1 / 72

Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange Server with Hyper-V

VIR320. Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange Server with Hyper-V. Matt McSpirit Senior Product Marketing Manager Microsoft Corporation @ mattmcspirit. What We Will Cover. Why Microsoft Virtualization for Microsoft Server Applications? Base Hypervisor Performance ESG Performance Results

brock
Download Presentation

Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange Server with Hyper-V

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. VIR320 Virtualizing Microsoft ExchangeServer with Hyper-V Matt McSpirit Senior Product Marketing Manager Microsoft Corporation @mattmcspirit

  2. What We Will Cover • Why Microsoft Virtualization for Microsoft Server Applications? • Base Hypervisor Performance • ESG Performance Results • Exchange Server Virtualization Best Practices • Links to Reference Material

  3. Trends – Changing Market Landscape • Virtualization is exploding resulting in VM proliferation and impacting OS share Number of physical servers shipments used for virtualization will grow to 1.7M+ in 2012 at a CAGR of 15% IDC Server Virtualization Forecast 9.00 8.00 7.00 6.00 5.00 4.00 3.00 2.00 1.00 VM Density 19% of physical server shipments will be used for virtualization, increasing from 11.7% in 2007

  4. Why Microsoft Virtualizationfor Microsoft ServerApplications

  5. Microsoft Virtualization for Server Applications Business Critical Applications Management Platform Line of Business (LOB) Custom Applications Enterprise Applications Microsoft Server Applications Communication: Databases: Collaboration: Virtualization Platform Microsoft VirtualizationWindows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V & System Center

  6. Microsoft Virtualization: The Best Choice for Microsoft Server Applications Built for Windows CompleteManagementSolution Low CostCompleteSolution *Built-in Virtualization with one-stop support *Deep Application Knowledge *A comparable solution can cost almost 4 times more† *Large PartnerEcosystem *Physical & Virtual Management *Lower On-goingCosts Increased Deployment Options *Cross-Platform & Hypervisor Support Virtualization-Friendly Licensing *Only available with Microsoft Virtualization †Based on a comparison of Microsoft® System Center Server Management Suite Datacenter with VMware® vSphere Enterprise Plus with VMware vCenter Server.. Assumes a five host configuration, 2 processors on each host, 2 years support costs for both products, and no operating system costs included.. The Microsoft solution can use either the free Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 hypervisor or an existing Windows Server 2008 R2 hypervisor.  Based on Microsoft estimated retail prices and published VMware prices available at https://www.vmware.com/vmwarestore as of 08/04/2009 for purchases in the United States. Actual reseller prices may vary.

  7. Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 • Many of the scenarios discussed leverage features new to R2 and R2 SP1 • Live Migration & HA • New Processor Support • Improved Performance & Lower Costs • Enhanced Scalability • Greater VM density & Lower TCO • Networking enhancements • Improve performance & 10 Gb/E ready • Dynamic VM capabilities • Enhancements to Server Core • Ease management & Lower TCO • Dynamic Memory & Remote FXin SP1

  8. Hyper-V Configuration Guidelines • Hyper-V Root Configuration • Plan for 1GB+ memory reserve for the management OS in the root partition • Plan for one dedicated NIC for management purposes • Plan (ideally) for one dedicated NIC for live migration • Separate LUNs/Arrays for management OS, guest OS VHDs and VM storage • Management OS and VHD LUNs should employ RAID to provide data protection and performance • Challenge for blades with 2 physical disks • Hyper-V Guest Configuration • Fixed-sized VHDs for Virtual OS • Need to account for page file consumption in addition to OS requirementsOS VHD Size (minimum 15GB) + VM Memory Size = Minimum VHD size • Account for space needed by additional files by VM • Example for SQL: OS VHD Size + (VM Memory Size) + Data Files + Log Files

