Microsoft Virtualization Meets F5

Making Dynamic IT even more dynamic

It's not often that a backend infrastructure technology gets so much attention. But virtualization technology, because of the marked increases in efficiency that it brings about, is one of the hottest topics in IT. Virtualization changes the nature of the data center, resulting in significant reductions in capital costs, maintenance, and energy consumption. But saving money is just the tip of the "value" iceberg that virtualization offers. Most importantly, virtualization enables IT departments to deliver critical business services faster and more reliably than before.

The dynamic data center

Virtualization enables companies to create IT infrastructures that are highly efficient and can automatically adapt to fluctuations in business conditions. "When hardware, operating system, storage, applications, interfaces, and the network are tightly bound together, it makes change very difficult," says Dai Vu, Director of Virtualization Solutions Marketing at Microsoft. "Virtualization creates a level of abstraction between these layers and therefore, improves flexibility and enables a dynamic environment where IT infrastructure can be more closely aligned to the needs of the business."

A leader in virtualization technology, Microsoft offers products that address customers' virtualization needs from the data center to the desktop. With the recent release of Windows Server^® 2008 with Hyper-V^™, and the newest component of Microsoft System Center solutions, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008, Microsoft provides a full suite of technologies for a comprehensive virtualized infrastructure. For the IT manager, the familiar Microsoft interfaces and common management consoles are a huge plus--helping to simplify and ease management of virtual environments that can include thousands of virtual machines running on physical servers.

"Microsoft's vision for virtualization is that of ubiquity. It will become a core technology in everything that we do--similar to a file system for a network stack," says Vu. "With any foundational technology, management capabilities are absolutely critical. Microsoft is working closely with partners such as F5 to enhance the management platform. System Center can leverage rich partner data that can help customers rapidly provision new server capacity or dynamically re-allocate virtual machines' resources to respond to the specific needs of their business."

Never underestimate the network

The data that F5 provides is all about the network, and F5 is partnering with Microsoft to build an intelligent network for virtualization environments so customers can fully realize the benefits of a dynamic and self-sustaining data center. Vu says, "The virtualization platform is more than just the hypervisor that Microsoft provides. It includes network, storage, management, security, and servers. We look to our partners to round out this platform. The network is a critical element of the platform because it enables organizations to virtualize and consume applications differently--across the LAN or WAN--on premise or through the cloud."

For more than a year, the two companies have worked closely to achieve integration between Microsoft System Center solutions and the F5 BIG-IP product line. In March 2007, it was announced that F5 would deliver a new Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 that provides visibility and reporting for F5 devices. F5 will deliver a management solution that will give administrators who use System Center Operations Manager valuable insight into the network, and also enable System Center Operations Manager to proactively and dynamically optimize the network based on the real-time information it receives from F5 devices. This bilateral communication is made possible by F5's iControl application programming interface, which takes advantage of the Windows PowerShell^™ command line shell and scripting language to enable communication between the Microsoft and F5 products.

Monday morning rush hour traffic

To illustrate the role of F5 devices and the integrated management pack for System Center solutions in a virtualized data center, Ryan Korock, Solutions Architect at F5, uses the example of employees accessing an enterprise's Microsoft Office^® SharePoint^® Server 2007 environment.

In a virtualization environment, for better performance and to achieve higher rates of server utilization, an IT department may choose to deploy multiple instances of Office SharePoint Server 2007 as virtual machines on a single physical server. But for optimal performance, traffic to these virtual machines must be load balanced--just as would be required among physical servers. "On a Monday morning," says Korock, "SharePoint may see a huge spike in usage. Bandwidth consumption increases dramatically. Without a load balancing device in place, the network may reach a saturation point, resulting in failed connections, and many unhappy SharePoint users."

Tag-team traffic control

Here's how the integration between F5 devices, such as F5 BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager (LTM), and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, works.

Integration means that System Center Operations Manager--in addition to its inherent ability to pull resource metrics from the SharePoint servers--also simultaneously retrieves network-based information from BIG-IP LTM. These combined capabilities result in automatic detection of the Monday-morning traffic spike so that it can be acted upon before network saturation prevents users from being able to access SharePoint. "This information is used to modify the complete landscape of the virtual data center," says Korock, "to make sure that both server and network resources are appropriately allocated in order to meet the increased demand."

Once System Center Operations Manger determines that an increased load poses a threat to SharePoint availability, System Center Operations Manager alerts Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager that new resources are needed to meet heightened demand. With its ability to provision new hardware, System Center Configuration Manager then installs a complete virtualized instance of Office SharePoint Server 2007 onto an available physical server.

The information relay continues. "Even with the new resources deployed, the work is only half done," says Korock. System Center Operations Manager ensures management continuity by informing System Center Virtual Machine Manager of the newly available SharePoint virtual machines. "Without network awareness, these new SharePoint instances would sit idly by while the original instances still struggle to meet the increased demand," says Korock.

With industry-unique integration, F5 devices enhance System Center Operations Manager's monitoring capabilities to include the network, thereby bridging the gap between the creation of new resources and the successful utilization of them. With the F5 solution, new SharePoint virtual machines are proactively added to the network configuration, and once this is done, users are automatically directed to the newly available resources. "Without any intervention, the user load is spread across the whole server farm, relieving over-saturated servers and ensuring the best possible user experience," adds Korock.

Vu adds, "If you have the ability to measure and track key network-related metrics such as packet loss and network latency, then you will be able to respond accordingly through both the load balancing and core server technologies, adjusting your infrastructure for optimal performance."

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By Anne Landfield, freelance writer based in Seattle.

Photographs by Dennis Wise of Studio 3 Inc.

October 2008

Issue Articles

• Home
• Welcome from John McAdam
• VMware and F5
• Q&A with VMware
• Cover Story: One for the books
• Microsoft Virtualization Meets F5
• Virtual Data Center