by Duncan Epping
I just bumped in to a bunch of new VMware EVO:RAIL demos which I wanted to share. Especially the third demo which shows how EVO:RAIL scales out by a couple of simple clicks.
General overview:
Customer Testimonial:
Clustering appliances:
Management experience:
Configuration experience:
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A couple of weeks ago we launched EVO:RAIL, a new VMware solution. I have been part of this since the very beginning, the prototype project started with just Dave and myself as part of the prototype team with Mornay van der Walt as the executive sponsor (interview with Mornay will follow shortly as this project involves many different disciplines). After Dave developed the initial UI mock-ups and we worked on the conceptual architecture, Dave started developing what then became known internally as MARVIN. If my memory serves correct it was our director at Integration Engineering (Adam Z.) who came up with the name and acronym (Modular Automated Rackable Virtual Infrastructure Node). All was done under the umbrella of Integration Engineering, in stealth mode with a very small team. I guess something not a lot of people know is that for instance William Lam was very instrumental when it came to figuring out in which order to configure what (a lot of dependencies as you can imagine) and which API calls to use for what. After a couple of months things really started to shape up, the prototype was demoed to C level and before we realized a new team was formed and gears shifted.
Personally whenever I talk to start-ups I like to know where they came from, what they’ve done in the past, how things went about… as that gives me a better understanding of why the product is what it is. Same applies to EVO:RAIL, no better start then with the lead developer and founding team member Dave Shanley…
Good morning Dave, as not all of my readers will know who you are and what you did before joining the EVO:RAIL team can you please introduce yourself.
I’m the lead engineer, designer and software architect of the EVO:RAIL platform. I joined VMware about two and a half years ago. I started out in Integration Engineering, I got to see and experience a lot of the frustration that is often seen when trying to install, configure and integrate our technology. I’ve pretty much worked in web application engineering my entire career that has given me a really broad experience across consumer and enterprise technology. Before VMware I was the CTO of a really cool VC funded start-up in the UK as well as being the lead engineer over at McCann Erickson’s EMEA HQ. [Read more…] about EVO:RAIL engineering interview with Dave Shanley (Lead Dev)
EVO:RAIL is awesome! That is typically what I hear from customers when pitching the EVO:RAIL play and showing the config and management demo. Customers are all over it I can tell you. They love the ease of deployment, management, procurement and support… Now, every now and then this geeky person pops up and say: but euuhm, I want more disks and I want to scale per node and all of my configuration stuff is scripted. How will that work with EVO:RAIL?
This is when I show them this slide:
It is a very very valid question to be honest. It is something which I, as a geek, would ask as well. How can I tweak the configuration so that it meets my requirements, and can I just use my own deployment mechanism? Sure you can, but not necessarily with EVO:RAIL. Keep in mind that EVO:RAIL is build using trusted VMware technology like VMware vSphere, vCenter Server, Virtual SAN and Log Insight. Although the EVO:RAIL engine (configuration and management interface) cannot be downloaded separately the components can be. We very much realize that EVO:RAIL may not be a fit for all customers and that is exactly why VMware offers choice as the slide above shows.
If you are a geek, love digging through hardware compatibility lists, like to configure your own servers part by part and have absolute maximum flexibility then option 1 is your best choice. Using the “Component Based” approach you can select your own: Server (vSphere HCL) and then from the VSAN HCL pick your components like the disk controller, SSD and magnetic drives. You get to pick how many drives, which type of flash, how much memory, how many cores per CPU… you name it. Note though, that it does mean you will need to do research to find out which components work well together, what kind of performance you can expect from disk controller x, y or z. But it is doable, many customers have already done this and it will allow you to design to your specific needs. Do note, you will need to configure it yourself and purchase licenses / support.
If you prefer a simpler approach, but still a certain level of flexibility then the “Virtual SAN Ready Node” approach is definitely a great option. It provides you a selection of around 40 different OEM configurations which have been validated by both the OEMs and VMware. Note though that these configurations are typically based on VM configuration profiles and IO profiles. This is mentioned in the Virtual SAN Ready Node list, there are low / medium / high configurations and also two different VDI configurations for each of the different server platforms. If you prefer a pre-validated solution, but need some flexibility then this is the way to go. Again, you will need to install/configure it yourself and purchase licenses / support, but it definitely easier than “component based”.