  9. Dynamic Memory in SP1 • Overview • A memory management enhancement for Hyper-V • Enables customers to dynamically grow and decrease the memory of a VM • Available as a feature in Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 • Benefits • Better consolidation ratios with predictable performance • Enables linear scalability for deployment environments • Designed for production use • Recommendations for use for server applications still being evaluated. • With the SP1 release, we will meet all the Gartner/Burton group requirements for an Enterprise ready Hypervisor

  10. How does it work? • VM memory configuration parameters: • Initial (what VM will boot with) • Maximum (what VM can grow to) • Memory is pooled and dynamically distributed across VMs • Memory is dynamically allocated/removed based VM usage with no service interruption • Guest enlightened: guests & Hyper-V work TOGETHER • Memory is added and removed via synthetic memory driver (memory VSC) support

  11. How is it different? • There is a difference between memory overcommit and overcommitting memory • We warned of the dangers of overcommitting memory • We pressed against the use of overcommit from a marketing perspective • Dynamic Memory allows for predictable, consistent performance even after overcommitting memory • Key is avoid the performance cliff which is possible with the VMware solution • The features VMware has does NOT provide significantly more scale than Hyper-V with DM does (despite what VMware will tell our customers)

  12. How does VMware do it? • Memory Ballooning and Un-ballooning • Set VM memory, reservation, and limit • Will add and remove as necessary, between the reservation and limit • Memory Compression • Page Sharing • Optimized common memory pages • Affected by ASLR and SLAT • Hypervisor Memory Paging • Pages at the Hypervisor when physical memory is completely committed • All these (italicized) are only used after all physical memory is committed, which is not recommended by VMware or Microsoft!

  13. Base HypervisorPerformance

  14. Project Virtual Reality Check • Available at www.virtualrealitycheck.net • Performed by Ruben Spruijt and Jeroen van de Kamp • Not sponsored by any one company, although VMware and Citrix have assisted the site • Results are focused on running and replacing Terminal Server workloads only, on vSphere, Hyper-V, and XenServer • Results are not for redistribution or validation, although they are public • Phase II results from February 2010, with significant increase in vSphere performance

  15. Project VRC Results • Enable EPT/RVI results in a significant increase in capacity of VMs running TS • vSphere – 90% increase • XenServer – 95% increase • Hyper-V – 154% increase • When scaling x86 TS VMs w/o Hyper-threading, vSphere is 5% better than both Xen and Hyper-V • When scaling x86 TS VMs w/ Hyper-threading, Xen and Hyper-V are 15% better than vSphere • When scaling up to 100 TS sessions, response times for all three hypervisors are fairly equal • Beyond 100 sessions, vSphere response times increases with each new session • When scaling x64 TS VMs, Xen and Hyper-V are within 13.6% of bare metal, and are 27% better than vSphere

  16. 2010 ESG Paper • 3rd Party Performance Validation White Paper, sponsored by Microsoft • Key Points • Hyper-V is easy to install to get running for those administrators familiar with Windows • Hyper-V provides high availability with transparent and automatic failover of Virtual Machines (VMs) • Hyper-V Live Migrations provides for zero-downtime migrations of VMs between Hyper-V servers • Most importantly, the report shows Hyper-V performance versus physical is excellent, with 95% to 99% of the performance of physical disks and 89% to 98% of performance of the tested workloads versus physical.

  17. 2010 ESG Paper • All this strongly supports the position that Hyper-V performance is not a bottleneck or blocker to implementation and that customers can run almost all their workloads on Hyper-V • Publically available and you can distribute to your customers/clients • http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/07/microsoft-hyper-v-r2-scalable-native-server-virtualization-for-the-enterprise/ • http://www.infostor.com/index/articles/display/5976242552/articles/infostor/esg-lab-review/2010/july-2010/microsoft-hyper-v.html

  18. Hyper-V Fixed Virtual Hard Disk Performance Overhead Analysis

  19. Hyper-V R2 Application Overhead Analysis

  20. Microsoft/Intel iSCSI Test • Used Windows Server 2008 R2, Intel Xeon 5500 processors, and Intel 10Gbps Ethernet Adapters • Reached over One Million IOPS over a single 10 Gbps Ethernet link using a software iSCSI initiator on Native HW • Reached over 700,000 IOPS over a single 10 Gbps Ethernet link using a software iSCSI initiator on Hyper-V to the Guest OS

