Manage Vm Sprawl

7/27/2019 Manage Vm Sprawl

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BEST PRACTICES

TO PREVENT AND

MANAGE VM SPRAWL

By Anil Desai By

BE

Implementing virtualization has become a airly simple process.

The marketplace eatures numerous mature virtualization

products, and administrators have several options to reduce costs

and consolidate their inrastructures. As with all technology,

however, virtualization must be managed. The primary challengeis in implementing a virtual inrastructure and managing it well.

In many ways, you can treat virtual machines

(VMs) just like physical machines. They

typically run their own operating systems,

require security updates and patching,

and generally must ollow standard

IT best practices. However, VMs also

pose some new challenges that system

administrators must consider in order to

eectively maintain their data centers.

When let unmanaged, virtual environments

can experience a problem similar to server

sprawl. VM sprawl is the rapid prolieration

o VMs without adequate IT oversight.

This article provides recommendations or

managing virtual environments and or

preventing issues related to VM sprawl.

VM Sprawl: Causes and Impacts

A primary cause o VM sprawl is when an

organization doesnt plan or virtualization

deployment. Oten, a virtualization rollout

begins when administrators start creating

VMs in an ad-hoc ashion to support new

applications and services. They typically

ocus on the rapid deployment andbeneit o server consolidation, but ail to

perorm capacity planning or to implement

management methods.

In other cases, IT departments ail to create

or update standard operating policies and

practices to account or virtualization. While

VMs can be created, moved, copied, and

reconigured in a matter o minutes, the

potential eects o these actions on the

production data center can be quite serious.

About the Author

Anil Desai is an independent consultant

based in Austin, Texas, who specializes

in evaluating, implementing, and

managing IT solutions. He has managed

environments that support thousands

o virtual machines and has writtenseveral books on virtualization and IT

management. Desai also has presented at

dozens o conerences and is a requent

contributor to online and print magazines.

For more inormation, please see

http://AnilDesai.net or

email [email protected].


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Consider, or example, the transition o a

VM that was originally designed or test

purposes into a live, production environment.

Organizations generally wouldnt consider

moving an unpatched, insecure desktop

computer into the data center. Yet, the same

risks appear when systems are deployed into

production with little IT oversight or review.

Worst o all, several IT administrators dont

even know how many VMs are running in their

data centers or how theyre being used.

Regardless o the source o VM sprawl, an

unplanned approach to virtualization can

create a long list o problems. Overall, the

risks o running an unmanaged virtual

environment are signiicant concerns that

must be addressed.

Planning and Deploying VMs

Although its oten neglected, planning

is an important portion o virtualizationmanagement. Organizations should start by

understanding the strategic and tactical goals

they hope to achieve with virtualization (see

sidebar: Regaining Control o Your Virtual

Environment). The goal is to igure out which

applications and services should be moved to

a virtual environment and to which hosts they

will be deployed. Planning also applies or

any existing VMs theres almost always

room or improvement in VM placement

and coniguration.

The ability to quickly deploy a new OS,

application, or service is a key beneit o

virtualization. To simpliy the process,

companies oten start with a base VM

coniguration (part o a VM library).

These base VMs ollow standard OS

coniguration, patch management, and

security coniguration best practices. In

order to improve the end-user experience,

organizations also can implement tools that

allow users to deploy VMs automatically and

on demand. O course, administrators must be

sure to deine and enorce resource utilization

rules and track ownership o VMs in non-

production environments.

Monitoring the Entire Environment

There are two conlicting trends in IT

management. On the one hand, the use

o virtualization and other technology has

the potential to simpliy the environment

and reduce costs. On the other hand,

modern applications depend on dozens o

data center components. Its not enough

or a web application to run well i a

dependency, such as a database server or

part o the storage or network inrastructure,

isnt running as expected, users will eel

the impact.

With virtualization, organizations should

invest in tools that are virtualization aware.

These systems should be able to monitor and

relate perormance statistics collected rom

VMs and rom the physical host servers on

which they reside. They should be able to

proactively identiy potential perormanceproblems. Many systems can automatically

take corrective actions, such as moving VMs

between hosts or reconiguring VMs with

more memory or CPU resources based on

changing usage patterns. The end result is

a luid, agile data center environment that

partly manages itsel.

Best Practices to Prevent and Manage VM Sprawl

DeploymentIssues

AdministrationIssues

ResourceManagement

Issues

SecurityManagement

Issues

Lack of IT oversight (deployment of unauthorized VMs) Inconsistent VM configurations Lack of administrative ownership of VMs Difficulty related to identifying and tracking VMs

Lack of administrator expertise Managing heterogeneous host, guest, and hypervisor platforms Monitoring offline and disconnected VMs Tracking host, guest, and software licenses

Reactive management can lead to downtime and data loss Less-than-optimal VM placement can result in wasted resources

Verifying adherence to OS and application security standards Demonstrate regulatory compliance

Potential Dangers o Unmanaged VM Deployments


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While theres no simple one-size-ts-all solution or managing

virtualization, these seven steps provide a good starting point i you

nd your virtual machines getting out o control.

Take Inventory o the Entire Environment

Organizations can rely on standard network monitoring tools or

basic production systems, but virtualization-aware tools are required

to nd disconnected or ofine VMs. Include all o the assets that

matter network devices, physical servers, VMs (i any), and

storage devices. Most companies can use a network-based scanning

tool that automatically nds existing physical or virtual machines.Those that have a centralized database o asset details can leverage

the data as a basis to identiy current and potential virtualization

host systems. Its important to keep in mind that enterprise

management tools must be virtualization-aware to receive a

complete inventory o all VMs in the environment and to correlate

inormation between host and guest operating systems.

