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Posted to user@vcl.apache.org by Michael Jinks <mj...@uchicago.edu> on 2012/10/23 16:38:26 UTC
Balancing load on virtual hosts?
Hi List.
We designed our deployment with the idea that we could use the VM limit
setting in the Virtual Hosts configuration page. Since that setting
doesn't actually do anything, now I wonder, what are other sites doing
in order to manage load on your virtual hosts?
Related to that, any tips on doing load testing to see what our
environment can handle given our expected work load, hardware setup and
so forth? When we thought we could adjust things on the fly with a
slider, I was less concerned about knowing in advance what a single host
can take. Now I realize we'll need to be very careful in advance when
it comes to assigning virtual computers to hosts, so any tips on
planning and testing that would be welcome.
Thanks.
-mrj
--
Michael Jinks :: mjinks@uchicago.edu
University of Chicago IT Services
Re: Balancing load on virtual hosts?
Posted by Aaron Coburn <ac...@amherst.edu>.
We are deploying Windows 7 under our campus license, using a KMS server to activate running instances of Windows.
Aaron
On Oct 23, 2012, at 11:17 AM, Michael Jinks <mj...@uchicago.edu>
wrote:
> Hi Aaron.
>
> We chose not to use vSphere mainly because of licensing restrictions on
> the Windows versions we'd be allowed to deploy. At least according to
> our license agreements, we can't use vSphere and a "desktop" class
> version of Windows. If we want to deploy Windows 7, we have to do it on
> ESXi or another "standalone" virtualization platform.
>
> Does that mesh with your experience? Are you deploying Windows 7 in
> your environment?
>
> Thanks,
> -mrj
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 03:08:15PM +0000, Aaron Coburn wrote:
>> Michael,
>>
>> we are using a vCenter cluster for our VMware hosts. In this way, the
>> vcl knows only about a single VM host, when actually there are several
>> ESX servers behind the scenes. VMware then manages all of the resource
>> and load balancing -- the VCL isn't really designed to manage this.
>> This means that when one server is consuming too much CPU or memory,
>> then the VM is "vMotioned" to another physical host.
>>
>> The downside of this is that it requires the more expensive
>> (Enterprise) VMware license; also, depending on how you manage your
>> datastore disk extents, you may run into VMware's 2TB disk limits
>> (unless you are already using vSphere 5) -- note that you will need to
>> use shared SAN storage across all of your ESX hosts in order to enable
>> VMware's Distributed Resource Scheduler (that is what manages the load
>> balancing).
>>
>> Aaron Coburn
>>
>> --
>> Aaron Coburn
>> Systems Administrator and Programmer
>> Academic Technology Services, Amherst College
>> [1]acoburn@amherst.edu
>> On Oct 23, 2012, at 10:38 AM, Michael Jinks <[2...@uchicago.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi List.
>> We designed our deployment with the idea that we could use the VM
>> limit
>> setting in the Virtual Hosts configuration page. Since that setting
>> doesn't actually do anything, now I wonder, what are other sites
>> doing
>> in order to manage load on your virtual hosts?
>> Related to that, any tips on doing load testing to see what our
>> environment can handle given our expected work load, hardware setup
>> and
>> so forth? When we thought we could adjust things on the fly with a
>> slider, I was less concerned about knowing in advance what a single
>> host
>> can take. Now I realize we'll need to be very careful in advance
>> when
>> it comes to assigning virtual computers to hosts, so any tips on
>> planning and testing that would be welcome.
>> Thanks.
>> -mrj
>> --
>> Michael Jinks :: [3]mjinks@uchicago.edu
>> University of Chicago IT Services
>>
>> References
>>
>> 1. mailto:acoburn@amherst.edu
>> 2. mailto:mjinks@uchicago.edu
>> 3. mailto:mjinks@uchicago.edu
>
> --
> Michael Jinks :: mjinks@uchicago.edu :: 773-469-9688
> University of Chicago IT Services
Re: Balancing load on virtual hosts?
Posted by Michael Jinks <mj...@uchicago.edu>.
Hi Aaron.
We chose not to use vSphere mainly because of licensing restrictions on
the Windows versions we'd be allowed to deploy. At least according to
our license agreements, we can't use vSphere and a "desktop" class
version of Windows. If we want to deploy Windows 7, we have to do it on
ESXi or another "standalone" virtualization platform.
Does that mesh with your experience? Are you deploying Windows 7 in
your environment?
