Brown County Virtualization Project

Transcription

1 Brown County Virtualization Project By Nicholas Duncanson Submitted to the Faculty of the Information Technology Program in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology University of Cincinnati College of Applied Science May 2009

2 Brown County Virtualization Project By Nicholas Duncanson Submitted to the Faculty of the Information Technology Program in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in Information Technology Copyright 2009 Nicholas Duncanson The author grants to the Information Technology Program permission to reproduce and distribute copies of this document in whole or in part. Nicholas Duncanson Date Prof. Mark Stockman Date Dr. Hazem Said, Department Head Date

3 Duncanson i Acknowledgements I want to thank everyone who helped me through the entire project. Without the support I have received it would not have been feasible to complete the project. I want to thank the Brown County General Hospital for giving me the opportunity to do this project for them. I would especially like to thank the IT department at the hospital for the support and guidance that they have given me throughout the project. I would also like to thank Prof. Mark Stockman for being my advisor and being there when I had questions.

4 Duncanson ii Table of Contents Section Acknowledgements Table of Contents List of Figures Abstract Page i ii iii v 1. Statement of the Need Error! Bookmark not defined. 2. Description and Intended Use Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.1 User Profile Error! Bookmark not defined. 2.2 Design Protocol VMware VI VMware ESX VMware Virtual Center Symantec Backup Exec and VMware Consolidated Backup Rack Mounted Servers Tape Library 7 4. Proof of Design Virtual Infrastructure Network Diagram Time-line Budget Testing Risk Management Conclusion 14 References 15

5 Duncanson iii List of Figures Figure 1. ESX Servers Figure 2. Tape Library Figure 3. Virtual Center Figure 4. Network Diagram Figure 5. Storage Area Network Figure 6. Fibre Switch Error! Bookmark not defined. Error! Bookmark not defined. Error! Bookmark not defined. Error! Bookmark not defined. Error! Bookmark not defined. Error! Bookmark not defined.

6 Duncanson iv Table 1. Timeline Table 2. Budget Table 3. Risk Analysis Error! Bookmark not defined. Error! Bookmark not defined. Error! Bookmark not defined.

7 Duncanson v Abstract The Brown County General Hospital has several servers that are old and out of date. They are also currently running low on space in their server environment. The solution for this is to virtualize their data center. This will allow the hospital to get off of hold hardware, and reduce the load on their current resources. It will also give the hospital room for growth without having to spend money on new hardware every time a new server is needed.

8 Duncanson 1 Brown County Hospital Virtualization Project Statement of Need Brown County General Hospital (BCGH) is a small county-owned hospital in southwest Ohio. It consists of the main hospital and six remote sites. Over 400 people are employed at the hospital and its remote sites. It has a small IT department consisting of three full-time employees: Brian Dietrick, Ryan Mountjoy, and Nick Duncanson. The IT department is responsible for the IT infrastructure at the hospital. The department s responsibilities include the servers, the phone system, client machines, and the connecting infrastructure. Some of the servers at the hospital are currently at the end of their life cycle. The warranties on the existing hardware are almost becoming more expensive than replacing the hardware. Several of the servers that need replacing at BCGH are not currently being backed up. Some servers are currently at maximum capacity. The existing fail-over for some systems requires 30 minutes of downtime. The hospital wants to make certain that this situation is rectified. BCGH wants these servers to have fail-over, minimal downtime, easy administration, and an effective but simple backup solution (2). The server room at the hospital is currently running out of space. The lack of space is causing the temperature in the server room to rise to unacceptable levels (2). The payroll server at the hospital has to be replaced soon. The vendor is no longer going to support that version of the software and the hospital will need to replace the entire server for the new version. I plan to use VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) to address all of these issues. VI3 includes VMware ESX Server 3.0, VirtualCenter 2.0 with VMotion, Virtual SMP, DRS, High Availablity (HA) and Consolidated Backup. These components make it ideal for filling all of the needs that BCGH has identified (2).