  21. Microsoft/Intel iSCSI test • In-Guest VM Performance • Native Performance

  22. Microsoft/Intel iSCSI test • iSCSI Performance can be as good or better than either Fibre Channel or FCoE. iSCSI can offer a compelling offering for those who don’t want to invest in FC. • Windows Server and Hyper-V is not a limiting factor to IO performance. There shouldn’t be any significant concern around IO for virtualizing with Hyper-V. • More details (along with a great Photoshop picture) at http://gestaltit.com/all/tech/storage/stephen/microsoft-and-intel-push-one-million-iscsi-iops/

  23. ESG PerformanceResults

  24. ESG Lab Summary 2011 • Available online: http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/en/us/solution-business-apps.aspx • Useful links, resources, case studies, white papers and webcasts

  25. 2011 ESG Test Lab - Physical SharePoint SQL Server Exchange Utilities HP BL680C up to 24 cores and128 GB RAM per blade SAN 2x4 Gbps FC per server RAID-10 Pools: Data (88): EMC CX4-960 155 15K RPM FC disk drives Logs(16): OS(24): Apps(16): http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/0/9/F09FEDCA-1FEA-4DB4-B131-563145BF0B6F/ESG%20Preso%20Microsoft%20Hyper-V%20Performance%20Exchange%20Mar%2011_Wide.pdf

  26. 2011 ESG Test Lab - Virtual Exchange Exchange Exchange Exchange Application: Exchange 2010 VM configuration: 4 vCPU, 4 GB RAM Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V R2 Hypervisor: Microsoft Hyper-V R2 Physical OS: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 SAN Virtual machine images: Fixed VHD Exchange data and logs: Fixed VHD http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/0/9/F09FEDCA-1FEA-4DB4-B131-563145BF0B6F/ESG%20Preso%20Microsoft%20Hyper-V%20Performance%20Exchange%20Mar%2011_Wide.pdf

  27. Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress 2010 • Scale from 5,000 to 20,000 simulated Exchange mailboxes • 5,000 mailboxes per VM • 250 MB mailboxes • 0.15 IOPs per mailbox • 2 databases/2 copies per VM http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/7/F/17FB551C-0905-4A04-AB46-2EBA616CFDF3/ESG%20Preso%20Microsoft%20Hyper-V%20Performance%20SharePoint%20Mar%2011_Wide.pdf

  28. 2011 Exchange Workload Results http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/0/9/F09FEDCA-1FEA-4DB4-B131-563145BF0B6F/ESG%20Preso%20Microsoft%20Hyper-V%20Performance%20Exchange%20Mar%2011_Wide.pdf

  29. 2011 Exchange Workload Results http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/0/9/F09FEDCA-1FEA-4DB4-B131-563145BF0B6F/ESG%20Preso%20Microsoft%20Hyper-V%20Performance%20Exchange%20Mar%2011_Wide.pdf

  30. Exchange Tested Solutions • Microsoft and participating server and storage vendors • Key design decision points for common scenarios • Cost effective resource planning (server, storage, network) • Device Access Group and multi-site designs for HA • Documented results of exhaustive performance tests • 500 Mailboxes in a Single Site Running Hyper-V on Dell Servers • 9000 Mailboxes in Two Sites Running Hyper-V on Dell M610 Servers, Dell EqualLogic Storage, and F5 Load Balancing Solutions • 15000 Mailboxes in Two Sites Running Hyper-V on Unisys ES7000 Servers and Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage 2000 Family • 16000 Mailboxes in a Single Site Deployed on IBM and Brocade Hardware • 20000 Mailboxes in Two Sites Running Hyper-V on Dell R910 Servers, EMC CLARiiON Storage, and Brocade Network Solutions • 32400 Mailboxes In Three Sites Running Hyper-V on Cisco Unified Compute System Blade Servers and EMC CLARiiON Storage http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/0/9/F09FEDCA-1FEA-4DB4-B131-563145BF0B6F/ESG%20Preso%20Microsoft%20Hyper-V%20Performance%20Exchange%20Mar%2011_Wide.pdf

