/ Cbeyond Successfully Migrates Virtuozzo Container Customers to Hyper-V
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:Hosting Services
Customer Profile
Founded in 2000, Cbeyond provides IT and communications services to small business throughout the United States.
Business Situation
Provide customers with a better cloud service offering to improve customer retention.
Solution
Migrate Parallels customers from Virtuozzo to Hyper-V.
Benefits
- Happier customers
- Reduced management burden
- Improved reliability
- Greater agility for a competitive advantage
– Dominic Foster, Cbeyond Senior Director of Technology
Cbeyond migratedone-hundred twenty-five Virtuozzo Containers to Virtual Machines running Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2 operating system with Hyper-V. The company improved performance, availability, and reduced resources for technical support resulting in higher customer satisfaction.
Situation
Cbeyond provides scalable web hosting services so Microsoft web developers can grow seamlessly over time, while remaining under a single umbrella of support and maintenance.The hoster previously provided many of their customers with Virtuozzo Containers for their virtual environments.Update incompatibility with Virtuozzo challenged Cbeyond when attempting to install critical Microsoft® Windows Server® updates to customer environments. In addition customers wanted the ability to install their own server updates.
Solution
Cbeyond managed 125 virtual machines on Parallel’s Virtuozzo and decided it was time to migrate customers from Virtuozzo to Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V to improve performance and reduce total cost of ownership for their customers. Cbeyond had confidence in this decision to move to Hyper-V after successfully migrating approximately 600 virtual machines from Windows Server 2008 R1 to R2 in early 2010.
Cbeyond’s planning strategy ensured capacity was available to migrate all Virtuozzo containers to Hyper-V.In addition to a mixed environment of 32 and 64 bit Virtuozzo containers, they also had differences in resource allocation for many of the servers. Cbeyond created golden virtual hard drives (VHD) for both 32 and 64 bit Windows Server 2003 Enterprise. To make planning easier, they used a standard hardware profile, which was then tailored to match the resources allocation of the source container.Because the virtual environments were moving to better hardware, Cbeyond decided to consolidate from eight (8) Virtuozzo hosts to six (6) Hyper-V hosts. The added scalability, high availability, and platform stability were key selling points to convince customers that the migration would benefit them.
Because of previous experiences with Virtuozzo’s backup system, many customers were concerned about the possibility of losing data. Cbeyond explained that the migration process was non-destructive, and in the worst case scenario they could switch back to the old Virtuozzo server back (which was never required). Customers were also concerned about configuration post-migration issues such as reconfiguring the server or changing DNS settings. Because Cbeyond used Xtratus SmartMigration tool, no reconfiguration was required. Once customers understood no intervention would be required on their part, they were more than willing to migrate and their fears were allayed.
Prior to conducting the migration, Cbeyond conducted testing to baseline the performance of existing servers running various SKUs of Windows 2003. Cbeyond created test Virtuozzo containers and configured them with the applications our customers typically installed in their environments (IIS, SQL, Mail server, etc.). This validated that all installed software would migrate flawlessly and no issues were found.
Lessons Learned
Since this was the first attempt by Cbeyond to migrate Virtuozzoenvironments to Hyper-V there were some important insights they had to share with other hosters:
- Explain the benefits and changes to how customers manage servers in the Virtuozzo environment vs. the new Hyper-V environment (e.g. Managing their servers with MOM vs. Virtuozzo Power Panel).
- Make the migration seamless for customers (i.e. don’t change IP’s, no reconfiguration, etc).
- The upfront planning for the migration is very important.
- Additional time should be factored into the migration for contingencies.
- Have the Administrator password on all the Virtuozzo containers being migrated.
- Communicate realistic migration windows with customers.
The investment upfront in planning by Cbeyond kept their migration issues to a minimum and resulted in little to no impact to customers.
Table 1: Typical Server Configuration for Virtuozzo ContainersAttribute / Virtuozzo / Hyper-V
Hardware
CPU / Intel XEON E5320 1.86GHZ / Intel XEON E5520 Dual 2.27Ghz
Memory / 8GB / 96GB
Disk Space / C: 18.6/135GB / iSCSI SANS – space allocated as-needed (vs. local storage of Virtuozzo nodes)
Network / 1GBps / 1Gbps
Software
Windows Version / 2003 R2 Ent x32 SP2 / 2008 R2 Datacenter
Number of Containers / 7 / Capable of up to 75
Average Container Size / 8.5GB / 13.25
Memory Allocation/VM / 914MB / 1.25GB
Benefits
Happier Customers
Cbeyond customers have seen remarkable improvements in performance, higher availability and better stability. Those customers who wanted to manage Windows Server updates themselves finally can. For example, several customers have installed anti-virus software on their servers which was not available to them with Virtuozzo. In addition, customers get a direct cost benefit since they no longer pay for additional Virtuozzo licensing. This in aggregate reduces server software licensing for Cbeyond customers 50 percent annually.
“I think your team did a great job in migrating the servers (I actually didn't know it was going to happen) but noticed one day when I logged in via RDP the new background and figured some migration took place. I noticed everything is still functional, profiles were moved, etc, and all data was intact. The server does seem to be more responsive, and our sites are rather quick as well. Thank you for all you hard work and great support” – Cbeyond Customer
Reduced Management Burden
Cbeyond can use fewer resources for virtual machine support. Resources previously used to support Virtuozzo are being redeployed for system improvements versus troubleshooting.In addition, Cbeyond was able to use the System Center Suite, including Virtual Machine Manager, Configuration Manager, Operations Manager, and Data Protection Manager, to manage the newly migrated virtual machines. This has resulted in approximately 0.5 FTE (Full-time Equivalent) reduction of support required since migration o Hyper-V.
Improved Reliability
Cbeyond has realized Hyper-V offers reliability advantages too.Customers have the ability to run their own Microsoft updates without having to wait for Virtuozzo verification. Waiting for verification often resulted in installation delays for important updates. Eliminating Virtuozzo verification has also reduced code related incidents.
“I noticed that we had more disk space on the new server, and it seems that we have more memory, although the numbers are the same, it seems to perform better. And I really like running the updates myself, I always felt hamstrung when I couldn’t update my server as I wanted.” – Cbeyond Customer
Greater Agility for a Competitive Advantage
With Hyper-V, Cbeyond provides their customers an easy, affordable way to adopt new technology and expand their businesses. Customers also receive the full benefits of the Hyper-V platform without any limitations.
Microsoft Cloud Power
Microsoft offers a complete set of cloud-based solutions to meet business needs, including solutions for advertising; communications (email, meetings); collaboration (document storage, sharing, and workflow); business applications (customer resource management, business productivity); data storage and management; and infrastructure services.In addition, customers can take advantage of an entire ecosystem of solution providers and Microsoft partners.
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