Virtual Sprawl

The life of a VMware administrator can become one request after another for serving up Virtual Machines. At times I myself have felt like a fast food drive through. Various people will pull up to my office and place their order. “I’d like a Windows 2003 Server, extra RAM, extra disk, hold a processor.” I’ve often been inclined to ask if they wanted fries with that order.

With all of these orders coming in for virtual environments, it becomes easy to lose track of exactly what each server in your VMware Infrastructure does. After looking through all of the servers you’ve built out over several months and realizing that you have one or two that you just don’t remember building, you can start to feel as if you’ve lost control of the environment.

To counteract this process I began adopting a few simple approaches in order to maintain control and reason within my virtual infrastructure. The first method of control is to force the “customer” to submit a written request either by e-mail or through a formal change request process to me detailing exactly what they need and when they need it by. While a request like this usually will generate a phone call by me to the “customer” asking for further clarification or to explain to them that no, indeed, they did not NEED 16 gigabytes of RAM for their IIS server. Basically, the written request allows me to respond back to them with the pertinent information they will need to work with their server while at the same time giving me a way to track my servers should I need to.

The second method I use to contain Virtual Sprawl is to create an inventory database for virtual machines that tells me all relevant information I need for the systems. Yes, I know this can all be found in the Virtual Console. However, should something happen that I cannot access the virtual console I have a backup plan. Also, the virtual console doesn’t reveal to me the backup methodology employed, the persons responsible for the server, or what the scheduled reboot cycle of the server is. Trust me when I say this has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.

The final method I use is to simply put the server role in the Notes section of the Virtual Console. When I click on the server everything I need to know about it is displayed there. What its function is, who to call in the event of a problem, and any special things that my poor, tired brain may not remember in five months time all reside right there in the Notes.

All of three of these tips make my job a little easier whle at the same time keeping me from reaching for the tweezers and pulling what little bit of hair I have left out. Also, they allow for a sanity check once a quarter to ensure that all vm’s in the environment are being used and aren’t just dead weight. Most importantly they reduce “virtual sprawl” in the environment and keep everything nice and tidy.