R-virtualization

R- is Virtualizationa Russian hyper convergent platform virtualizations servers with centralized management and integrated cluster storage.

Prerequisites for a hyperconverged architecture

Traditional enterprise and cloud IT infrastructures were built on the basis of separate hardware components: server computers, external storage systems and a fast network between them. Fault tolerance and performance were ensured by duplication and special enterprise-class equipment with a high unit cost. At the same time, the increase in computing performance and/or DSS capacity is associated with high and non-linear costs with a large minimum step. Moreover, after several years of operation, the cost of maintaining such outdated equipment and software increases, and the need to upgrade it often leads to the creation of a new system. All this translates into a high cost of ownership, insufficient flexibility of the IT infrastructure built on these principles and a decrease in the competitiveness of enterprises.

All this has become prerequisites for the emergence of a hyper-converged architecture, the main meaning of which is to abandon separate specialized equipment and combine computing virtualization, data storage and network functions in special software running on "ordinary" servers. This can significantly reduce the cost and time of both building new systems and gradually updating and scaling them. Unlike classical architecture, in the case of a hyperconverged system, it is enough to connect new simple nodes for scaling. The system itself will determine them and begin to operate them in accordance with the configured strategy.

History of Russian hyperconverged software development

Back in the late 1990s, a group of Russians began to seriously engage in virtualization technologies, starting work on the Virtuozzo project. It was the world's first implementation of container virtualization in Linux. At that time, the company was called SWSoft and fully fit on the first floor of the applied mathematics building of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT).

Virtuozzo is currently used by hundreds of companies around the world. This software runs millions of virtual environments and many hundreds of petabytes of data. In 2016, part of the Virtuozzo team moved to Rosplatforma, which received full legal rights to the source code of basic technologies and the ability to create a set of Russian products based on it to implement hyperconverged scenarios in the corporate and public sectors. The Rosplatforma products developed as a result - the R-Virtualization industrial hypervisor and the R-Storage software-defined data warehouse, are included in the Unified Register of Russian Software of the Ministry of Digital Science and are recommended for use for companies with increased requirements for sanctions stability.

What R-Virtualization Is

R-Virtualization combines two types of virtualization - a hypervisor for managing virtual machines and virtualization based on system containers - with software-defined data storage. The administrator manages virtual machines and containers using a single console - a convenient and visual web interface.

R-Virtualization Architecture on a Physical Server

"R-Virtualization" together with the software-defined data storage "P-Storage" is part of the single distribution kit "Rosplatforma." The software does not require special server hardware and can be installed on any servers already available or purchased from a preferred supplier. Also, Rosplatforma software can be preinstalled by partners on their own or specially selected server models to create ready-made hardware and software systems.

Efficiency

Virtual machines in R-Virtualization are controlled by the KVM hypervisor supplemented by the developers of Rosplatforma. Improvements and additional services have made the hypervisor completely suitable and convenient for industrial use.

Why "P-Virtualization" is better than open KVM

At first glance, solutions built entirely on open source software are very attractive: they are free and source codes are open in them (which means that they can be redone for their own needs).

In practice, it turns out that it is not so easy and by no means free to implement such a solution: refinement, ON its configuration and creation of documentation requires a large amount of technical work and financial costs.

If an organization decides to build a virtualization system using open source code, for example, KVM and related components, then its technical specialists will most likely have to:

• understand the features of setting and configuration of parameters when assembling a solution from source codes;
  
• Find or develop and then integrate additional compatible services such as high-availability solutions, backup, monitoring, and other features not found in open KVM
  
• identify and correct a number of errors to bring the solution to production quality.
  

At the same time, it is important to work with an open community, send your improvements and fixes to the "mainstream" and maintain synchronization with the main version, otherwise the project begins to live in a "dead" branch and becomes incompatible with future versions of the source code.

Further, dedicated teams of specialists are needed to build and develop such a solution, as well as maintain the existing infrastructure. This requires technical expertise and investment, which only companies specializing in the development of relevant products can do.

That is why only the consolidation of expertise in a vendor company allows you to achieve high quality, since the installation base of such a product company is many times larger than the base of one organization. This reduces overhead and multiplies the experience gained from different customers.

What are the advantages of implementing virtualization from Rosplatforma? In "P-Virtualization," virtual machines are controlled by a significantly improved KVM-based hypervisor. At the same time, the Rosplatforma team is actively exchanging developments with the international open community to ensure their support in the next versions. It is one of the five main world contributors to profile open projects libvirt/QEMU/KVM.

The modified version of the hypervisor is fully compatible with the public version of the KVM project when it comes to integration with other systems. The Rosplatforma team focused on additional services and improvements necessary for industrial use. This allowed:

• Combine two types of virtualization in one solution:
  • - virtual machines on hypervisor with improved performance
  • - containers with high density: twice as many virtual environments on the same hardware

• integrate visual tools for unified management of virtual machines and containers (graphical web interface)
• update the system kernel without rebooting (i.e. without interrupting user service)
• improve support for Windows as a guest system
• add a built-in data backup system (backup)
• Optimize memory management (including adaptive policies)
• Ensure full compatibility with OpenStack-based solutions
• implement more than two hundred upstream kernel patches to improve performance, optimize performance, and fix bugs.

The most important advantage is the integration with the distributed software-defined "P-Storage" data storage to build hyperconverged solutions that make the most of all the computing power of the customer's servers, as well as all the disparate disks that make up them, without the need to purchase specialized storage systems.

