This document summarizes Darren Schoen's experience virtualizing the Broward Center for the Performing Arts' technology infrastructure using VMware. It discusses how VMware provided a cost-effective solution to give remote employees network access. Initially a single ESXi server hosted 10 VMs for $3500. Within 2 years, the environment grew to 4 servers hosting 63 VMs, saving $75,000 compared to physical servers. The document concludes that VMware is a robust virtualization solution that can start small and scale affordably for mission-critical applications.

1. Red Riders and Pink
Nightmares: A Journey into
Virtualization.
Darren Schoen
Director of Technology Infrastructure,
Broward Center for the Performing Arts

2. First Things First….

3. Did you say Virtualization????

4. Red Ryders=Awesome

5. Pink Nightmare =
Not so Awesome

6. Business Need
•Employees at Remote Location
•On Separate Network that had stringent
security.
•Able to get to Internet
•Cheap
•Needed BCPA internal network access

7. Solution(s)!
•Remote Access Solved (GoToMyPC)
•Buy each employee PC and set up in
vacant Cube (not cost effective)
•VIRTUALIZATION!

8. What about this Virtualization?
•Density, Density, Density
•Ease of Administration
•Cost Effectiveness
•Best use of hardware

9. Amount of Bacon
Tastiness

10. Density of VMs in Environment
AmountofSavings

11. Vendors We Looked At
•XenServer (Citrix)
•VMWare ESX 3.5
•Microsoft (Not Hyper-V at that time)
•Virtual Iron (Xen Based)

12. Basis of Comparison
•Ease of Implementation
•Support Structure (Online and by
Company)
•Price
•Scalability
•Product Maturity

13. Results
VMWare
Citrix (Xen
Based)
Microsoft
Virtual Iron
(Xen Based)
Ease of
Implementation
Red Ryder Red Ryder Pink Nightmare Red Ryder
Support Red Ryder Pink Nightmare Red Ryder Pink Nightmare
Price Pink Nightmare Red Ryder Red Ryder Red Ryder
Scalability Red Ryder Red Ryder Pink Nightmare Red Ryder
Maturity of
Product
Red Ryder Red Ryder Pink Nightmare Red Ryder

14. Conclusion

15. Bacon

16. Why?
•Online Support Community
•Maturity of Product (It’s bulletproof!)
•Scalability
•Transparent Page Sharing
•Memory Overcommit
•Memory Overcommit
•Memory Overcommit!!

17. Density of VMs in Environment
AmountofSavings

18. My Roadmap
Build Server
Install Free VMWare Server Product (at
the time, this ran on top of Windows)
Rock and Roll with VMs!
Establish Proof of Concept and start
scaling up VMWare environment!

19. The Joys of ESX Implementation
•Red Ryders:
•Ease of Installation
•Stability
•Migration of current VM objects
•Pink Nightmares:
•Hardware, Hardware, Hardware
•Licensing, Licensing, Licensing

20. The Story, Just After
Implementation
•1 Stand-Alone ESXi 3.5 VMWare Box w/2TB+ storage.
•16GB RAM, Dual Quad-Core Procs.
•Total of 10 VMs (not close to being maxed out)
•Managed as a stand-alone box, no cloning or migration.
•All Windows XP OS VMs
•All used as ‘desktops’ for remote users connecting by
GoToMyPC
•No Backup scheme implemented
•Total Spent: ~$3500…approximately $350 per VM.
•Total Savings up to this point: $3000.

21. The Story, 2yrs later….
•4 Stand-Alone ESXi Boxes, each with 2TB+ internal storage
•Total of 63 VMs (not maxed out by a longshot)
•Minimum of 42 VMs on at any given time
•Managed by Vcenter
•Scheduled tasks to clone mission critical VMs to different
VM host on separate partition.
•Backup SW on each server VM
•VM objects include:
•Exchange Servers
•SQL Servers
•Application/Web Servers
•Workstations
•Total Spent: ~$30,000..about $476.70 per VM
•Approximate Savings: ~$75,000

22. What about Hyper-V?
•Overhead
•From our experience, more than VMWare
•Even ‘bare-metal’ install uses most of Server 2008 install
files
•Performance
•No Transparent Page Sharing
•No Simultaneous Live Migration
•No Memory Overcommit!

23. Final Thoughts
•Bottom Line (based on my first hand
experience):
•You don’t need to spend $50,000 to get a
robust Virtual Environment, you can start
with 10% of that.
•For any Mission Critical Application, VMWare
is the only solution that I would feel
comfortable implementing

24. Questions?