers– Desktops

• Reduce data center TCO– Hardware, Electricity, Environmentals

• Disaster Recover / Improved MTTR– Restore an image to a target virtual host


Reality

• Did you get the benefits you hoped for?

• Are you concerned about actually attaining the benefits promised?

• It takes more than just the software!


Optimizing Value• Technology has been the mainstay of

Information Technology– Technology can’t fix all of our problems!

• The need to find and retain qualified people is known, but not always stressed enough

• What hasn’t received as much attention are the processes

– Leveraging best practices– A focus on quality management– Continuous Improvement Processes

• Any technology can be rendered ineffectual by poor personnel and process choices

– Very true for security as well as other processes• Our results will depend on our ability to

properly blend people, processes and technology into the required solution based on the needs of the business and tied to supporting/protecting functional area objectives and organizational goals

• Virtualization is a technology. Optimizing its value is a management issue.

PeopleP

roce

sses

Tech

no

log

yOutcomes


How to Prepare?• Understand Capacity Requirements before purchasing the system

– Trends, spikes– Understand business requirements for the future

• Are there defined service levels?• What is the expected availability?• What are management’s expectations?• How is the introduction of this new service being planned per

Release Management?– Requirements definition, testing, Training, updating processes and

procedures, deployment into production, risk management, awareness, ensure capacity/facilities exist, etc.

– Awareness to all stakeholders – not just in the virtualization but in the services provided to the business?

• How will monitoring be handled? Who will get alerts and alarms?


The IT Service Management Mindset

• IT in support of the business

• Understand business requirements first

• IT service requirements second

• Resource component needs last

• The objective is to reliably provision services that meet the needs of the business

• A systemic perspective is mandatory


Service Support, Delivery & Security

Service LevelManagement

IncidentManagement

ProblemManagement

Service DeskFunction

CapacityManagement

AvailabilityManagement

IT FinancialManagement

IT ServiceContinuity

Management

IT SecurityManagement

ControlProcesses

ConfigurationManagement

ChangeManagement

ReleaseManagement


Three Key Processes for Operational Efficiency and

Effectiveness


The Trinity• Change Management

Is the set of standardized processes and tools used to handle change requests in order to support the business while managing risks.[Risk Management]

• Release ManagementUses formal controls and processes to ensure requirements are met and safeguard the production environment.

[Quality Management]

• Configuration ManagementFocuses on tracking and documenting configurations and then providing this information to other areas including Change and Release Management.[A combination of Knowledge Management and Information Broker]

The three process areas must work together and share information.


Visible Ops: Four Steps To Build An Effective Change Management Process

• Each of the four Visible Ops steps is:– A finite project: not a ISO 9001 initiative

or a vague 5-year vision– Catalytic: returns more resources to the

organization than it consumes, fueling the next steps

– Sustaining: process stays in place, even when the initial force behind it disappears

– Auditable: supports factual reporting and attestation to process adherence and consistency

– Ordered: must be done in the specified order to achieve the above

• Visible Ops is the copyright of, and managed by, the IT Process Institute (http://www.itpi.org).

• Has sold over 50,000 copies since June 2004 to individuals and organizations all over the world


Let’s look at questions to ask about virtualization in our

respective organizations via ITIL

Virtualization applies from Mainframes to Windows to UNIX and with different platforms and vendors will come different capabilities hence a question format


Change Management• Can IT manage risks associated with changes to services?• Just because you can change on the fly doesn’t mean you

should!• 80% of availability problems can be tied to human error• The ability to deploy a change to a 100 hosts may

automate the ability to crash 100 hosts unless careful• Risks associated with changes must be managed• How will Change Management process change requests

for the virtual hosts?• Is there anything special that must be taken into

consideration?• How can you answer the prime question – “What

changed?”• How can failed changes be rolled back?


Configuration Management• Do you know what services are in production, how the various Configuration

Items (CIs) relate to one another and how they are configured?• Configuration Management provides a logical view of IT’s world to the other

processes• How will you track data about virtual hosts in the Configuration Management

Database (CMDB)?– Physical chassis as a parent CI with physical blade CIs and then virtual CIs

underneath?– Physical parent server CI with virtual server CI with logical server CIs

underneath?– Do you need to set attributes to flag what is virtual and physical?– How will dynamic values be tracked? Do they need to be tracked?– What do you really need to know to reliably provision services?– What is needed for reporting?

• What do you need to monitor, report and alert/alarm on?– Can you do end-to-end service monitoring vs. resource monitoring


Release Management

• Can IT reliably deploy new and changed services into production without negatively impacting the business?

• How will the deployment of virtualization technology be managed?– Project management, stakeholders, testing, rollout

• How can virtualization enable test and development environments to mirror production?

• How will the deployment of virtual hosts be managed?• Can images be retained and governed by change

management?– Far faster to build, or rebuild, from an image than manually


Incident Management / Service Desk

• Can IT assist users in the speedy recovery of services or service requests?

• Does the Service Desk know about proposed changes and the schedule? (Don’t surprise them on Monday morning!)

