Virtual machines go mobile: optimization software shrinks files to improve portability and...

One of the biggest obstacles for today's road warriors is the daily challenge of working with cumbersome virtual machines with image files that are difficult to copy, move, back up, deploy, share and archive. These professionals need to shrink virtual machine space and optimize performance to generate

"I need to keep multiple virtual machines with me at all times, and I usually carry special virtual machines configured for demonstrations and presentations," explains Andrew Connell, senior developer and trainer for Mindsharp. "All these virtual machines can take up a considerable amount of space."

Mindsharp, a Minnesota-based Microsoft SharePoint training and development company, specializes in training people on Microsoft SharePoint products and technologies. Mindsharp instructors and developers spend most of their time with virtual machines, working in a distributed environment, with more than half of the company's staff traveling all over the United States.

A virtual machine is essentially a computer within a computer, implemented by software. Virtual machine technology enables customers to run multiple operating systems concurrently, each in its own isolated software partition, on a single physical computer. An application running in a virtual machine behaves the same as an application running on a physical system--it writes information to the file system in the same manner and interacts with the network just as if it were sending packets to a physical network interface card.

Virtual machines have grown to become important tools for demonstrating live software and for building proof-of-concept solutions. A single virtual machine, for example, can be configured and "released" to a field sales force with a bundle of accompanying tools that teach how to demonstrate and/or build a solution. A virtual machine can make its way to thousands of people much easier than a physical system because the virtual machine is a self-contained "file."

Virtual machine platform technologies have the ability to transform the way people derive value from computing, especially in scenarios such as demonstrations or rapid solution prototyping. One of the limitations in this paradigm, however, can be the size of a virtual machine's virtual hard drive. Specifically, large virtual hard drives are difficult to share and move around.

LIMITATIONS TO TRAINING

In Mindsharp's classes, each student needs his own virtual machine to follow along during the course, as well as to complete many of the labs. SharePoint only runs on Windows 2003 Server, which is required to work within a virtual environment. Most Mindsharp students, however, do not have Windows 2003 Server on their laptops, so a virtual machine containing a SharePoint installation can quickly grow to an unmanageable size. In addition, some Mindsharp courses require the installation of additional server applications. For example, the administrator class requires the installation and configuration of Microsoft Exchange.

Prior to a class, the instructor must either copy the virtual machines to the students' PCs (if class is taught in a training center), or distribute DVDs to the students to copy the virtual machines to their laptops (if the students have brought their own machines). In addition, a student may do something to her test environment that makes it unrepairable within a short timeframe, so the best approach is to simply refresh the local environment by copying over a clean image to reduce any downtime in the class. Waiting for the massive files to be copied to the students' workstations, however, creates training downtime.

"The virtual machines we create for our classes can easily push 10 GB in size," Connell says. "Files of this size can take a lot of time to push to multiple users. Even when we tried to compress the files to fit on individual DVDs, the compressed files wouldn't even fit on writeable DVDs. We had to use multiple DVDs to distribute the images."

Connell thought this inconvenience was a problem that Mindsharp instructors would "just have to deal with," until he stumbled across several online blogs that mentioned Invirtus VM Optimizer (VMO) as a potential solution to make more efficient use of virtual machine space.

"We're a small business that strongly believes in a propensity to action," he explains. "Once I saw those (blog) posts, I proceeded to try out VMO. I saw what we needed, downloaded the free 14-day trial, saw how well it worked, and bought the retail license online after trying it out."

PERFORMANCE IMPROVED

Mindsharp started using VM Optimizer in July 2006. The improvements in portability and performance have been significant, so Mindsharp now uses VM Optimizer as the final step in the creation of all its virtual machines. "We've found it to be a very straightforward and easy process," says Connell. "Just mount an ISO and let it run. Once it has finished running, shut down the virtual machine and run the virtualization disk compaction process/utility."

VM Optimizer works with VMware Workstation, VMware GSX Server, VMware ESX Server, Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual Server. VM Optimizer works to reduce a virtual machine's virtual hard drive to the smallest size possible and optimizes Windows guest operating systems.

VM optimization configures the Windows guest operating system for quicker boot times, faster run-time responsiveness and overall system performance enhancement. Reducing the size of a virtual hard disk (vmdk with VMware/vhd with Microsoft) can deliver a big pay-off if virtual machine usage is a large part of an organization's computing strategy.

Since adopting VM Optimizer, Mindsharp has significantly reduced the time required to set up its training machines. The company has also found VM Optimizer to be essential to the work of its development and sales staff. "VM Optimizer not only helps us speed up the virtual machines, but it helps us shrink them down to a size that's entirely more manageable," Connell states. "This has allowed us to streamline our training business operations.

"VM Optimizer has helped cut each machine's physical storage requirements an average of 50 percent, making them much easier to take wherever I go," Connell continues. "We can now easily compress the images to fit on single writeable DVDs for student distribution. This is ideal for someone who works out of their backpack."

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