  31. Exchange Tested Solutions with Hyper-V http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/0/9/F09FEDCA-1FEA-4DB4-B131-563145BF0B6F/ESG%20Preso%20Microsoft%20Hyper-V%20Performance%20Exchange%20Mar%2011_Wide.pdf

  32. Exchange Tested Solutions on Hyper-V http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg513522.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=4D83E5AC-7D9A-47C6-A843-A5520D118FC4 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=6FD7E23F-30C8-4FB7-BCA3-A5DE9AA9A8E4 http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h7337-exchange-unified-cisco-hyper-v-wp.pdf http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/0/9/F09FEDCA-1FEA-4DB4-B131-563145BF0B6F/ESG%20Preso%20Microsoft%20Hyper-V%20Performance%20Exchange%20Mar%2011_Wide.pdf

  33. 2011 Exchange Results Summary • 20,000 simulated Exchange 2010 users on a single server in four Hyper-V R2 VMs with Jetstress • Exchange tested solutions from 9,000 through 32,000 mailboxes • The 32,000 mailbox solution was deployed in 36 Hyper-V R2 VMs over three sites http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/0/9/F09FEDCA-1FEA-4DB4-B131-563145BF0B6F/ESG%20Preso%20Microsoft%20Hyper-V%20Performance%20Exchange%20Mar%2011_Wide.pdf

  34. 2011 Exchange Results Summary • A single Hyper-V R2 enabled server scaled to meet the IO performance requirements of 20,000 Exchange 2010 mailboxes. • Exchange Tested Solutions virtualized with Hyper-V R2 met the scalability and performance requirements of 9,000 through 32,000 highly available Exchange 2010 mailboxes. • The performance, scalability and low overhead of Hyper-V R2 can be used to reduce costs and improve the manageability, flexibility, and availability of consolidated Exchange applications. http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/0/9/F09FEDCA-1FEA-4DB4-B131-563145BF0B6F/ESG%20Preso%20Microsoft%20Hyper-V%20Performance%20Exchange%20Mar%2011_Wide.pdf

  35. Exchange ServerVirtualizationBest Practices

  36. Why Virtualize ExchangeTake advantage of virtualization capabilities to optimize server utilization Host in Datacenter VM 1 Exchange 2010 CAS & HUB File & Print Server Exchange 2010 MBX DC 1 2 Exchange 2010 MBX Database Server DC 2 NLB DAG Exchange 2010 UM Management Server 3 Exchange 2010 CAS & HUB • Consolidate under-utilized servers into a single virtualized hosts • Lower costs by reducing space needs and power consumption • Rapid provisioning of a mobile infrastructure

  37. Updated Support Guidance • Support for virtualized Exchange servers since Exchange Server 2007 SP1 • Exchange 2010 release continued support for virtualization • Expanding support scenarios • Release of Exchange 2010 Virtualization Guidance whitepaper

  38. Support Guidance (continued) • Storage • Fixed sized VHD, SCSI or iSCSI pass-through. • Dynamic or Thin Disks are not supported • Differencing or Delta Disks are not supported • Disk space should be 15GB + VM Memory Size • Other considerations • Only the management software in the parent partition. No other roles should be running. • VM Snapshots are not supported • 2:1 vCPU to physical CPU ratio is supported but 1:1 is best • Current guidance to not use any memory management or oversubscription

  39. Deployment Recommendations • Exchange application is not ‘virtualization aware’ • Core Exchange Design Principles Still Apply • Design for Performance, Reliability and Capacity • Design for Usage Profiles (CAS/MBX) • Design for Message Profiles (Hub/Edge) • Virtualization Design Principles Now Apply • Design for Performance, Reliability and Capacity • Virtual machines should be sized specific to the Exchange role (EDGE, HUB, CAS, MBX, multi-role) • Hosts should be sized to accommodate the guests that they will support

