Virtual Servers get rebooted twice

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Posted in Technology, Management on March 27, 2008 at 3:56 pm

For some time now I’ve been working on a server consolidation project in our environment (Virtualisation Update … Web Server). This has been using virtualisation technology which seems to be in vogue at the moment. So, instead of a number of tower based servers we now have just a few HP DL380 64-bit servers running a virtual images which on the whole is working great. Rebooting machines is much quicker, allocating resources is easier, we are getting better value out of our machines and backing up virtual images gives us a sense of security that we could only dream of five years ago. It is also becoming easier to get all the machine images onto the same software release, see Upgrading Windows 2003 Server SP2 to R2.

One problem we have discovered however, especially being a 24 hour operation, is that when certain patches and updates have been installed on a host server it still needs rebooting which now takes down half a dozen servers at a time instead of just the one. The added trouble is that the virtual images receive updates too so now they often get rebooted twice, once for their own update and once for the host update. I imagine a good software and patch update methodology is the answer to this dilemma but it’s still surprising that with all this technology at hand - that a machine still needs to be switched off and on again in order to process an update.

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Comments

Tried Vmware and Vmotion in specific to get around this?… using ESX server you can in fact upgrade the “host” OS, migrate all the “guest” VM’s onto another box hot (ie no downtime), boot the ESX host, move the boxes back, repeat on next host etc.

I’m sure microsoft will have a complete virtulisation solution in time, but the above is why the company I work for uses Vmware currently instead of MS Virtual Server- its ability to move a running VM from host to host makes it invaluable. I believe it can also boot Microsoft Virtual Server images now, so migration shouldn’t be an issue if you wanted to try it.

Comment by Dan Jones - March 27, 2008 @ 4:19 pm

Thanks for the comment Dan, that could prove a handy feature - I will definitely take a look at it.

Jas.

Comment by Jason Slater - April 8, 2008 @ 4:33 pm

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