• Do any scripts need to change when the Service Desk takes a call involving a virtual host? Are there any new questions or branches?

• What training does the Service Desk need?• What monitoring is needed?• Do alerts and alarms route through Incident Management?• How can virtualization reduce MTTR and the Incident lifecycle?

– Occur, Detect, Diagnose, Repair, Recover, Restore Service


Problem Management

• Are root causes established to address trends and/or prevent incidents from occurring?

• How might virtualization affect root cause analysis?

• What data can be collected from virtual hosts to aid in problem analysis?

• What should problem managers be looking for in terms of proactive problem management?


Service Level Management• Are the needs of the business understood and consistently met?• What does the business need?• What can IT realistically provision?• Establishment of Roles and Responsibilities

– IT should not be isolated – the business needs to engage at appropriate times as well. Ex. Justifying upgrades to senior management

• Negotiated Service Level Agreements– Availability– Capacity– Performance– Security– Response times to Incidents, Problems, Changes– Escalation procedures– User Support– Pricing

• Virtualized hosts still need to meet SLAs• What reports can be generated to show service levels from the virtualization

technology(s)?• Why exceed SLAs and expend excessive resources?

– Technology push vs. Business pull


Availability Management

• Can IT provision services the are available when the business needs them?

• What availability is needed?• What about planned maintenance windows?• How is IT trending?• How can virtualization help meet Availability

requirements?• What can threaten availability?

– Uncontrolled changes– Uncontrolled complexity and variation


Capacity Management• Can IT provision services with adequate capacity to meet the needs

of the business both now and in the foreseeable future?• One of virtualization’s greatest benefits is in improving capacity

utilization• First, understand business capacity requirements

– Regular meetings and review of business planning documents• What are the IT service capacity requirements needed to meet this?• What component resource capacity is needed?• What are target thresholds?• How can virtualization enable better utilization of capacity?• How can demand be managed to perhaps reduce capacity

escalations?• Proper SLAs that include Capacity and performance requirements

are very beneficial!


IT Service Continuity Management

• Can IT support the organization’s Business Continuity Plan (BCP)?

• How can virtualizations support ITSCM?• Can jobs be transferred to another site seamlessly in

case of an event?• If virtual system images are under change management,

can they be mirrored off-site for emergency restoration?• Can virtual servers be mirrored real time?• Actions must align with the needs of the business

– The level of fault tolerance, much like the speed of a car, is a function of money!


IT Financial Management

• Are the costs and value of IT understood?• What are the costs associated with virtualization and

provisioning of services?– What is the total cost of ownership (TCO) vs. discrete systems

• Does the budget allocate for proper growth next year?– What reports can the virtualized systems provide to trend

utilization? (Capacity Management)

• What is done with charge backs or illustrating consumption relative to costs?– How can virtualization enable tracking utilization?

• What value does virtualization add?


Security• Is the organization relatively secure to operate

without negative consequences from external entities?

• How does virtualization affect security?• Can risky code be run in isolated virtual

machines?• How can virtualization better safeguard data?• Reduction of variation inherently improves

security– BUT YOU MUST ACTIVELY MANAGE VARIATION– Just having virtualization technologies isn’t sufficient –

need supporting processes as well


Diminishing Returns

• Any single process, technology, or combination in a vacuum will reach a point of diminishing returns– Each successive unit of input will

yield less and less output

• Over-optimizing any single area can unbalance the system

• Efficient and effective productivity gains come from recognizing and addressing the system – not individual areas

Res

ult

s

Level of Investment

100%


Continuous Improvement Is Key

• Like any process, you must pick a place to start and begin

• As you gain more experience, evolve the various aspects people, process and technology as the organization matures and challenges change

• Be sure to tie activities to functional area objectives and organizational goals

Where do we want to be?

Where are we now?

How do we get to where we want to be?

How do we monitorProgress?

Vision and Objectives

Audits / Assessments

Process Improvement(Leverage Best Practices)

Metrics and Critical Success Factors

* Adapted from ITIL Service Support Graphic


Process References• The Official OGC ITIL Site

http://www.itil.co.uk/ • Microsoft’s Operations Framework

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/itsolutions/cits/mo/smf • British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA)

http://www.becta.org.uk/tsas• IT Process Institute’s Visible Ops Methodology

http://www.itpi.org• PMI Project Management Body of Knowledge

http://www.pmi.org • Projects in Controlled Environments version 2 (PRINCE2)

http://www.prince2.org.uk/web/site/home/Home.asp


Thank you for the privilege of facilitating this webcast

George [email protected]

http://www.pepperweed.com

Daily News Archive and Subscription Instructionshttp://www.spaffordconsulting.com/dailynews.html


Questions?


Thank you for attending

If you have any further questions, e-mail [email protected]

For future ITSM Watch Webcasts, visit www.jupiterwebcasts.com/itsm

© 2007 Jupitermedia Corporation Using ITIL to Manage Virtualization February 22, 2007 2:00pm EST,...

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