One week after the launch of the new esxMigrator tool, Scott Herold, Director of Research and Development at vizioncore, sit down with virtualization.info speaking about company products, future projects and state of the virtualization market.

virtualization.info: vizioncore just released a new product called esxMigrator, which helps customers to migrate from ESX Server 2.x environments to the new VMware Infrastructures 3 (VI3). Can you explain some of the issues raised by migrations and why esxMigrator is a desirable tool?

Scott Herold: The greatest challenge of migrating from ESX 2.X to VI3 is managing the downtime associated with each stage of the migration. VMware has made several significant changes to the underlying architecture of their virtualization platform that requires downtime of either your virtual machines or ESX hosts. Smaller environments have the issue of having to take a complete outage of their virtual infrastructure to perform an upgrade of their environment, which can take anywhere from 4-6 hours per host. Large VMware ESX implementations have the major issue of managing virtual machine and application dependencies to dictate their migration time frames.

To top it all off, VMware has changed their storage infrastructure to support a more organized subdirectory structure for VMDK files. Their current recommendation is to have all VMDK files for a single virtual machine reside on the same VMFS datastore in the same directory. That is the exact opposite of the ESX 2.X recommendation of balancing your workload across multiple LUNs and data paths. A lot of data needs to move to better organize it for the VI3 architecture. While it is being moved, it requires downtime.

esxMigrator automates and manages all of the steps involved in the migration and controls the transfer of data in the background while the source virtual machine is running. The final cutover of the virtual machine can be scheduled to occur at any point in time. This provides the maximum amount of control around a virtual infrastructure upgrade.

VI: Why would customers prefer to move to VI3 with esxMigrator instead of approaching a virtual to virtual (V2V) migration?

SH: In a way, esxMigrator IS a V2V migration tool. We take the unique approach of performing the V2V migration outside of the guest operating system. We require no agents inside or outside of a virtual machine and do not impact the resource utilization of the guest during the migration process. Using our methodology, a new virtual machine is built based off the ESX 2.X configuration and the tedious process of copying the data is performed on the backend leveraging technologies from our proven products. What you have at the end of the process is a fully VI3 compliant virtual machine all the way from the VMDK structure and layout to the VMware Tools and virtual hardware running inside the guest operating system.

VI: A new VI3 feature is VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), able to backup running virtual machines acting at Storage Attached Network (SAN) device level. vizioncore has offered virtual machines live backup since its commercial launch with esxRanger. Would you clarify differences in esxRanger and VMware Consolidated Backup approaches?

SH: VCB, in its current state, is a backup platform. It enables ties to the vmkernel through a SAN to offload backup jobs from the console operating system. VMware is relying on backup vendors to supply the necessary ties to script the VCB technologies as pre and post activities of a standard backup job to perform the actual backup. There is no user interface surrounding the technology outside a set of command line executables.

While VMware does provide a mechanism to capture a full image of the server, they removed the necessary executables to easily restore the file from the GA release. There is also no easy way to restore individual files when using VCB in "File Mode". One of two things are required to restore data from a standard backup job: First, a backup agent can be loaded in each guest so they have the capability to restore individual files. This defeats the entire purpose of VCB. Second, a proxy server can be used to manage the restoration of files. The data may then be copied back to their original locations on their original virtual machine. This adds a layer of complexity to the backup/restore procedures of an organization. A final major pitfall of VCB and how it is structured is that file permissions are stripped from any file or directory that is backed up through the proxy. This is a major issue for any organization concerned with securing their data.

esxRanger will have ties to VCB to better manage the use of the platform through an intuitive user interface and enhanced data management, but will still have the capability to perform image level backups across the entire platform. iSCSI, NFS, and local VMFS targets will not be an issue for esxRanger with VI3 compatibility. With the recent addition of file level restore capabilities, esxRanger will provide a complete package for restoring both images and individual files to any storage platform.

VI: In previous months vizioncore launched a much appreciated free package called esxBasics, bundling a scaled down version of esxRanger and esxCharter. Is there any plan to extend the bundle to esxReplicator and esxMigrator?

SH: As of right now there are no immediate plans to include our newer products into the esxBasics package. The way esxReplicator and esxMigrator are licensed would provide a challenge for us to properly manage a "Basics" version. With the introductory pricing of esxMigrator that we have announced, we are not anticipating this to be a significant issue. We will continue to retrofit beneficial technologies into esxBasics as we see fit, but will always ensure our esxRanger processional and standard customers have all the functionality they require first.

