MacBreak Weekly rant

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Leo Laporte’s TWiT Podcast Network has some really good podcasts including This Week in Tech (TWiT). More recently, the network has launched MacBreak Weekly and (I understand) will soon launch a Windows Podcast hosted by Paul Thurrott. Of course, some of the information is subjective and must be taken with pinch of salt – it can also be very US-centric (this is helped when there are European guests, e.g. Wil Harris from Bit-Tech); however MacBreak Weekly annoyed me greatly as I caught up on a few podcasts over the last couple of days.

  • Whilst discussing the Mac Pro (in episode 3) there was comment about a lot of software not being optimised for multi-processor configurations and the reply came back (and I quote) “you mean that Apple actually built a computer that’s ahead of its time?”. No! I can accept that Apple may well have built a computer that offers more processing power than many users could use; and in Apple’s credit all Macs now have at least two processor cores (except any Core Solo Mac Minis that are still being sold – I think even they have hyperthreading) but both the other major PC operating system platforms (Linux and Windows) have supported multi-processor machines for some time now – if Mac OS X is not able to make full use of the machines then that’s a fault of the operating system designers at Apple and they need to get up to speed – quickly. I’m no developer but the need to rewrite applications to run on an Intel platform instead of the older PowerPC architecture was given as the reason for the distraction preventing writing applications to use the available processing power. That doesn’t stack up to me. I am casting my mind back 15 years now but I seem to remember from the operating systems internals module that made up a part of my degree that it is the task of the operating system scheduler to assign processor time to execution threads – so that’s Mac OS X then, not the applications. Of course if the applications aren’t threaded then there’s not much that the operating system can do about it, but even applications for a single processor should be multithreaded. Shouldn’t they?
  • They then went on to talk about striping four 750GB SATA drives to give 3TB of “super fast storage performance”. Hmm… it sounds very risky to me. SATA drives are okay for PC use but not designed for 24×7 operation; however, regardless of the disk hardware in use, RAID 0 (striping) offers no fault tolerance at all. Zero. Nada. RAID 5 and 6 would work (but are a bit slow for writing) and would reduce the available disk space to about 2.25TB. If the Mac Pro’s RAID controller supports it, the safest solution (whilst remaining performant) would be RAID 1+0 giving 1.5TB of usable space, mirrored across two disks and then striped. RAID 0 might be fast but you’d better hope it’s being backed up somewhere else and 3TB backups are not very easy to manage!
  • In another section, the panel was amused that PC Magazine would cover a story about why 91% of Mac users are satisfied with their product (as Apple tops a user satisfaction survey). Get over it – Mac OS X is just an operating system and Macs are personal computers (they always have been). If that’s a bit literal then Intel Macs are definitely just PCs! Now, if Windows XP Magazine or Linux Format had covered this story then I could understand the amusement, but PC Magazine and Personal Computer World should be covering Linux, Mac OS and Windows stories (in my experience Personal Computer World magazine certainly does) as well as those relating to any other operating systems that run on PC hardware.
  • In one episode the guys were suggesting that there is no reason to buy a PC as a Mac can do it all, making it a better PC than a PC… but hang on guys – previously you were making a distinction between Macs and PCs – you can’t have it both ways! And as much as I love Apple hardware, a black MacBook sounds pretty expensive to me. Even the MacPress has commented that other PC manufacturers have been making black notebook PCs for many years now (and they don’t charge a £90 premium to have it in black). I’d love a MacBook but my IBM ThinkPad is still my favourite (and best built) notebook PC.
  • Another item that riled me was a comment that Macs have 5% of the PC market share but not 5% of the viruses – duh! Hackers, virus writers, and other miscreants like kudos. No-one gets kudos for writing a virus on something obscure, but as the Mac gains a greater market share it will be the target for more malware – especially as the MacPress continues to stress that Windows on a Mac is subject to the same security concerns as Windows on any other PC (true) whilst stressing that running OS X on a Mac is safe (misleading… and unlikely to remain true indefinitely). All PC users should practice safe computing, regardless of the operating system.

In all, MacBreak Weekly disappointed me with a general Mac-elitist view. Sure, I recently switched to using a Mac, but I run other OSs too (I’m writing this on my Fedora notebook). Mac OS X is good at some things, Linux is good at others and, believe it or not, Windows is good at some things too; Windows Vista and Windows Longhorn Server may be running late but Windows Server 2003 is still a great server OS. The trouble is that there are still too many “my OS is better than your OS” discussions.

Still, at least (in episode 5) I learnt about availability heuristics!

