Who is running Altiris on VMWare ESX?

Mike · 09-27-2007, 09:45 AM

Officially, Altiris has approached the concept of using virtual computing for the Altiris server with much caution. The official statement on running your Altiris server on VMWare is:

Quote:

Originally Posted by kb35990

Question

Does Altiris officially support VMWare 3.0.1 and with what operating system platforms?

Answer

VMWare 3.x is supported as a platform for running Notification Server; however, it is should be made very clear that there are often performance issues. Careful consideration should be taken before considering this as an option.

Regarding operating system support, this is independent of VMWare and is whatever the version of Notification Server you wish to install will support.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kb2133

....Since a VMware virtual machine session shares hardware resources with its host server, customers should expect a noticeable decrease in Notification Server, Deployment Server, Recovery Server, and SQL Server performance when hosting them in a virtual machine session. Customers should expect anywhere from a 10% to 50% decrease in performance (depending on hardware and VMware platform/configuration) when compared to an identical server running NS, DS, RS, and SQL "natively".....

There are many attractive benefits to virtualizing the data center and it's becoming increasingly popular to do so. Most of our customers would not consider virtualizing SQL as the reduction in I/O capacity that will inevitibly occur in a virtual environment is not desirable, but what about leaving SQL "Hosted" and virtualing the NS server?

Are any of you virtualizing any aspects of your Altiris infrastructure?

Which components of the infrastructure have you virtualized?

Which solutions are you running?

How many nodes are you managing?

What has been your experience?

Thank you for your time:

n_aaron · 09-27-2007, 10:48 AM

Are any of you virtualizing any aspects of your Altiris infrastructure?

Yes.

Which components of the infrastructure have you virtualized?

Deployment only at this time.

Which solutions are you running?

DS 6.8.378 sp 2

How many nodes are you managing?

~12,000 over 4 DS.

What has been your experience?

Current job: We're migrating DS to VM now to lessen the load on existing servers running SQL/NS/DS on one box. So far, the DS on VM have been stable.

Last job: Ran 7 DS for ~16,000 nodes. 2 were on VM, and they were perfectly fine. Had zero performance issues. SQL backend was on a dedicated physical server.

Some of my coworkers want to put NS on VM as well, but I don't like that plan. For what DS does, VM works well; but NS is flakey enough as it is without adding another layer of complication to the setup. We'll see, though.

skakid · 09-27-2007, 11:01 AM

I'm planning on doing it, but the main reason is because there's no clustering available in either server product naitively and we're relying so heavily on it now that I can't afford much down time at all

TRYDL · 09-27-2007, 01:04 PM

I'll just pick from one example

Are any of you virtualizing any aspects of your Altiris infrastructure?

Sure

Which components of the infrastructure have you virtualized?

CMSL3 and AMSL2 (SQL 2005 was also placed in a VM)

They sat in a 2 node ESX cluster that did DRS and VM.

How many nodes are you managing?

This one, approx 3,500

What has been your experience? No issues at all really with the appropriate resource pooling setup in VC for ESX.

Imaging and the PXE boxes were all virtualized. RS servers were also virtualized. The most important aspects were staggered schedules and inventory scans during off hours, this includes back ups.

Mike · 09-28-2007, 12:34 PM

Thanks Tyrdl. This is helpful information.

Brandon · 09-28-2007, 12:40 PM

We are working on setting up ESX now. Our plan is to have CMS Lvl1 1500 clients on the VM and to keep SQL 2005 seperate. We do not want to virtual any databases. Other's experiences will be helpful to note.

drinking12many · 09-28-2007, 02:08 PM

only thing we have virtual is one package server... rest all physical.

dbush · 09-28-2007, 02:10 PM

Excellent question Mike. My 2 cents... I've worked with Altiris in a few virtualized (ESX) environments and to be truthful I have yet to see NS virtualized that performs equal to a real box. if I remember correctly these were primarily medium environments (1,500 - 5,000) using CMS III, Helpdesk or the mix. There is always some degradation and I would tend to agree with the statement that it will be 10%+. DS on the other hand makes a lot more sense to virtualize and I've encouraged it at least once before.

If you must go virtual (like skakid mentioned), I'd say it's more important to pay attention to all the little details like resource assignment, network connectivity to SQL, etc. than you would normally. A minor setting can create a bottleneck.