The third option is “VMware EVO:RAIL“. EVO:RAIL is at the far right of the slider –> Maximum Ease of Use. EVO:RAIL is pre-built on a qualified platform. This means that it comes pre-installed, and can be configured within 15 minutes. It has an easy / simple management interface that allows for easy patching/updating, simple VM creation and management, and even easier automatic scale-out (a couple of clicks). On top of that, it is sold as a single SKU (all licenses and support included) and all support will go through 1 channel. No more being pointed from one vendor to the other, no you contact that single vendor for both support of software as for hardware… Maximum Ease of Use as I said. If this is what you are looking for, EVO:RAIL is what you need.
As you see, when it comes to scale-out server SAN / hyper(visor) converged solutions… VMware offers you maximum choice.
I have seen this being debated many times on twitter now, and I’ve seen various Virtual SAN (VSAN) and EVO:RAIL competitors use this in the past to mislead potential customers.
@vmwevorail Exchange/SQL etc is use case for EVO:RAIL? No objection by VMware for whatever reason to run such apps on rail?
— ᗰᗩᖇᑕEᒪ ᐯᗪ ᗷEᖇG (@marcelvandenber) September 7, 2014
I think we have all seen these slides at VMworld or at a VMUG when it comes to VSAN or EVO:RAIL. The slide contains a couple of primary use cases:
So what does that mean? Does this mean that VMware does not support Exchange or MS SQL on top of VSAN or EVO:RAIL? Does that mean that VMware does not support it as a DR target? Or what about a management cluster? Or what about running Oracle? Or maybe SAP? Or what about my WordPress instance? Or what about MySQL? Or although you mention VDI, would that only be VMware View? What about… Yes by now you get my drift.
Let me try to make it really simple: Primary use cases says nothing about support. Primary use case means that this where the vendor expects the product or solution to fit best. In this case it is where VMware expect VSAN/EVO:RAIL to fit best, this is the target market VMware will be going after with this release.
Why include this in a slide deck? Well it allows you (the user / consultant / architect) to quickly identify where the majority of opportunities will be with the current version for your environment or for your customers. It does NOT mean that if your use case, like running your Exchange environment for instance on top of VSAN, is not listed that it is not supported. (Try listing all use cases on a slide, it will get pretty lengthy.)
Running Tier-1 applications on top of VSAN (or EVO:RAIL) is fully supported as it stands today, however … your application requirements and your service level agreement will determine if EVO:RAIL or VSAN is a good fit. One example would for instance be that if your agreed SLA requires an RPO (recovery point objective) of zero then sync replication is the only option (or stretched clustering), now you will need to determine if this is possible with the platform you want to use (this goes for any solution!). (Yes, you can make that happen with the platform pretty soon before anyone wants to go there…)
I hope that clears things up a bit.
Something that came up a couple of days back was a question around how VMware EVO:RAIL fits the ROBO (remote office branch office) use case. If you watched the demo you will have seen that it is very simple / easy to configure. It takes about 15 minutes to get you up and running and all you need to do is provide details like “IP ranges”, “Subnet mask”, “Gateway” and a couple of other globals.
This by itself makes EVO:RAIL a perfect solution for ROBO deployments… but there is more. When it comes to ROBO deployments and simplifying the roll out there are two more options:
I won’t discuss option 1 in-depth, as this will very much depend on how each of the EVO:RAIL Qualified Partners handles this on their website / during the procurement process. Basically what happens is that you provide your preferred server vendor with configuration details and they put it in to a file called “default-config-static.json” and this is injected in to the vCenter Server Appliance which also runs the EVO:RAIL engine. For the hackers who want to play around with EVO:RAIL, note that the location of the json file and the format may change with newer versions so make sure to always use the latest and greatest if you want to play around. If you have filled out these details, you can just click
Option 2 is also very interesting if you ask me. If you look at EVO:RAIL as it stands today, you have the option to upload a JSON file when you hit the configuration screen (as shown in the screenshot above). This JSON should contain all of your configuration details and then will allow you to configure EVO:RAIL with the click of a button. In other words, you ship the appliance to your remote office. You email them the JSON file (in a secured manner hopefully) and ask them to click “upload configuration file”. They upload the file and then run “Validate”, and probably fill out the password as you don’t want to sent that in clear text. That is it… Nice right :). Of course, if you want … you could even go as far as injecting the .json file into the vCenter Server Appliance yourself, but I am not sure if that will be supported.
As you can imagine, this greatly simplifies the deployment of EVO:RAIL as all it takes is just one click to configure, which is ideal for a ROBO scenario. Anyone can do it!