Virtualization, Cloud, Infrastructure and all that stuff in-between

This is the outline of a number of posts on building a {relatively} low-cost accurate test lab of your production systems using P2V, VMWare, ESX, custom scripted HP voodoo, HP MSA1500 SAN, Virtual Switch Tagging (VST), Checkpoint on Sun Firewalls and Cisco switches. in order to clone a complicated multi-tier Windows based production platform with lots of DMZ segments into a VMWare farm for use as a test/dev & development environment (and possibly a DR one too in future)

This is all based on some of my recent work with customers* and I hope will help someone else to navigate the pitfalls (both business and technological) I & my team encountered in delivering this idea.

The following is a list of titles or sections and will hopefully serve as an index, but please, don’t expect them all at once I do have a day job to do! 😉

Why do this?

The traditional approach to test labs & why I think it’s wrong

Pro’s

Con’s

Isn’t this all a bit too complicated/mad-scientist/far out?

Reload lab from production process – how often?

is change control important?

What do you want a test lab to do?

Scoping/Expectation Setting

Load Testing – is VMWare right for this

Dynamic/Grid based approach to load testing

Break/Fix analysis

Release Testing

Options for disaster recovery/production failover

What won’t it do?

Storage Design

“Big” SAN’s are always better if you have them, but what if you don’t?

HP MSA 1500 – it’s not big, but it’s clever

Disk/SAN bandwidth – my practical experiences

Server Design

ESX Node specification

The RAM per VM debate

Networking Design

VLAN tagging

VST vs. Guest Tagging etc.

Firewalls

Clone to test lab Process

P2V Tools – VMWare Convertor vs. the rest

Changing IP addresses

HP uninstall Scripts

Build-Out Steps

Build ESX environment

Scripted VMWare installations – automatically create custom Virtual NIC’s/LANs

Adjust install paths for SAN storage

Set administrator password/create accounts

Install Networking

Configure VLAN’ing

IP Load Balancing

Install Firewall(s)

Test Communications between virtual DMZ segments and across hosts

Import Production machines

VMWare Convertor

General issues found

P2V Windows 2003 Domain Controllers – Special Notes

P2V’ing entire Windows Cluster’s – not that easy but do-able

P2V Process over a WAN – issues found & workaround.

Fresh VM 1st boot, changing IP address etc.

HP tools removal

Some further problems caused by changing IP addressing.

Into the Future

Can you use this for disaster recovery?

VMWare Lab Manager

Total Automation – Platespin products?

*This article has been deliberately made anonymous & I’m afraid I can’t disclose the name of the customer or provide any further reference materials without a commercial engagement via my employer, you can contact me for more details on this via this blog.

This article & information contained within is provided entirely without warranty.

Technorati Tags: VMWare , ESX , HP , MSA1500 , Test Lab , P2V , production , clone , Sun , Checkpoint firewall , VLAN tagging , VST