VI: A part of VMware customers adopting GSX Server have no opportunity to address virtualization issues with vizioncore products because you are currently offering solutions for ESX Server only. Now that GSX Server became Server and is offered for free that customer base could grow a lot: does vizioncore plan to introduce products for the new platform? If so, only on Linux or also on Windows hosting?

SH: vizioncore is actively looking at opportunities in the VMware Server space. We anticipate a fast and wide adoption of VMware's free offering and are analyzing how our products and ideas would best fit this technology. From a development standpoint, there is almost no difference between managing a Linux or Windows hosted VMware Server platform. There are minor differences around file system structure between the platforms, but those aren't even speed bumps for the developers we have on staff.

VI: Is there a chance vizioncore will broaden its product line to different virtualization plaforms like XenEnteprise or Virtual Iron?

SH: vizioncore has a strong partnership with VMware and will maintain a strong focus on enhancing VMware's technologies. That does not mean we aren't very well aware of the other technologies in the virtualization space and what opportunities may be available for each of these platforms. It would not be a wise business decision on our part to lose focus on all available technologies as virtualization platforms become a commodity.

VI: vizioncore is expected to release a new version of esxRanger within middle August, introducing support for VI3 and file level restore. What will we see next? Can you provide a roadmap of features vizioncore is to deliver?

SH: We are working on several items in the office. One of our main areas of focus is on enhancing VCB. There are a lot of opportunities to further strengthen VMware's offering. We will also be implementing a differential backup engine in the near future. We have developed a unique process that can be applied to multiple operating system platforms and file types. We will still be able to leverage individual file level restores out of our differential backups, which is a very unique feature. We are also members of VMware's Community Source program and have been working closely with VMware on some extremely exciting technology that is going to change the way backups and replication are currently performed.

VI: Why do you think VMware is so slow providing out of the box disaster recovery features like platform redundancy and virtual machines live backup, even if the virtual infrastructure greatly aggravate the concept of single point of failure?

SH: VMware has a strong ISV program and has a lot of support from their partners in assisting with developing this technology. We see VMware making the right steps in some of these directions in VI3 with offerings such as VMware HA, DRS and VCB. The technology involved with developing around the VI3 architecture is extremely advanced. VMware is a very rapidly growing company and may not want to spread themselves too thin in various projects. There is also a lot of new intellectual property surrounding a lot of the methodologies of advanced disaster recovery and availability. Legally, it's a mess tracking all of the new ideas and processes. It also tends to take time to buy technologies or certain aspects of it to integrate into a platform as advanced as VI3.

VI: In your opinion which is the feature customers are missing the most in today's virtual infrastructures? Is vizioncore working on a product about it?

SH: When I was in consulting, the biggest problem I noticed was controlling the growth of a virtual infrastructure. The time to deploy a new operating system sharply fell from weeks to hours. As soon as a company sees the true benefit to virtualization, the flood gates open. Organizations no longer have "Server Sprawl", but they still have "OS Sprawl". Introducing a large number of operating systems, whether physical or virtual, provides significant challenges around all aspects of IT management. Security, Networking, Storage, Support... all of it becomes more difficult as more and more systems are added to the environment.

If I had to pick the single component that I feel needs the most consideration, it would have to be the security aspect around virtual machine management and deployment. While there is nothing on our immediate roadmap we are making progress through VMware's Community Source program to enable us to do some amazing things with data. That will open a lot of possibilities for us around ways to manipulate data that have yet to be identified as we progress through community source development.

VI: vizioncore appears to have a very fast development lifecycle. How much part of research is driven by customers needs? How much time do you spend, as Director of Research and Development, in the virtualization community?

SH: I spend more than 50% of my time in the community. One of the things that I have found has changed is that I have moved from being a very active member of the public community to a very active member of the private community. A lot of the things I do now are invisible to most people who watch community news or VMTN forums, etc. I have implemented a customer visit program for my department where we head out to our larger customers to see how they are using the product and make sure they are following not only our own, but VMware's best practices in their infrastructure. The amount of product feedback we can receive from even a single organization is pretty significant.

I still participate in user groups and various conferences such as VMworld, and love to get out and just give people real technical information without the marketing. On the private side I keep my eye on every aspect of technology whether it currently touches virtualization or has the potential to in the future. With the current growth trends in virtualization, the best is still yet to come. vizioncore has a very large head start over others competing in the same space as us.