METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR EVALUATING VIRTUALIZED ENVIRONMENTS

• US 20090070771A1
• Filed: 08/29/2008
• Published: 03/12/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 08/31/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Cirba, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Cirba, Inc.
• Inventors: Hillier, Andrew Derek, Yuyitung, Tom Silangan
• Granted Patent: US 8,209,687 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/105
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06 Resources, workflows, human or project management; Enterprise or organisation planning; Enterprise or organisation modelling

Abstract

A system and method are provided for incorporating compatibility analytics and virtualization rule sets into a transformational physical to virtual (P2V) analysis for designing a virtual environment from an existing physical environment and for ongoing management of the virtual environment to refine the virtualization design to accommodate changing requirements and a changing environment.

Claims

1. A method for designing a virtualized environment based on an existing physical environment comprising a plurality of systems, said method comprising:

obtaining a data set for each of said plurality of systems, each data set comprising information pertaining to parameters associated with a corresponding system;

performing a first compatibility analysis on said systems to determine candidate virtual guests;

performing a second compatibility analysis on said systems to determine candidate virtual hosts; and

performing a third compatibility analysis using said candidate virtual hosts, said candidate virtual guests and one or more rule sets pertaining to technical, business and workload constraints to generate a virtual environment design for virtualizing said plurality of systems.

2. A method for managing a virtualized environment, said method comprising:

generating a virtual environment design for a plurality of existing physical systems using technical, business and workload constraints;

facilitating the deployment of said virtualized environment according to said design; and

on an ongoing basis;

obtaining data pertaining to systems being used in said virtualized environment, validating placement of said systems in said virtualized environment, if necessary rebalancing said systems, and refining said virtualized environment.

3. A method for performing a virtual to virtual (V2V) transformation for a plurality of existing virtual servers, said method comprising:

analyzing said existing virtual servers based on technical, business and workload constraints;

based on said analyzing, determining which of said existing virtual servers are most suitable for conversion from one virtualized platform to another virtualized platform; and

providing a mapping from said one platform to said another platform to facilitate said transformation.

4. A method for determining a set of virtualization hosts for a virtualized environment based on an existing physical environment comprising a plurality of systems, said method comprising:

obtaining a data set for each of said plurality of systems, each data set comprising information pertaining to parameters associated with a corresponding system;

performing a first compatibility analysis of said plurality of systems using said data sets and a first rule set pertaining to virtualization specific constraints to determine an intermediate set of virtualization host candidates; and

performing a second compatibility analysis of said intermediate set of candidates using a second rule set pertaining to migration specific constraints to determine said set of virtualization hosts.

5. The method according to claim 4 further comprising incorporating one or more hypothetical hosts into said set of virtualization hosts based on workload requirements for said virtualized environment.

6. A method for evaluating virtualization candidates to determine if additional systems are required to implement a desired virtualized environment, said method comprising:

obtaining a set of virtualization guest candidates and determining aggregate workload requirements based on workload data pertaining to said guest candidates;

obtaining a set of virtualization host candidates and determining aggregate workload capacity based on configuration data pertaining to said host candidates;

comparing said workload requirements against said workload capacity to determine if sufficient capacity exists to satisfy said workload requirements; and

if there is insufficient capacity, adding hypothetical server models to said host candidates to meet said workload requirements.

7. A method for validating an existing virtualized environment comprising a plurality of virtual machines placed on one or more virtual hosts, said method comprising:

obtaining a data set for each of said plurality of virtual machines, each data set comprising information pertaining to technical, business and workload constraints associated with a corresponding virtual machine;

evaluating the placement of said virtual machines in said virtualized environment using said data sets; and

identifying the existence of virtual machines with suboptimal placements to enable replacement of said virtual machines.

8. A method for performing a power utilization analysis for a server, said method comprising:

determining server load;

determining power consumption for said server at idle and maximum loads; and

estimating power utilization by combining said idle power consumption with a measurement based on a relationship between said maximum and idle power consumption.

9. The method according to claim 8 wherein said power utilization is estimated according to the following relationship:

Estimated Power=Idle Power+Server Load*(Maximum Power−

Idle Power).