  40. Best Practices: Capacity, Sizing and Performance

  41. Sizing Process Overview • Start with the physical server sizing process • Calculator & TechNet guidance • Account for virtualization overhead • Determine VM placement • Account for VM migration if planned • Size root servers, storage, and network infrastructure

  42. Guest Sizing Rules of Thumb • Size Mailbox role first • CPU ratios for other roles based on Mailbox role sizing • Mailbox role performance is key to user experience • High availability design significantly impacts sizing • Don’t oversubscribe resources • Size based on anticipated peak workload, don’t under provision physical resources • Don’t forget network needs

  43. Guest Sizing for Unified Messaging • Newly supported for virtualization • Requires Exchange 2010 SP1 (or greater) • Role is susceptible to poor voice quality and/or latency if undersized • Requires min. 4 virtual processors • UM must be able to utilize physical processors on demand • Consider network requirements (low latency, sufficient bandwidth) to meet UM needs • Tests show that 4VP/16GB VM can handle 40 concurrent calls with VM Preview and 65 calls without

  44. Root Server Sizing • Root server storage sizing includes space for the OS & required hypervisor components, plus connectivity to storage for guest VMs • Don’t forget about high availability of storage if required (multi-path HBAs or iSCSI NICs, redundant paths, etc.) • Network sizing is critical: number of interfaces and bandwidth • Consider app connectivity, storage networking, heartbeats, CSV, VM migration

  45. Root Server Sizing • CPU sizing should include root needs plus per-guest overhead • Follow hypervisor vendor recommendations • Memory sizing should not assume oversubscription • Follow hypervisor vendor recommendations • Provide memory for root plus sum of running VM requirements • Memory for Hyper-V root = the larger of 512MB or the per-VM value (summed for running VMs) of 32MB for the first 1GB of virtual RAM + 8MB for each additional GB of virtual RAM • Example: 8 VMs running, each with 32GB RAM. Root requires 8 * (32MB + 8MB*31) = 2240MB

  46. Virtual Processors • Scale up CPU on VMs as much as possible • Don’t deploy 4 x 1 vCPU machines vs. 1 x 4 vCPU machine: take advantage of Exchange scalability • Don’t oversubscribe CPUs unless consolidating with P2V, or similar scenario • Generally assume 1 logical CPU == 1 virtual CPU, don’t assume that a hyperthreaded (SMT) CPU counts

  47. Best Practices: Server Deployment

  48. Locating Virtual Machines • VM placement is important for high availability • Don’t co-locate DAG database copies on physical hosts • Exchange unaware of VM location relative to other VMs • No path correction in transport to avoid data loss • Ensure peak workload can run in standard VM locations • OK to move temporarily for maintenance assuming high availability requirements are met and current workload can be serviced

  49. Storage Decisions • Exchange performance and health highly dependent on availability and performance of storage • Many options for presentation of storage to VMs • VHD • FC • iSCSI, FCoE • DAS • Optimize for performance and general design goals • We recommend looking for options that provide large mailboxes and low cost

  50. Storage Decisions • Exchange storage should be on spindles separate from guest OS VHD physical storage • Exchange storage must be fixed VHD, SCSI passthroughor iSCSI • Preference is to use SCSI passthrough to host queues, DBs, and logfile streams • Hyper-V Live Migration suggests Cluster Shared Volumes with fixed VHD (faster “black-out” period) • FC/SCSI HBAs must be configured in Root OS with LUNs presented to VMs as passthrough or VHD • Internet SCSI (iSCSI) • Standard best practices for iSCSI connected storage apply (dedicated NIC, jumbo frames, offload, etc…) • iSCSI initiator in the guest is supported but need to account for reduced performance • Exchange storage must be block-level • Network attached storage (NAS) volumes not supported

More Related