9 Duncanson 2 Product Description and Intended Use The Brown County General Hospital (BCGH) has several servers that are at the end of their product life-cycles in addition to several servers that are beyond their product life-cycles. The hospital needs to either purchase support on the existing hardware, which can cost up to $20,000 per server, or they need to replace the hardware. The current hardware is so old that it is simply a matter of time before the servers start to actually fail. One of the servers is currently out of support on the hardware and software, and the software support cannot be renewed, so it must be upgraded. The old server hardware cannot handle the new software. There are also a few other servers that need to be upgraded to the newest versions of the software. These servers include Exchange and SQL Server. The hardware the servers are currently running on is old and is close to the end of its product life-cycle. The servers are also not running the newest version of Windows Server, which is part of the hospital's requirements for installing the new versions of the software. The hospital has planned to install several new servers in the future. Currently, they have planned to install a new media-care server that will control what is displayed on the new IP-TV's that they have installed hospital wide. This server will be purchased by the hospital. They will have to buy a new Windows Server license, and they will need hardware to put the server on. There are also plans to install more servers in the future as the need arises. The server room at the hospital is also currently having power issues. The circuits running into the hospital are being pushed very hard, and they will only be pushed harder as more servers are introduced. Add that on top of the fact that the temperature in the server room has been rising to unacceptable levels and one can see that something must be done about their server room.

10 Duncanson 3 These issues all arose at the same time, and a decision had to be made as to what to do about them. It was decided that virtualization is the answer. The decision was made to purchase three new servers, each with 12 NIC's, 32GB of RAM, and Dual Quad-Core Processors. These servers will be 2U rack mount servers and will each run VMware ESX 3.5. All of the servers that can will be migrated over to the ESX cluster. This allows BCGH to replace all of the hardware that was at the end of its life cycle. It will also create more space for more virtual servers in the future, allowing for a large amount of growth for the organization's IT infrastructure. The new ESX cluster will create room to build new Windows Server 2008 virtual machines to run the new versions of Exchange and SQL Server. Due to the size of the servers being purchased, the hospital has a lot of room for growth in its server environment. There will be plenty of room for the new Media-care server to be virtualized. Moving from a room full of servers down to three physical servers will also have an effect on the server room. It will lower the temperature in the server room and will reduce power consumption. It will also increase rack space for future expansion if needed. This will allow the IT department to continue to use the same server room with minimal changes to power or size. It was also decided that a backup solution for the new system would be vital. An effective enterprise backup solution is currently not in place for many of the servers that are being replaced. This meant that one was needed for this project. Symantec s Backup Exec will be implemented on a stand-alone server that will be attached to a tape-library. There will be weekly backups. Each week the tapes will be taken off the premises in the same locked container that the hospital uses for its Meditech system.

11 Duncanson 4 User Profile There will be one group of users for the ESX cluster. This group consists of the members of the BCGH IT department. They will be responsible for administering, repairing, and maintaining, along with any additional requirements for the ESX cluster. The IT department consists of three individuals: Ryan Mountjoy, Brian Dietrick, and Nicholas Duncanson. The department will be responsible for creating virtual machines, removing virtual machines, and monitoring virtual machines. They will also be responsible for any other needs that the ESX cluster has. Design Protocols VMWare VI3 VI3 is the backbone of the entire project. It is the software that will be used to host and administer all of the virtual machines. It includes VMware ESX 3.5 and VMware Virtual Center. VMware ESX 3.5 VMware ESX 3.5 is the software that will host the virtual machines. Three licenses have been purchased for it, each good for one server. This software is a Hypervisor. That basically means it is its own operating system that hosts other operating systems. It requires two physical processors, at least 1GB of RAM, and one NIC. It is also recommended that ESX be installed on a SCSI HDD. ESX also requires that all virtual machines run on VMFS partitions. They can be hosted over a SAN. VMware Virtual Center VMware Virtual Center is the management piece of the project. It will be used to

