VMware: Virtually There

The first entry is only a hint. A specification at a useful level of generality would fill several hundred pages. Let me explain. One outcome would be to move the VMWare model up to the service level, so you could lift your whole SMTP or FTP service out of one VM and move it onto another, without missing a beat. These services may be composed of thousands of system and data files, Registry entries etc. You could package them so they could be moved around like chess pieces, as single units, without having to uninstall, reinstall, reconfigure, copy data from backup, recreate permissions etc.

I imagine several components to the architecture. Let's call the "intelligent package manager" the "Virtual Package Activities Controller" (VPAC). VPAC would include a next-generation of installation, uninstallation, moving, property reporting and change, and other service management tools. It would include a Virtual Environment Analyzer (VEA), a Virtual Service Profiler (VSP), and a Virtual Service Manager VSM). To move a service like a chess piece, in real time, with little or no loss in availability, possibly with changes of properties based upon the features of the source, destination, and other hosts, is something within reach.

So we drill down into the host list of the VMWare Console, and drill down one more level. There we see (for example), SMTP, HTTP, FTP, and DNS Services. They are constructed in conformity with the VPAC Standard. We use the VEA to report the Service Properties, which includes a performance profile giving me historical data, along with information about what other machines in the environment access the Service, and how. It is, say, the FTP Service, which is installed on C:. I would like to move it to another machine, can afford little or no downtime, no loss of transient data, and I want it on D: on the other machine, with a different name, where it will listen on a different IP address, and possibly run on a non-standard port. I would like all clients machines that use this service to adjust their parameters to account for the changed IP address and server name. Fortunately, they are VPACs also, so my VEA can gather their environment and performance characteristics, and make the adjustments automatically. Of course this means that the VPAC Installer has to be "next generation", gathering dynamic data from the VPA and VSP. When the programmer put the server name in his application configuration file, the fact was detected by the VPA, and now it can be changed by the VSM. The usual service attributes are available (such as might be found in an httpd.config file or the IIS Metabase), along with such news as that VM Server XYZ is the primary user of the service, it transfers an average of 20 GB of data per day, peak day is Wednesday, and the linear increase in stored data over the past 6 months requires expanded disk space of 40 GB on the target host. Also, I would like the local groups on the source server created on the destination server, and populated with the domain members from the source groups.

Extending the idea, I would like to automatically replace my Windows FTP Service with a new Secure FTP Service from another vendor, and have it set up with equivalent functionality.

The VPAC Installer checks for the usual things (available & required disk space, previous versions, file dependencies), but also checks for, and offers options to adjust, dependant features of related servers. The VPAC uninstaller really uninstalls all the components. The VEA and VSP are updating the service metadata as it changes (configuration files, directory and file names, client and script dependencies, etc.)

This is still only a hint. There are many criticisms that could be addressed to this proposal, and many responses that could be made. One might want to ask, for example: Isn't this too much overhead ? Is this possible ? What if I don't want it to change all these things automatically ? Is there any need for this ? Can't we do this some other way already ? Can't we do this some better way already ? What else would it do ?