It seems like I may have seen a doc with some tips for virtual and if I can find it I'll put it up.

David

Mike · 09-30-2007, 01:55 PM

Great thanks, Dave. Your comments are in step with what I've heard from the Altiris PS team as well. For large installations (I'm looking at around 18000 nodes on this one), it's generally considered to not be a good idea based on those that I've talked to about this.

I also appreciate Trydl's comments about properly configuring resource pooling.

Tyrdl, are you running one SQL server with 2 instances or two SQL servers for CMS L3 and AMS L2?

bennice · 10-11-2007, 05:17 PM

Looks like I'm a bit late to the party, but I'll still throw my $.02 in.

Are any of you virtualizing any aspects of your Altiris infrastructure?

Yes

Which components of the infrastructure have you virtualized?

Package servers, most of the test environment

Which solutions are you running?

SMS, CMS, AMS, DS

How many nodes are you managing?

Around 3000 total

What has been your experience?

Works great for package servers. Probably wouldn't virtualize production NS's at this point for performance reasons.

kschroeder · 10-20-2007, 11:10 AM

We have multiple test/dev NSes running in VM, and have a project on the table to break up our Recovery solution environment (currently 2 4x2 6850's with ~3000 and ~2200 users) into multiple, smaller RS boxes so we can improve the turn-around on SSM jobs (they run for days or weeks currently). Our admin in Asia-Pacific P2V'd his old NS into a 2 vCPU VM and he says he hasn't noticed any issues (and some people said it seems faster than before). This box only has about 1000 clients on it though, running most of CMS1 solutions.

Mike · 10-23-2007, 08:17 PM

Thanks to everyone who has replied to this. I can see that by this sampling, nearly half of you are currently using a Virtual computing platform or are planning to. This is very enlightening.

Thanks again,

-Mike

skakid · 10-24-2007, 08:17 AM

I'd add this addendum to my post Mike. With some of the new NS 7 features my co-worker brought back from ManageFusion in Orlando I don't think I'll be using it for production. NS seems to be moving in a direction to meet my needs.

Deployment Server is still probably going to be virtualized unless similar redundancy changes are made for a new version of DS.

mack_jason · 10-24-2007, 11:30 AM

We are planning on running our Altiris servers in Vmware as a disaster recovery solution. We will be using the VMware converter to convert our physical machines to vm then using a secondary physical server for our SQL backup (per many posts about SQL in VM). I’m currently running a Deployment Server in VMware using the free VMWare Server and it seems to be running fine as long as I shutdown the server every night and defragment the hard drives.

If anyone is running their servers in VMware Server how are you dealing with the defragmentation of the virtual disks? I understand once we move to ESX that we no longer have to worry about fragmentation of the host servers but the virtual disks with in the deployment server will need to be defragmented. What software are you using to defragment the virtual disks? I have been looking at getting a copy of Diskkeeper but wanted some suggestions.

gabelopezjr · 11-02-2007, 11:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mack_jason

We are planning on running our Altiris servers in Vmware as a disaster recovery solution. We will be using the VMware converter to convert our physical machines to vm then using a secondary physical server for our SQL backup (per many posts about SQL in VM). I’m currently running a Deployment Server in VMware using the free VMWare Server and it seems to be running fine as long as I shutdown the server every night and defragment the hard drives.

If anyone is running their servers in VMware Server how are you dealing with the defragmentation of the virtual disks? I understand once we move to ESX that we no longer have to worry about fragmentation of the host servers but the virtual disks with in the deployment server will need to be defragmented. What software are you using to defragment the virtual disks? I have been looking at getting a copy of Diskkeeper but wanted some suggestions.

We currently have our production SQL DB replicated to an offsite SQL cluster. In the event of a disaster we can use the VM at the offsite location once we reactivate NS processing.

Edit:
We can easily add a DNS alias to redirect the clients to the VW at the offsite location so no changes are needed to the local client Agents.

dfrancis · 11-21-2007, 10:16 AM

We're trying to consolidate physical servers in our environment. With only 400 clients with CMS level 1 and AMS level 2 and the SQL database on a dedicated physical server, this seems like a logical candidate for virtualization.

dmb_wheee · 11-29-2007, 09:04 PM

We had our initial deployment of Altiris where NS/Helpdesk were running on 1 VM connected remotely to a SQL Cluster (2 HP DL360's /w 12 SATA disk RAID5).