12 Duncanson 5 administer the ESX servers. It provides VMotion and High Availability. VMotion allows Virtual Center to move virtual machines between ESX hosts and High Availability uses VMotion to automatically migrate virtual machines to a new ESX host in case one of the other ESX hosts has any issues. Virtual Center will be installed in a virtual machine in the ESX cluster. Virtual Center is not required for the ESX servers to run; it is only used to administer the virtual machines. If it goes down, it will not take down anything else. This will be the main method for the users to administer the ESX cluster. Symantec Backup Exec and VMware Consolidated Backup Symantec Backup Exec is the software that will be used to backup the solution. VMware has a module that you can download that will integrate VI3 with Backup Exec. The Backup Exec server will be attached directly to the SAN and will retrieve the data it needs directly from the SAN. The piece it integrates within VI3 is called Consolidated Backup. Consolidated Backup is not truly a separate piece. Instead it is the piece that integrates inside of Backup Exec to allow it to create snap-shots of virtual machines. These snap-shots allow Backup Exec to backup the virtual machines while they are live.

13 Duncanson 6 Rack Mounted Servers There are three physical 2U servers that will run ESX (Figure 1). Each server will have 12 Gigabit NICs, 32GB of RAM, and Dual Quad-Core Processors. They will also all have dualpower supplies, and RAID 1. Four of the NICs will be used for iscsi, one for VMotion, and the rest will be used for the virtual machines. The servers will all be placed on a new standard 42U rack that will be purchased for the project. There will also be a server dedicated as a backup server for the project. This server will have 8GB of RAM. It will be directly attached to the tape library and will host Symantec Backup Exec. Figure 1: ESX Servers

14 Duncanson 7 Tape Library There is also an HP MSL LTO-4 Ultrium 1840 Tape Library (Figure 2). This tape library will be attached to the backup server. It has one tape drive and will hold twenty-four LTO-4 tapes. These tapes will be rotated weekly. The data backed up on the backup server will be written to tape once a week. Figure 2: Tape Library

15 Duncanson 8 Proof of Design Virtual Infrastructure 3 VI3 fills the needs presented in several ways. Namel, it allows multiple servers to run on a single piece of hardware. It also allows users to manage the physical servers centrally with Virtual Center (Figure 3). Figure 3: Virtual Center Each physical ESX server hosts multiple virtual machines. There are three ESX servers. These virtual machines are spread out over the three ESX servers, based on need. They can be migrated between ESX servers with VMotion at the administrators discretion. Only having four

16 Duncanson 9 physical servers has reduced the amount of space used in the server room. The new hardware is also part of the solution and replacing the old hardware was a large part of the need. Symantec Backup Exec is recommended by VMware as a supported backup solution. The hospital had already used Backup Exec in the past and was more comfortable with using it than other options presented by VMware. It has the capability to connect to a SAN and take a snap-shot of a virtual machine when integrated with VMware consolidated backup. The capability makes it a suitable backup solution for this project. Network Diagram BCGH has a large network with a large amount of systems. These systems must all continue to work well together when the project is in place. Figure 4 shows how all of the systems in the BCGH network connected now that the project is complete. Figure 4: Network Diagram

17 Duncanson 10 The ESX servers are shown with the virtual machines they host. They are each connected to the storage area network (SAN) with two HBAs for redundancy. Each HBA goes to a different fiber switch (Figure 5). The HBAs are plugged into the switches along with the NS22 and the CX500 (Figure 6). Figure 5: Storage Area Network

18 Duncanson 11 Figure 6: Fiber Switch The backup/proxy server is also connected to the SAN. It is only connected to one of the switches because it is not as mission critical as the ESX servers (Figure 5). The ESX servers are also connected to the rest of the network through the core switch stack (Figure 4). This connection gives the virtual machines hosted in the cluster access to the rest of the network. This includes the remote sites, all workstations, all physical servers, and anything else attached to the network. It also gives them access to the internet through the hospital s connection to Time Warner. Time-line The project had several pieces that need to be completed in the proper order. Table 1 is a time-line outlining when each piece of the project occurred. The plan was to have the project completed by June 2009.