Server virtualisation using VMware: two real-life stories

Posted on By Mark Wilson

VMware logo BT logo Nationwide logo
Last week, I attended the VMware Beyond Boundaries event in London – the first of a series of events intended to highlight the benefits that server virtualisation technology has to offer. The day included a number of high-quality presentations; however there were two that had particular meaning because they were given by VMware customers – no marketing fluff, just “this is what we found when we implemented VMware in our organisations”. Those organisations weren’t small either – BT (a leading provider of communications solutions serving customers throughout the world) and Nationwide Building Society (the UK’s largest building society – a members-owned financial services provider with mutual status).

Michael Crader, BT’s Head of Development and Test Infrastructure/Head of Windows Migration talked about the BT datacentre server consolidation and virtualisation strategy. This was a particularly interesting presentation because it showed just how dramatic the savings could be from implementing the technology.

BT’s initial virtualisation project was concerned with test and development facilities and used HP ProLiant DL585 servers with 16-48GB RAM, attached to NetApp primary (24TB) and nearline (32TB) storage with each virtual machine on its own LUN. SnapMirror technology allows backing up a virtual machine in 2-3 seconds, facilitating the removal of two roles whereby two staff were solely responsible for loading tapes (with 96 hour backups of the test infrastructure).

The virtualisation of the test and development facilities was so successful that BT moved on to file and print, and then to production sites, where BT are part way through consolidating 1503 WIntel servers in 5 datacentres to three virtual infrastuctures, aiming for:

  • Clearance of rack space (15:1 server consolidation ratio).
  • Reduction in power/heat requirements.
  • Virtualised servers and storage.
  • Rapid deployment.
  • True capacity on demand.

The supporting hardware is still from HP, using AMD Opteron CPUs but this time BT are using (in each datacentre) 36 HP ProLiant BL45 blade servers for hosting virtual machines, each with 32GB RAM, 3 HP ProLiant DL385 servers for management of the infrastructure (VirtualCenter, Microsoft SQL Server and PlateSpin PowerConvert), 4 fibre channel switches and an HP XP12000 SAN – that’s just 10 racks of equipment per datacentre.

This consolidation will eventually allow BT to:

  • Reduce 375 racks of equipment to 30.
  • Reduce power consumption from approximately 700W per server to around 47W, saving approximately £750,000 a year.
  • Consolidate 4509 network connections (3 per server) to 504.
  • Remove all direct attached storage.

At the time of writing, the project has recovered 419 servers, 792 network ports, 58 racks, used 12TB of SAN storage, saved 250KW of power, 800,000 BTU/hour of heat and removed 75 tonnes of redundant equipment – that’s already massive financial savings, management efficiencies, and that reduction in heat and power is good for the environment too!

Michael Crader also outlined what doesn’t work for virtualisation (on ESX Server 2.5.x):

  • Servers which require more than 4 CPUs
  • Servers with external devices attached
  • Heavily loaded Citrix servers.

His main points for others considering similar projects were that:

  • Providing the infrastructure is in place, migration is straightforward (BT are currently hitting 50-60 migrations per week) with the main activities involving auditing, workload management, downtime and managing customer expectations.
  • The virtual infrastructure is truly providing capacity on demand with the ability to deploy new virtual machines in 11-15 minutes.

In another presentation, Peter West, one of Nationwide Building Society’s Enterprise Architects, outlined Nationwide’s server virtualisation strategy. Like many organisations, Nationwide is suffering from physical server sprawl and increased heat per unit of rackspace. As a major user of Microsoft software, Nationwide had previously begun to use Microsoft Virtual Server; however they moved to VMware ESX Server in order to benefit from the product’s robustness, scalability and manageability – and reduced total cost of ownership (TCO) by 35% in doing so (Virtual Server was cheaper to buy – it’s now free – but it cost more to implement and manage).

Nationwide’s approach to virtualisation is phased; however by 2010 they plan to have virtualised 85-90% of the Intel server estate (production, quality assurance/test, and disaster recovery). Currently, they have 3 farms of 10 servers, connected to EMC Clariion storage and are achieving 17-18:1 server consolidation ratios on 4-way servers with data replication between sites.

Peter West explained that Nationwide’s server consolidation approach is more than just technology – it involves automation, configuration and asset management, capacity on demand and service level management – and a scheme known internally as Automated Lights-out Virtualisation Environment (ALiVE) is being implemented, structured around an number of layers:

  • Policy-based automation
  • Security services
  • Resource management services
  • Infrastructure management services
  • Virtualisation services
  • Platforms
  • IP networks

With ALiVE, Nationwide plans to take 700 development virtual servers, 70 physical development servers, a number of virtual machines on a VMware GSX Server platform and 500 physical machines to VMware Infrastructure 3, addressing issues regarding a lack of standard builds, backup/recovery, limited support, and a lack of SLAs along with a growing demand from development projects, to allow self service provisioning of virtual machines via a portal.

At the risk of sounding like an extension of the VMware marketing department, hopefully, these two examples of real-life virtualisation projects have helped to illustrate some of the advantages of the technology, as well as some of the issues that need to be overcome in server virtualisation projects.