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Posted to user@vcl.apache.org by Hal Stone <ha...@clemson.edu> on 2012/09/28 20:58:20 UTC
General planning question
Hello,
Here at Clemson University we are working with VCL in a sandbox environment with hopes of soon giving students remote access to software that is currently only available in our campus computer labs. Our next step is to build a proposal that contains estimates for equipment and support personnel. So for those of you that have been running VCL in production, would you mind sharing details of the resources supporting it at your schools? For example:
* Server types and configurations
* Storage (SSD, other)
* Network bandwidth (internal to VCL infrastructure)
* People time for systems admin, Image management, other.
One other helpful piece of information is to know how many concurrent connections your environment is built to support, and how does that number compare to your student, faculty, and staff totals (25%, 50% etc)?
Thank you in advance for any information you can provide.
Hal
Hal Stone
Director of IT Service Management
Clemson Computing and Information Technology
Clemson University
340 Computer Court
Anderson SC, 29625
864-656-7132
RE: General planning question
Posted by Hal Stone <ha...@clemson.edu>.
Josh,
This is very helpful. Thank you for your time.
Hal
-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Thompson [mailto:josh_thompson@ncsu.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2012 9:45 AM
To: user@vcl.apache.org
Subject: Re: General planning question
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Hal,
At NCSU, we have IBM BladeCenter hardware (and Intel blades that are basically identical). We have quite a bit of older HS21 models that we mostly use for bare metal loads. Over the last year or so, we've been cycling those out and replacing them with newer blades (HS22) that have 8-12 cores and 96 GB of RAM, and focusing much more on provisioning VMs. We've done a very small amount of testing with a new IBM Flex System, but hope to do more soon. We've been running datastores on NFS mounted storage (NetApp and EMC) with four 1 Gb bonded links to the NetApp and a 10 Gb link to the EMC.
Very recently, we've started looking in to using SAN storage for the datastores. We've also looked at using NFS for the Virtual Disk datastore and iSCSI for the VM Working Directory datastore. The tests we did with SAN storage (10 Gb FCoE) yielded extremely good results.
We were able to load 40 VMs on each of two ESXi hosts (80 total VMs) with a base Windows image in less than 5 minutes. The storage for this was a V7000 with SAS drives.
The NFS/iSCSI combination wasn't as good, but it only had a 1 Gb link for NFS and another 1 Gb link for iSCSI; so, I think we were network bound. We were able to load 30 VMs on a single KVM host with an Ubuntu image in less than 3 minutes. However, 30 base Windows images were closer to 30 minutes. We're hoping to test this with 10 Gb links soon. The storage used for this is an IBM V7000 Unified with SAS and SSD drives with their EasyTier software determining which blocks to place on which drive type.
Given the above, we've found using high speed networking between your VM hosts and storage has a huge impact on the number of VMs you can place on a host.
We have 1 person that works with our hardware (~0.35 FTE), 1 person that does some hardware work and mostly VCL sysadmin work (1 FTE), and
3 people that do VCL sysadmin work and VCL development (3 FTE). We have 2 people that promote and train others on using VCL (guessing < 1 FTE), particularly focusing on training instructors on how to use it in teaching. We have many sysadmins that have rights to manage images.
We haven't actually designed our infrastructure to support some number of people. Here are some peak numbers from our stats over the past year:
* 1722 reservations in a single day
* 662 max concurrent reservations
* 321 max concurrent VM reservations
* peak time of day - 3pm
* ~190,000 reservations over the year
Our install is used most heavily by NCSU, with around 40 other partners using it, only about 5 of which make significant use of it.
Josh
On 09/28/12 14:58, Hal Stone wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Here at Clemson University we are working with VCL in a sandbox
> environment with hopes of soon giving students remote access to
> software that is currently only available in our campus computer labs.
> Our next step is to build a proposal that contains estimates for
> equipment and support personnel. So for those of you that have been
> running VCL in production, would you mind sharing details of the
> resources supporting it at your schools? For example:
>
>
> * Server types and configurations
>
> * Storage (SSD, other)
>
> * Network bandwidth (internal to VCL infrastructure)
>
> * People time for systems admin, Image management, other.
>
> One other helpful piece of information is to know how many concurrent
> connections your environment is built to support, and how does that
> number compare to your student, faculty, and staff totals (25%, 50%
> etc)?