The performance is horrendous! Even after giving max resources to the VM and tweaking SQL all to kingdom come, we came to the conclusion that NS just does not run well in a VM environment.

We are currently rebuilding this environment and will be splitting both NS and Helpdesk on their own hardware. Plus, it had been recommended to us, by some local consultants, to keep SQL on the same box as NS. Although, I am still not convinced this is the best way to go, that is what we are doing.

Yay altiris and virtualization?!?!

gabelopezjr · 11-29-2007, 10:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dmb_wheee

We had our initial deployment of Altiris where NS/Helpdesk were running on 1 VM connected remotely to a SQL Cluster (2 HP DL360's /w 12 SATA disk RAID5).

The performance is horrendous! Even after giving max resources to the VM and tweaking SQL all to kingdom come, we came to the conclusion that NS just does not run well in a VM environment.

We are currently rebuilding this environment and will be splitting both NS and Helpdesk on their own hardware. Plus, it had been recommended to us, by some local consultants, to keep SQL on the same box as NS. Although, I am still not convinced this is the best way to go, that is what we are doing.

Yay altiris and virtualization?!?!

Split up the Helpdesk module from the other NS functions. I do not advocate running Altiris Helpdesk on VM. The notification server by itself should work fine. How many clients do you have reporting to the NS? The SQL cluster is the best way to go on this as long as you have enough physical memory on each cluster node. I hear that SQL 2005 has better performance that SQL 2000 but i can't confirm that. Also I know it might not be an option but if your SQL database is on SAN storage that will add some performance also. SQL is more heavily reliant on memory and disk IO than processors.

dmb_wheee · 11-30-2007, 01:52 AM

The interesting thing is that the Helpdesk module performs great! It is the NS Admin console that is extremely slow. It takes about 10 to 15 seconds to load the webparts on a page. But once they load data is queried rather quickly. Which is another reason why I do not believe the issue is with our SQL environment. Click on reports and they generate fast. It is simply the web parts taking for ever to load.

Our current SQL environment is fiber connected to a MSA1500 SAN. It is running SQL 2005. The only CONS I do see with it is:

1.) The OS is running 32bit
2.) The 12 disks are SATA not SCSI

But, again, I feel SQL performs well, it is something on the NS server loading web parts for the clients.

fschiavone · 01-30-2008, 03:37 PM

I am currently running my DEV Altiris servers (NS & DS) on VMWare ESX. No issues so far with regards to running them, functionality, etc. We are aware of the performance issues but I am managing only a few servers. This DEV farm is so we can test new solutions such as recovery, app metering or job deployment in DS.

pebcak · 02-21-2008, 10:12 AM

Hello All,

I am currently working on migrating a test lab to ESX. Have a 3-way Dell 1750 ESX cluster with HA and DRS enabled. P2Ving my existing Physical NS and DS. Will leave SQL2005 on a physical.

Will have 4 VMs:

Client NS
Client DS
Server NS
Server DS

Server DS will do PXE and imaging. Have approx 30 servers both physical and virtual that will talk into the server space. Clients will bounce all over the place as testing goes on.

More info to follow.

rossy416 · 02-10-2009, 10:22 AM

I'm planning to run DS and NS servers on VMware ESX, mainly for the resilience and agility benefits.

My storage engineer is asking for data IOPS figures for both systems. I've not seen any good information for data throughput for either system, which of course becomes more complex when we include the hypervisor.

IOPS figures for running on physcial would also be useful.

Any clues?

MikeCusick · 02-11-2009, 11:49 AM

We are running NS on ESX based servers, our local Package Server is located on a VM server and our remote Package Server is located on a physical server.

That being said, our SQL Server is running on a shared SQL database.

This setup works pretty well, but performance at times, especially when the DB is hammered by other processes, becomes very painful for more than a few people to be in.

chris.crowell · 02-11-2009, 01:56 PM

We are running ESX 3.5 and haven't had any performance issues. The host has SAS drives in RAID5. We have 1400 clients and 100 servers reporting to our NS running TMS. We have a separate DS VM and a shared SQL2005 VM. We don't track any of our VM hosts or guests in Altiris. All of our PXE/package servers are physicals. Don't load carbon copy on a VM unless you like BSODs.

edwardelawrence · 04-09-2009, 11:27 AM

If you do have NS in a virtual environment, what is the common resource configuration you are using to make it perform successfully?