Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
system mounts it. Compared to NAS solutions, SANs typically offer better qual-
ity of service (QoS) features and provide more predictable performance. When
designing mobile VEs, you should try both methods to determine which is a better
fit for your computing environment.
Virtualization management software can be used to manually restart alternate
VEs, either on the same system, on a different system in the same site, or on a
different system at a different site. Disaster recovery planning should identify
alternate equipment on which to run the virtualization management software
itself in case of total site failure.
There is some overlap between virtualization management software and high-
availability clustering. Some clustering tools understand virtualization and can
automatically restart a VE on a different node in the cluster—a tactic that can
also apply to geographically separated nodes. There is still room for integration of
clustering tools and other virtualization management tools.
The Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center software product is a full-service data
center management package, whose features provide a good example of a compre-
hensive virtualization management tool. This section describes the features of Ops
Center and explains how they fulfill the needs described earlier in this chapter.
Ops Center manages the life cycle of Sun computer systems and VEs. Its feature
set greatly simplifies life-cycle management of physical systems as well as VEs.
Ops Center has a three-tier architecture to enhance scalability. The three tiers
include a centralized Enterprise Controller (EC), one or more Proxy Controllers
(Proxies), and software agents that run on the assets being managed.
The EC provides a console that can be accessed from standard web browsers.
This browser user interface (BUI) makes it possible to configure remote access to
the EC, though that step is not required. The EC also has a command-line inter-
face (CLI) so that you can script multiple actions into one command.
The EC maintains a central database and data cache, and tracks all manage-
ment activities. It is important to note that the EC does not
perform
these tasks,
but merely manages them and tracks them. When a Proxy needs contents from
the cache, such as an OS image or a software package, it downloads the contents.
If a Proxy will provision the same software onto multiple systems, it needs to
perform only one download, reusing the downloaded copy as needed. This reuse
reduces network traffic.
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