19 Duncanson 12 Table 1: Timeline Item Start Date Finish Date Proposal Autumn Quarter Done Decide on Hardware 1/2/2009 Done Install new Hardware 2/28/2009 Done Re-Arrange Hardware Racks 2/28/2009 Done Prototype 2/28/2009 3/16/2009 Design Freeze 1/23/2009 3/11/2009 Finish converting P2V 2/28/2009 5/7/2009 Testing 2/28/2009 5/7/2009 Perform Required Training 5/1/2009 6/6/2009 Present at Tech Expo 5/7/2009 5/7/2009 Final Presentation 6/6/2009 6/11/2009 Budget The original budget approved for the project was $50,000. This original budget did not account for a complete enterprise backup solution. The new budget for the project was approved in February 2009 by the hospital s CFO (Table 2). BCGH had a backup solution budgeted for later in the year for $35,000. The CFO decided to grant the project additional funding for a backup solution in this project to avoid the $35,000 cost later in the year. BCGH supplied all funds for this project. Table 2: Budget Item Quantity My Cost Hospital Cost ESX Host Server (HP DL380) 3 $0 $20, Management/Backup Server (HP DL180) 1 $0 $5, HP MSL LTO-4 Ultrium 1840 Tape Lib 1 $0 $8, Backup Software(Symantec Backup Exec) 1 $0 $ ESX Server HBA 6 $0 $5, Server Rack and PDUs n/a $0 $1, Hardware Support n/a $0 $5, VMware VI3 3 $0 $15, Total $ 66,902.98

20 Duncanson 13 Testing Testing for the project will begin the moment the physical servers start to migrate to virtual machines. The first part is the physical to virtual conversion. After the physical machine is converted, the virtual machine (VM) will be uploaded to the ESX server cluster. At this point, an administrator will open the command prompt on the VM and run a ping test to see if the VM can contact BCGH s Meditech server. After network connectivity has been verified, each server will have its specific services started. When the service is up and running properly, the proper client will be used to connect to it. This part of the testing may be done by any member of the IT department depending on which server is being tested. Each day a ping test will be used to verify that the server can be accessed over the network. End users of each service will also be asked for input on issues during this testing time. Risk Management There were four areas of risk that were identified for this project (Table 3). These areas of risk were agreed upon with the technical advisor and they have been decided to be the most relevant for this project. Table 3: Risk Analysis Risk Risk Level Mitigation One physical server fails High VMware High Availability will be enabled Migration doesn't work properly High The server will be tested, and the old physical server will be left in place for one week until the new server is verified to be working

21 Duncanson 14 Power goes out to all three servers Low Each server will have redundant power supplies and each power supply will run to a different UPS. Each UPS will be on different circuits. Lose a hard-drive on the SAN Low The SAN will have RAID6 The IT staff at the hospital was notified about these risks. They also looked for new areas of risk during the project but did not come across any. Conclusion The hospital greatly benefited from this project. It will allow them to increase the utilization of hardware that they purchase and will help them to greatly cut costs in the longterm. I recommend that BCGH continue to virtualize any devices that can be virtualized. I also recommend that they continue to consolidate their servers as much as possible in the future.

22 Duncanson 15 References 1. Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., VMware Infrastructure 3, planning. Palo Alto, CA: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P Dietrick, Brian. Department Manager, Information Technology, Brown County General Hospital. Personal interview. October 31, VMware Inc., VMware Virtual Center. Palo Alto, CA: VMware Inc VMware Inc., VMware Consolidated Backup. Palo Alto, CA: VMware Inc VMware November VMware Inc., VMware Infrastructure 3, Capacity Planning, The Blueprint for Server Consolidation. Palo Alto, CA: VMware 7. Network World, VMware Inc., How VMware Virtualization Right Sizes IT Infrastructure to Reduce Power Consumption. Palo Alto, CA: VMware Inc VMware Inc., VMware Infrastructure 3, architecture. Palo Alto, CA: VMware 10. Dietrick, Brian. Department Manager, Information Technology, Brown County General Hospital. Personal interview. November 18, 2008