Click to add text May 2012Taking advantage of Virtualisation1 TWA : Taking Advantage of Virtualisation on IBM Platforms TWS Education

2May 2012Taking advantage of Virtualisation2 Agenda Definitions Base Support Advanced scenarios Conclusions

3May 2012Taking advantage of Virtualisation3 Virtualisation vs Cloud Virtualisation is a technology acting at the level of a machine (intended as OS) Cloud is a set of methods and technologies that impacts the whole DataCenter (IT, Business, Organisation) Cloud relies heavily on Virtualisation Impossible to draw a precise line when passing from one to the other

4May 2012Taking advantage of Virtualisation4 Support for Virtualised platforms - Scenario Obtain regular support through the whole chain  Sometimes includes equivalence clauses: Problems are supported unless they cannot be reproduced outside the virtualised platform, etc. Precise instruction for installation or additional tech notes Obtain base capacity data

5May 2012Taking advantage of Virtualisation5 Support for Virtualised platforms – State of the art A documentation wiki page gives all up-to-date details here.here Some platforms are the object of legal discussion might include conditions for support. Commonly used hypervisor are also used inside IBM and have very good knowledge base. TWS is not a picky product to the hypervisor  Rare cases of virtualisation-specific failures  Exceptions in the installation (for inst. Solaris Zones)

6May 2012Taking advantage of Virtualisation6 So you are virtualised! What more? Several direction can be taken Use virtualisation for High Availability (software) Use virtualisation to sustain Business SLAs Use virtualisation to accelerate provisioning and deprovisioning action Use virtualisation for Disaster Recovery

7May 2012Taking advantage of Virtualisation7 Virtualisation for HA TWS Blueprint suggests to cover  central network parts (MDM, BMDM, Broker server) with hard HA.  Agent parts (dynamic agents) with soft HA Avoid any confusion!  Virtualisation manipulates only machines, and performs HA at such level  TWS manipulates workloads and performs HA by rerouting  Be very careful when you want to implement both Key difference is the policy engine  Who decides the pieces that have to move Explored policy engines  Tivoli System Automation Multi-Platform  HACMP (AIX)  Microsoft Cluster Administrator (Windows)

8May 2012Taking advantage of Virtualisation8 Virtualisation for HA Soft HA has been described in previous ASAP  2011, W403 High Availability on Windows Cluster through Dynamic Load Rerouting Soft HA with System Automation Multi-Platform has been covered in a redbook.redbook  Most advanced policies to switch loads according to multiple criteria. Explanations for HACMP is in the TWS documentation

9May 2012Taking advantage of Virtualisation9 Virtualisation to sustain Business SLAs In the general idea, the flexibility of virtualisation is put to serve SLAs by providing pools of nodes, on which computation can be accelerated.  Bigger pool = quicker result  Needs an application capable of exploiting multiple nodes  Take advantage of Workload Service Assurance Avoid any confusion with provisioning actions  Serving the SLA through Workload Service Assurance is very quick  Acts as an optimisation and “shock absorbing” mechanism  Collaborates with provisioning actions Small pool Big pool 1h 2h

10May 2012Taking advantage of Virtualisation10 Virtualisation to accelerate provisioning The environment is undergoing constant change  Requires applications that exploit the scaling of nodes  Requires Template Library Typical Cloud scenario  Supported by IBM products like IBM Service Delivery Manager, or IBM SmartCloud Provisioning  Also possible on raw VMWare stack, but more complicated  Differences: rights, image handling, pre- installed and pre-configured TWS agent Deprovision is always harder  Pools help defining persistent vs non- persistent data  TWS workflows should always include cleaning the local node from any important information Templates Llibray Linux Servers pool Accounts DB Reporting App Enterprise Scheduler Create VM Templates Define time-windows reqs Define QoS/SLAs IT Administrator Database Cloud Mgmt Platform (TSAM) Provision environment Monitor environment Elastic scale Deprovision TWA Administrator Model, schedule, monitor and manage WA jobs Configure Scheduler

11May 2012Taking advantage of Virtualisation11 Virtualisation for Disaster Recovery Idea: capability to recreate a production environment from a template in rapid times  Requires a higher level of environment description  Requires a joint description of environments and workloads Big savings can potentially be realised

12May 2012Taking advantage of Virtualisation12 So, what’s the take out? Applications are a big gating factor  What is supported, how flexible are they Enterprise introduction should follow Business and Application interest Observed interest is prioritised like  High Availability > Optimisation > Provisioning It’s a constructive roadmap  Early steps support later steps  Deployment can climb the layers from virtualisation to cloud. Dashboards and Global reports Self Service Portals SmartCloud Foundation stack Individual Applications Infrastructure pieces (storage, network)