COVER STORY:
VIRTUAL MACHINE
From the May 2007
issue of Communications News
Virtual machines go mobile
Optimization software shrinks files to improve portability and performance.
One of the biggest obstacles for
today’s road warriors is the daily challenge of working with cumbersome
virtual machines with image files that are difficult to copy, move, back up,
deploy, share and archive. These professionals need to shrink virtual
machine space and optimize performance to generate more efficient use of
physical hard drive space–to make the tasks of moving and sharing virtual
machines more convenient.
“I need to keep multiple virtual machines with me at all times, and I
usually carry special virtual machines configured for demonstrations and
presentations,” explains Andrew Connell, senior developer and trainer for
Mindsharp. “All these virtual machines can take up a considerable amount of
space.”
Mindsharp, a Minnesota-based Microsoft SharePoint training and development
company, specializes in training people on Microsoft SharePoint products and
technologies. Mindsharp instructors and developers spend most of their time
with virtual machines, working in a distributed environment, with more than
half of the company’s staff traveling all over the
United States.
A virtual machine is essentially a computer within a computer, implemented
by software. Virtual machine technology enables customers to run multiple
operating systems concurrently, each in its own isolated software partition,
on a single physical computer. An application running in a virtual machine
behaves the same as an application running on a physical system–it writes
information to the file system in the same manner and interacts with the
network just as if it were sending packets to a physical network interface
card.
Virtual machines have grown to become important tools for demonstrating live
software and for building proof-of-concept solutions. A single virtual
machine, for example, can be configured and “released” to a field sales
force with a bundle of accompanying tools that teach how to demonstrate
and/or build a solution. A virtual machine can make its way to thousands of
people much easier than a physical system because the virtual machine is a
self-contained “file.”
Virtual machine platform technologies have the ability to transform the way
people derive value from computing, especially in scenarios such as
demonstrations or rapid solution prototyping. One of the limitations in this
paradigm, however, can be the size of a virtual machine’s virtual hard
drive. Specifically, large virtual hard drives are difficult to share and
move around.
Limitations to training
In Mindsharp’s classes, each student needs his own virtual machine to follow
along during the course, as well as to complete many of the labs. SharePoint
only runs on Windows 2003 Server, which is required to work within a virtual
environment. Most Mindsharp students, however, do not have Windows 2003
Server on their laptops, so a virtual machine containing a SharePoint
installation can quickly grow to an unmanageable size. In addition, some
Mindsharp courses require the installation of additional server
applications. For example, the administrator class requires the installation
and configuration of Microsoft Exchange.
Prior to a class, the instructor must either copy the virtual machines to
the students’ PCs (if class is taught in a training center), or distribute
DVDs to the students to copy the virtual machines to their laptops (if the
students have brought their own machines). In addition, a student may do
something to her test environment that makes it unrepairable within a short
timeframe, so the best approach is to simply refresh the local environment
by copying over a clean image to reduce any downtime in the class. Waiting
for the massive files to be copied to the students’ workstations, however,
creates training downtime.
“The virtual machines we create for our classes can easily push 10 GB in
size,” Connell says. “Files of this size can take a lot of time to push to
multiple users. Even when we tried to compress the files to fit on
individual DVDs, the compressed files wouldn’t even fit on writeable DVDs.
We had to use multiple DVDs to distribute the images.”
Connell thought this inconvenience was a problem that Mindsharp instructors
would “just have to deal with,” until he stumbled across several online
blogs that mentioned Invirtus VM Optimizer (VMO) as a potential solution to
make more efficient use of virtual
machine space.
“We’re a small business that strongly believes in a propensity to action,” he explains. “Once I saw those (blog) posts, I proceeded to try out VMO. I saw what we needed, downloaded the free 14-day trial, saw how well it worked, and bought the retail license online after trying it out.”
performance improved
Mindsharp started using VM Optimizer in July 2006. The improvements in
portability and performance have been significant, so Mindsharp now uses VM
Optimizer as the final step in the creation of all its virtual machines.
“We’ve found it to be a very straightforward and easy process,” says
Connell. “Just mount an ISO and let it run. Once it has finished running,
shut down the virtual machine and run the virtualization disk compaction
process/utility.”
VM Optimizer works with VMware Workstation, VMware GSX Server, VMware ESX
Server, Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual Server. VM Optimizer
works to reduce a virtual machine’s virtual hard drive to the smallest size
possible and optimizes Windows guest operating systems.
VM optimization configures the Windows guest operating system for quicker
boot times, faster run-time responsiveness and overall system performance
enhancement. Reducing the size of a virtual hard disk (vmdk with VMware/vhd
with Microsoft) can deliver a big pay-off if virtual machine usage is a
large part of an organization’s compu-
ting strategy.
Since adopting VM Optimizer, Mindsharp has significantly reduced the time
required to set up its training machines. The company has also found VM
Optimizer to be essential to the work of its development and sales staff.
“VM Optimizer not only helps us speed up the virtual machines, but it helps
us shrink them down to a size that’s entirely more manageable,” Connell
states. “This has allowed us to streamline our training business operations.
“VM Optimizer has helped cut each machine’s physical storage requirements an
average of 50 percent, making them much easier to take wherever I go,”
Connell continues. “We can now easily compress the images to fit on single
writeable DVDs for student distribution. This is ideal for someone who works
out of their backpack.”
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