Customer Solution Case Study

Customers and Web Host Benefit from Virtuozzo to Hyper-V Migration

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Hosting Services

Customer ProfileFounded in 1999, Applied Innovations specializes in hosting on the Windows Server platform.

Business SituationMove existing Virtuozzo customers production environments to Hyper-V with minimal downtime and disruption.

SolutionApplied Innovations used Xtratus SmartMigration to quickly migrate Virtuozzo containers to Hyper-V.

Benefits Reduced management burden Increased reliability Greater agility for a competitive

advantage

“Although Virtuozzo is a powerful solution and ideal for running

multiple identical workloads, using a single kernel comes with

risks. We frequently experienced outages and downtime due to

the non-paged pool memory being exhausted to the point that

we had to scale back from 40-60 VMs per node to 20-25. In

comparison we run 40 VMs on each of our Hyper-V nodes today

and are looking to move that to as high as 75! “

Nathalie Vaiser, Systems Administrator, Applied Innovations

Applied Innovations, a Web Hosting Provider, migrates Virtuozzo container customers to Hyper-V. The company successfully migrated 152 virtual machines across 16 rack servers running Virtuozzo to only 2 rack servers running Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2 operating system with Hyper-V. The company was able to improve reliability and customer usability, and better manage support costs.

SituationApplied Innovations is a Web Hosting Provider that aims to provide the technology and resources that businesses require to make them competitive and successful at a cost-effective price. Their hosting environment is based on Microsoft® Windows Server® platform.

Applied Innovations recently made the strategic decision to offer Hyper-V technology versus only physical servers. The company immediately saw benefits from this decision. Their challenge was what to do with existing customers who were using Virtuozzo Containers. Applied Innovations had considered Virtuozzo as a low cost alternative to physical containers and the original plan was to continue to offer Virtuozzo. However, Applied Innovations soon realized that the operating costs would be higher to support Virtuozzo than moving their entire hosting environment to Hyper-V. Hyper-V would improve reliability, lower support costs, and save on licensing costs.

24

Table 1: Typical Server Configuration for Virtuozzo ContainersAttribute Virtuozzo Hyper-V

HardwareCPU Intel XEON E5320 1.86GHZ Intel XEON E5520 Dual 2.27GhzMemory 8GB 96GBDisk Space C: 18.6/135GB iSCSI SANS – space allocated as-

needed (vs. local storage of Virtuozzo nodes)

Network 1GBps 1GbpsSoftware

Windows Version

2003 R2 Ent x32 SP2 2008 R2 Datacenter

Number of Containers

7 Capable of up to 75

Average Container Size

8.5GB 13.25

Memory Allocation/VM

914MB 1.25GB

“Today we run sixteen different Virtuozzo nodes and none of these nodes are the same. If things are not identical between nodes you’re not able to move machine between nodes and that’s very difficult” said Jess Coburn, CEO, Applied Innovations

Support couldn’t run Windows updates until Parallels provided their version of the update. Windows updates were a painful process that often required multiple reboots and extended production downtime sometimes taking days to complete. Customers wanted the ability to control which updates are applied and when based on their business needs.Using Hyper-V in conjunction with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2, System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, and System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 would allow Applied Innovations to handle day-to-day management of the environment more efficiently and effectively.

SolutionPrior to conducting the actual migration, Applied Innovations built test machines to baseline the performance of 10 existing servers running various SKUs of Windows Server 2003. Real production Virtuozzo environments (which included 32-bit and 64-bit with and without Parallels Plesk Control Panel) were migrated to new server hardware and storage using the Acutepath SmartMigration Tool [See Table 1 for configuration comparisons]. Testing proved difficult due to the company running multiple different versions of Virtuozzo on multiple operating system versions and service pack levels as well as the number of

different variations of virtual containers clients had created.

BenefitsThe benefits that Applied Innovations has gained from migrating from Virtuozzo to Hyper-V are the same benefits they received when they decided to move from offering physical servers only to Hyper-V as an option: reduced management burden, improved reliability, and greater agility to respond to customers changing business needs and focus on minimizing costs.

Reduced Management Burden By using Hyper-V, Applied Innovations can increase the number of virtualized environments on each server without sacrificing stability. The higher density means lower hardware and support costs per environment. The company through the use of System Center tools can take care of a lot of the usual administration, proactively resolving issues and decreasing the day-to-day management load without adding staff.

34

Improved Reliability Applied Innovations has found Hyper-V offers reliability advantages too. Waiting for Parallels verification before installing critical Microsoft updates would often result in undesirable delays, and often these updates would require a reboot of the entire node affecting all virtual machines. Reducing this additional verification has meant less code issues as well. Additionally customers benefit from the ability to run their own Microsoft updates giving them more control of maintaining their environments.

Greater Agility for a Competitive AdvantageWith Hyper-V, Applied Innovations provides their customers an easy, affordable way to adopt new technology and expand their businesses. Customers also can receive the full benefits of the Hyper-V platform without any limitations.

For Applied Innovations the ability to increase virtual server density per physical server means lower costs which contribute to better profitability and the ability to effectively compete for customers.

Microsoft Cloud Power

Microsoft offers a complete set of cloud-based solutions to meet business needs, including solutions for advertising; communications (email, meetings); collaboration (document storage, sharing, workflow); business applications (customer resource management, business productivity); data storage and management; and infrastructure services. In addition, customers can take advantage of an entire ecosystem of solution providers and Microsoft partners.

For more information about Microsoft Cloud Power, go to: www.microsoft.com/cloud

44

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter

with Hyper-V− System Center Operations Manager

2007 R2− Data Protection Manager 2010 (DPM)

− Windows Server Update Services 3.0 SP2 (WSUS)

− System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 (SCCM)

− System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 (SCVMM)

For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: http://www.microsoft.com

For more information about Applied Innovations products and services, call 866.706.8691 or visit the Web site at: http://www.appliedi.net/

For more information about Xtratus products and services, call 1-480-235-6188 or visit the Web site at: http://www.xtratus.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.