Thanks,
-mrj
On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 03:08:15PM +0000, Aaron Coburn wrote:
> Michael,
>
> we are using a vCenter cluster for our VMware hosts. In this way, the
> vcl knows only about a single VM host, when actually there are several
> ESX servers behind the scenes. VMware then manages all of the resource
> and load balancing -- the VCL isn't really designed to manage this.
> This means that when one server is consuming too much CPU or memory,
> then the VM is "vMotioned" to another physical host.
>
> The downside of this is that it requires the more expensive
> (Enterprise) VMware license; also, depending on how you manage your
> datastore disk extents, you may run into VMware's 2TB disk limits
> (unless you are already using vSphere 5) -- note that you will need to
> use shared SAN storage across all of your ESX hosts in order to enable
> VMware's Distributed Resource Scheduler (that is what manages the load
> balancing).
>
> Aaron Coburn
>
> --
> Aaron Coburn
> Systems Administrator and Programmer
> Academic Technology Services, Amherst College
> [1]acoburn@amherst.edu
> On Oct 23, 2012, at 10:38 AM, Michael Jinks <[2...@uchicago.edu>
> wrote:
>
> Hi List.
> We designed our deployment with the idea that we could use the VM
> limit
> setting in the Virtual Hosts configuration page. Since that setting
> doesn't actually do anything, now I wonder, what are other sites
> doing
> in order to manage load on your virtual hosts?
> Related to that, any tips on doing load testing to see what our
> environment can handle given our expected work load, hardware setup
> and
> so forth? When we thought we could adjust things on the fly with a
> slider, I was less concerned about knowing in advance what a single
> host
> can take. Now I realize we'll need to be very careful in advance
> when
> it comes to assigning virtual computers to hosts, so any tips on
> planning and testing that would be welcome.
> Thanks.
> -mrj
> --
> Michael Jinks :: [3]mjinks@uchicago.edu
> University of Chicago IT Services
>
> References
>
> 1. mailto:acoburn@amherst.edu
> 2. mailto:mjinks@uchicago.edu
> 3. mailto:mjinks@uchicago.edu
--
Michael Jinks :: mjinks@uchicago.edu :: 773-469-9688
University of Chicago IT Services
Re: Balancing load on virtual hosts?
Posted by Aaron Coburn <ac...@amherst.edu>.
Michael,
we are using a vCenter cluster for our VMware hosts. In this way, the vcl knows only about a single VM host, when actually there are several ESX servers behind the scenes. VMware then manages all of the resource and load balancing -- the VCL isn't really designed to manage this. This means that when one server is consuming too much CPU or memory, then the VM is "vMotioned" to another physical host.
The downside of this is that it requires the more expensive (Enterprise) VMware license; also, depending on how you manage your datastore disk extents, you may run into VMware's 2TB disk limits (unless you are already using vSphere 5) -- note that you will need to use shared SAN storage across all of your ESX hosts in order to enable VMware's Distributed Resource Scheduler (that is what manages the load balancing).
Aaron Coburn
--
Aaron Coburn
Systems Administrator and Programmer
Academic Technology Services, Amherst College
acoburn@amherst.edu<ma...@amherst.edu>
On Oct 23, 2012, at 10:38 AM, Michael Jinks <mj...@uchicago.edu>> wrote:
Hi List.
We designed our deployment with the idea that we could use the VM limit
setting in the Virtual Hosts configuration page. Since that setting
doesn't actually do anything, now I wonder, what are other sites doing
in order to manage load on your virtual hosts?
Related to that, any tips on doing load testing to see what our
environment can handle given our expected work load, hardware setup and
so forth? When we thought we could adjust things on the fly with a
slider, I was less concerned about knowing in advance what a single host
can take. Now I realize we'll need to be very careful in advance when
it comes to assigning virtual computers to hosts, so any tips on
planning and testing that would be welcome.
Thanks.
-mrj
--
Michael Jinks :: mjinks@uchicago.edu<ma...@uchicago.edu>
University of Chicago IT Services
Re: Balancing load on virtual hosts?
Posted by Michael Jinks <mj...@uchicago.edu>.
On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 01:48:42PM -0500, Michael Jinks wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 02:09:57PM -0400, Josh Thompson wrote:
> >
> > So, you were thinking you'd be able to assign all of your VMs to all of your
> > VM hosts, and VCL would control on which host a VM would be deployed?
>
> No; I was thinking we could assign say, X computer definitions to a VM
> host, and set a limit Y, where Y <= X, and vary Y according to
> performance needs, perceived responsiveness of VM's, changes in per-VM
> resource allocations, or whatever.
