Live migration is essential for a dynamic data center environment. But until now, it's been impossible between different generations of processors. Intel IT and End User Platform Integration have done so successfully with Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration. This white paper explains how.
White PaperIntel Information Technology Testing Live Migration with Computer ManufacturingServer Virtualization Intel® Virtualization Technology
FlexMigration Intel IT and Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, End User Platform Integration, conducted proof-of-concept (PoC) testing of live migration using Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration (Intel® VT FlexMigration) assist and the Enhanced VMotion feature of VMware ESX 3.5U2*. We successfully completed manual and automated live migrations of virtual machines (VMs) containing complex enterprise applications between two- and four-socket servers based on two generations of Intel® CoreT microarchitecture with differing instruction sets. Our testing showed that live VM migration using Intel VT FlexMigration assist and VMware Enhanced VMotion is robust enough for hosting Intel IT business applications in a mixed production environment.
Sudip Chahal, Raghu Yeluri, and Stephen G. Anderson, Intel Corporation
January 2009
IT@Intel IT@Intel White Paper Testing Live Migration with Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration
Executive Summary
Intel IT and Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, End User Platform Integration, conducted proof-of-concept (PoC) testing of live migration using Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration (Intel® VT FlexMigration) assist and the Enhanced VMotion feature of VMware ESX 3.5U2*. We successfully completed manual and automated live migrations Our testing of virtual machines (VMs) containing complex enterprise applications between two- and demonstrated that four-socket servers based on different generations of Intel® Xeon® processors. we can use Intel VT FlexMigration assist Live migration is an essential technology for an agile, dynamic data center
for live migration environment based on server virtualization. It has not been possible, however, to
of Intel IT business perform successful live migration between servers based on different generations of processors, each with different instruction sets. This limited our ability to applications in a implement large resource pools, creating islands of servers and hindering the mixed production implementation of advanced data center capabilities. environment. Combined, Intel VT FlexMigration assist and Enhanced VMotion are designed to overcome this limitation by enabling all servers to expose the same instruction set to applications, even if they are based on different processor generations from a single CPU supplier.
For our PoC, we created an enterprise reporting application workload representative of IT workloads. We then tested a variety of manual and automated (maintenance mode) live migrations between host servers based on two generations of Intel® CoreT microarchitecture with different instruction sets:
. A two-socket server based on Intel® Xeon® processor X5460 with Intel® Streaming SIMD Extensions 4 (SSE4.1) instruction set
. A four-socket server based on Intel® Xeon® processor X7460 with SSE4.1
. A two-socket server based on Intel® Xeon® processor X5365 with SSE3
. A four-socket server based on Intel® Xeon® processor X7350 with SSE3
All migrations completed without problems. Our testing demonstrated that we can use Intel VT FlexMigration assist for live migration of Intel IT business applications in a mixed production environment. As a result, we can create resource pools that combine servers from multiple generations, eliminating incompatible islands of servers and allowing full implementation of advanced data center capabilities. We expect to standardize on systems with Intel VT FlexMigration assist in the future.
www.intel.com/IT Testing Live Migration with Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration IT@Intel White Paper
ContentsExecutive Summary.................................................................................................................................................. 2
Business Challenge................................................................................................................................................... 4Live Migration and Processor Compatibility.............................................................................................. 5Intel® Virtualization Technology FlexMigration ...................................................................................... 6Test Systems..... [download for more]