>
> Thank you in advance for any information you can provide.
>
> Hal
>
>
> Hal Stone Director of IT Service Management Clemson Computing and
> Information Technology Clemson University 340 Computer Court Anderson
> SC, 29625 864-656-7132
>
>
- --
- -------------------------------
Josh Thompson
VCL Developer
North Carolina State University
my GPG/PGP key can be found at pgp.mit.edu
All electronic mail messages in connection with State business which are sent to or received by this account are subject to the NC Public Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties.
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Re: General planning question
Posted by Josh Thompson <jo...@ncsu.edu>.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Hal,
At NCSU, we have IBM BladeCenter hardware (and Intel blades that are
basically identical). We have quite a bit of older HS21 models that
we mostly use for bare metal loads. Over the last year or so, we've
been cycling those out and replacing them with newer blades (HS22)
that have 8-12 cores and 96 GB of RAM, and focusing much more on
provisioning VMs. We've done a very small amount of testing with a
new IBM Flex System, but hope to do more soon. We've been running
datastores on NFS mounted storage (NetApp and EMC) with four 1 Gb
bonded links to the NetApp and a 10 Gb link to the EMC.
Very recently, we've started looking in to using SAN storage for the
datastores. We've also looked at using NFS for the Virtual Disk
datastore and iSCSI for the VM Working Directory datastore. The tests
we did with SAN storage (10 Gb FCoE) yielded extremely good results.
We were able to load 40 VMs on each of two ESXi hosts (80 total VMs)
with a base Windows image in less than 5 minutes. The storage for
this was a V7000 with SAS drives.
The NFS/iSCSI combination wasn't as good, but it only had a 1 Gb link
for NFS and another 1 Gb link for iSCSI; so, I think we were network
bound. We were able to load 30 VMs on a single KVM host with an
Ubuntu image in less than 3 minutes. However, 30 base Windows images
were closer to 30 minutes. We're hoping to test this with 10 Gb links
soon. The storage used for this is an IBM V7000 Unified with SAS and
SSD drives with their EasyTier software determining which blocks to
place on which drive type.
Given the above, we've found using high speed networking between your
VM hosts and storage has a huge impact on the number of VMs you can
place on a host.
We have 1 person that works with our hardware (~0.35 FTE), 1 person
that does some hardware work and mostly VCL sysadmin work (1 FTE), and
3 people that do VCL sysadmin work and VCL development (3 FTE). We
have 2 people that promote and train others on using VCL (guessing < 1
FTE), particularly focusing on training instructors on how to use it
in teaching. We have many sysadmins that have rights to manage images.
We haven't actually designed our infrastructure to support some number
of people. Here are some peak numbers from our stats over the past year:
* 1722 reservations in a single day
* 662 max concurrent reservations
* 321 max concurrent VM reservations
* peak time of day - 3pm
* ~190,000 reservations over the year
Our install is used most heavily by NCSU, with around 40 other
partners using it, only about 5 of which make significant use of it.
Josh
On 09/28/12 14:58, Hal Stone wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Here at Clemson University we are working with VCL in a sandbox
> environment with hopes of soon giving students remote access to
> software that is currently only available in our campus computer
> labs. Our next step is to build a proposal that contains estimates
> for equipment and support personnel. So for those of you that have
> been running VCL in production, would you mind sharing details of
> the resources supporting it at your schools? For example:
>
>
> * Server types and configurations
>
> * Storage (SSD, other)
>
> * Network bandwidth (internal to VCL infrastructure)
>
> * People time for systems admin, Image management, other.
>
> One other helpful piece of information is to know how many
> concurrent connections your environment is built to support, and
> how does that number compare to your student, faculty, and staff
> totals (25%, 50% etc)?
>
> Thank you in advance for any information you can provide.
>
> Hal
>
>
> Hal Stone Director of IT Service Management Clemson Computing and
> Information Technology Clemson University 340 Computer Court
> Anderson SC, 29625 864-656-7132
>
>
- --
- -------------------------------
Josh Thompson
VCL Developer
North Carolina State University
my GPG/PGP key can be found at pgp.mit.edu
All electronic mail messages in connection with State business which
are sent to or received by this account are subject to the NC Public
Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties.
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Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (GNU/Linux)
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