...so that, regardless of how many VM definitions are associated with a
given host, only Y instances will run at a given time. Changing that
limit value looked a lot easier than removing and adding VM definitions.
--
Michael Jinks :: mjinks@uchicago.edu
University of Chicago IT Services
Re: Balancing load on virtual hosts?
Posted by Michael Jinks <mj...@uchicago.edu>.
On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 02:09:57PM -0400, Josh Thompson wrote:
>
> So, you were thinking you'd be able to assign all of your VMs to all of your
> VM hosts, and VCL would control on which host a VM would be deployed?
No; I was thinking we could assign say, X computer definitions to a VM
host, and set a limit Y, where Y <= X, and vary Y according to
performance needs, perceived responsiveness of VM's, changes in per-VM
resource allocations, or whatever.
--
Michael Jinks :: mjinks@uchicago.edu
University of Chicago IT Services
Re: Balancing load on virtual hosts?
Posted by Josh Thompson <jo...@ncsu.edu>.
On Tuesday, October 23, 2012 10:14:43 AM Michael Jinks wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 10:51:51AM -0400, Josh Thompson wrote:
> > Michael,
> >
> > Can you explain the behavior you were expecting a little better? From
> > what
> > you've said, I thought you wanted the ability to easily change how many
> > VMs
> > VCL will spin up on a given host. Rather than using the VM Limit field,
> > you can assign/unassign VMs to/from a host to change how many are on it.
> > So, given that, I'm guessing there was something more you were looking
> > for.
> That's the obvious alternative, yeah...
>
> I'll leave out the "why" for now, but what I had hoped was that we could
> define all our VM's, assign them across our vhosts, and then use the
> limit as a sort of flexible governor to raise and lower the number of
> vm's that can actually boot at any given time, independent of what'd
> defined or assigned.
So, you were thinking you'd be able to assign all of your VMs to all of your
VM hosts, and VCL would control on which host a VM would be deployed?
Josh
--
-------------------------------
Josh Thompson
Systems Programmer
Advanced Computing | VCL Developer
North Carolina State University
Josh_Thompson@ncsu.edu
919-515-5323
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.
Re: Balancing load on virtual hosts?
Posted by Michael Jinks <mj...@uchicago.edu>.
On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 10:51:51AM -0400, Josh Thompson wrote:
> Michael,
>
> Can you explain the behavior you were expecting a little better? From what
> you've said, I thought you wanted the ability to easily change how many VMs
> VCL will spin up on a given host. Rather than using the VM Limit field, you
> can assign/unassign VMs to/from a host to change how many are on it. So,
> given that, I'm guessing there was something more you were looking for.
That's the obvious alternative, yeah...
I'll leave out the "why" for now, but what I had hoped was that we could
define all our VM's, assign them across our vhosts, and then use the
limit as a sort of flexible governor to raise and lower the number of
vm's that can actually boot at any given time, independent of what'd
defined or assigned.
--
Michael Jinks :: mjinks@uchicago.edu
University of Chicago IT Services
Re: Balancing load on virtual hosts?
Posted by Josh Thompson <jo...@ncsu.edu>.
Michael,
Can you explain the behavior you were expecting a little better? From what
you've said, I thought you wanted the ability to easily change how many VMs
VCL will spin up on a given host. Rather than using the VM Limit field, you
can assign/unassign VMs to/from a host to change how many are on it. So,
given that, I'm guessing there was something more you were looking for.
Thanks,
Josh
On Tuesday, October 23, 2012 9:38:26 AM Michael Jinks wrote:
> Hi List.
>
> We designed our deployment with the idea that we could use the VM limit
> setting in the Virtual Hosts configuration page. Since that setting
> doesn't actually do anything, now I wonder, what are other sites doing
> in order to manage load on your virtual hosts?
>
> Related to that, any tips on doing load testing to see what our
> environment can handle given our expected work load, hardware setup and
> so forth? When we thought we could adjust things on the fly with a
> slider, I was less concerned about knowing in advance what a single host
> can take. Now I realize we'll need to be very careful in advance when
> it comes to assigning virtual computers to hosts, so any tips on
> planning and testing that would be welcome.
>
> Thanks.
>
> -mrj
--
-------------------------------
Josh Thompson
Systems Programmer
Advanced Computing | VCL Developer
North Carolina State University
Josh_Thompson@ncsu.edu
919-515-5323
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.