Understand Your Applications

Next, look at the services and applications you might want to

virtualize. Determine which ones are the best candidates (generally,

sotware that doesnt ully use the capabilities o the hardware itruns on). Organizations have a range o approaches or this step,

including using automated sotware management tools or arranging

interviews with specic end-users and business units.

Determine Inrastructure Requirements

Translate application requirements into measurements or RAM

allocation, storage requirements, network requirements, etc. Include

both conguration requirements (Internet access via the network

and shared storage or automatic ailover).

Map VMs to Hosts

I you havent yet deployed VMs, determine which workloads will

play nicely together and then deploy them to host servers that have

sucient capacity. I you have already deployed VMs, nd potential

perormance issues, such as low CPU or memory resources, and

rebalance the environment.

Regaining Control o Your Virtual Environment

Monitor the Environment

Ensure that your environment remains well managed by continually

monitoring resource utilization, host and guest OS conguration,

and other details. Proactively make changes as needed. Your users

might not thank you, but thats the point dont wait or urgent

situations to arise. Virtualization-aware automated tools can greatly

simpliy this process and can automatically make recommendations

and conguration changes.

Retire Unnecessary VMs

Managing a virtualized inrastructure is much like gardening itsoten necessary to identiy and pull the weeds in order to avoid

wasting resources. Many virtualization management tools provide

administrators with the ability to dene ownership o VMs and to

tightly control deployment policies. Oten, however, VMs outlive

their useulness. Administrators should scan their host servers or

VMs that are disconnected rom production networks, that are

ofine, or that receive very little usage. These VMs can usually

be retired. For an added measure o saety, administrators should

consider moving all virtualization hard disks and VM conguration

les to a near-online or ofine storage system or archival purposes.

Sit back and relax

Deploying, monitoring, and managing virtualization takes ongoing

eort. But, with the right tools and administration approach,

organizations can gain maximal benet o virtualization while

remaining in control o the entire data center. Lest you orget the

entire point o this process, you can nally rest easy knowing your

VMs and the entire data center are well managed.


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The

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Security, Compliance, and Auditing

In the world o physical computers, its airly easy to see what is present

in that environment. Typically, system administrators are able to veriythe coniguration o systems that are deployed to the data center,

and they can closely monitor them. With virtualization, however, new

systems can be deployed, moved, copied, and reconigured with no

obvious alerts to the administrators. The end result is potential security

and compliance issues, which can lead to security breaches, data loss,

and downtime.

A good approach to addressing these issues is to continually monitor

the environment. Administrators should create standard desired

coniguration templates and compare them to the actual

conigurations. Any discrepancies should be remediated automatically

(wherever possible) or brought to an administrators attention.

This approach helps to quickly highlight potential problems so

administrators can resolve them beore bigger issues occur.

Managing the VM Lie Cycle

Like physical servers, VMs typically have a lie cycle. Starting rom

the planning and coniguration stages through to deployment,

organizations can oten leverage existing best practices. Likewise,

monitoring is important or all systems in the environment physical

and virtual. But VMs present some additional challenges (or, i youre

an optimist, opportunities to improve management). They must be

uniquely identiied and tracked since details, such as MAC addresses,

computer names, and host placement, can change quickly. Additionally,

when VMs are copied, administrators must be aware o the new system

and its maintenance requirements.

Because they dont take up physical space, administrators oten

overlook the importance o retiring VMs that are no longer needed.

This is, indeed, a major cause o VM sprawl old VMs never really

die; rather, they just hang out on production machines and consume

valuable resources.

Benefts o Automation

O course, understanding how to better manage VMs is only part o

the overall challenge. Once you know what to do, the challenge isin inding the time, resources, and expertise to actually do it. Small

deployments can oten be managed using built-in virtualization

tools and simple automation scripts. But this approach can quickly

become unmanageable as the number and types o VMs increases and

virtualization becomes a mission-critical part o the data center.

Thats where automation can signiicantly reduce costs and improve

the quality o administration. The ollowing illustration provides an

overview o many standard virtualization management best practices

that can be automated.

Conclusion

This article outlines some o the ways in which VMs are like miniaturephysical machines, and, more importantly, how they are dierent. In

order to maintain control o a virtualized data center, administrators

must take into account the tasks o capacity planning, monitoring the

environment, managing the entire VM lie cycle, and veriying security

and compliance o all systems. It may seem like a signiicant challenge

but with adequate planning and the proper tools, administrators can

gain the advantages o virtualization while minimizing costs related to

management overhead.

Assess the Environment

Determine workload resource requirements

Measure overall data center capacity

Select virtualization candidates

Enforce policies and processes

Select the most appropriate deployment target for a workload

Allow end-user self-service deployments according to resource quotas

Use a single console to manage all guests, hosts, and hypervisors

Monitor and reallocate VMs based on host resource utilization

Develop and measure against service level agreements (SLAs)

Compare desired vs. actual configuration of virtual and physical systems

Optimize host hardware resource utilization

Proactively detect and resolve performance issues

Verify security policy and regulatory compliance

Manage Virtualization

Administration

Reporting

Tasks That Can Be Simpliied by AutomatingVirtualization Management

Manage Vm Sprawl

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