Rosplatforma actively participates in the international open-source community and understands how the corresponding basic technologies are arranged. This allows the company to:

• directly influence the basic (upstream) world projects;
• Integrate into your own solutions the best practices of international projects, new functionality and fixes that are not available with a simple rebuild of open versions;
• Provide technical support in Russian up to Level 3, including necessary code fixes, online updates, refinements, and customizations to meet customer needs.

Performance

To compare the performance of the basic KVM (part of CentOS) and "P-Virtualization," experts used two popular tests: vConsolidate from Intel and SPECVirt. Both tests ran a set of generic applications sequentially and measured the total number of requests the system could process per second. By increasing the number of running applications, you can measure the limits for both platforms. The total number of running applications allows you to determine the relative density of placement.

SPECVirt Results for Linux Guest Systems

vConsolidate Results for Windows Application Group

On average, R-Virtualization performance turned out to be 30-40% better, and the density of accommodation is up to two times higher.

How R-Virtualization Helps Optimize Your IT Infrastructure

"P-Virtualization" is based on the source code of the latest versions of KVM and the QEMU project and is supplemented by a number of integrated extensions. These improvements and additional services turn KVM into a ready-to-use platform. Among the features of "P-Virtualization" is also worth noting:

• Live migration - Move virtual environments between servers without downtime. The application does not even "notice" that it has changed its working environment.
• Fault tolerance - Protect against the exit of any disk, server, or server group.
• A single user-friendly graphical HTML 5 web interface for managing virtual machines and containers.
• Built-in backup.
• The new release optimized memory management (including adaptive policies). Deduplication of RAM and data and caching of identical files reduces RAM costs and increases server density.

"R-Virtualization" allows you to effectively use the computing power of servers and all disks distributed on them, as well as flexibly scale the power of your virtual data center through operation in three modes:

• Hyperconvergence (both processor and server computing resources are used simultaneously)
• Processing power (only server processor resources are used).
• Storage (only server disk resources are used)

In Hyperconvergence mode, both virtualization and storage components are installed on the server. It provides the shared data store with its local disks. Such servers are assembled into clusters with the ability to access the cloud (without mixing disk resources).

In Virtualization mode, the cloud is used as a habitat for virtual machines, and the server provides only its computing power. This mode is convenient if the storage is not exhausted, but you need to add computing power.

In Storage mode, local hard drives are used to increase the total capacity of distributed (cloud) storage.

These three scenarios allow you to solve any problem and provide impressive flexibility and scalability for any need.

Chronicle of Product Development

2022: Russian virtualization. Review of 15 developers of domestic products

The analytical center TAdviser studied who is who Russian in the funds market, virtualizations analyzed the functional and integration capabilities of the products, assessed the experience of development companies. Among the companies and products studied are "" (Rosplatforma product "Р-"). Virtualization Read more about the research here.

2020: Red OS Compatibility

The companies Rosplatforma and Red Soft, within the framework of the partnership, tested for compatibility of their products. The developers confirmed the full and uninterrupted operation of software complexes on the RED OS operating system (manufactured by RED SOFT) in the virtualization environment based on the R-Virtualization and R-Storage products (manufactured by Rosplatforma). This was announced on May 15, 2020 by the Red Soft company. Read more here.

2019: Obtaining the certificate of FSTEC of Russia

Rosplatforma On September 12, 2019, the company (R-Platform LLC) announced that it had received a certificate FSTEC of Russia for the United Platform R server virtualizations - and Virtualization Distributed software package. data storage R-storage

Certificate No. 4161 issued by the FSTEC of Russia dated August 28, 2019 indicates that the software "Combined Server Virtualization Platform" R-Virtualization "and Distributed Data Storage" R-Storage "contains built-in protection against unauthorized access to information and meets the information security requirements established in the guidance document" Protection against unauthorized access to information. Part 1. Information security software. Classification by the level of control of the absence of undeclared capabilities "- by the 4th level of control (NDB4).

In general, Rosplatforma products are system software for direct installation on server hardware without the use of separate operating systems. The distribution includes R-Virtualization server virtualization software and P-Storage distributed data storage. Rosplatforma software does not require special server equipment and can be installed on any servers already available or purchased from a preferred supplier. Also, the Rosplatforma software can be preinstalled by partners on their own or specially selected server models to create ready-made hardware and software systems.

The platform as a whole:

• allows you to use two types of virtualization - container and hypervisor - under the same license;
• is provided with a convenient graphical control interface, while maintaining the possibility of alternative control from the command line or API;
• provides smooth scalability - the capacity and capacity of the cluster are increased by adding disks and individual inexpensive nodes, without affecting running applications;
• supports "live migration" - in the event of a failure, virtual environments are transferred to another server without pauses in the operation of services;
• Provides advanced memory management - adaptive policies and optimizations
• Complies with enterprise standards of resiliency and high availability, with flexibility to configure at any given level - from server loss to rack to entire data center
• has built-in data backup tools with incremental copy support;
• can integrate with external orchestration systems, such as OpenStack through standard APIs.

2018

Compatibility with OS Alt

On October 31, 2018, the company BASEALT"" announced that, together with Rosplatforma"," they checked for correct work operating systems on the platform Viola as guests in the environment server virtualizations of the company "Rosplatforma." More. here

Compatibility with "Red OS" 7.1 Moore Server

On July 19, 2018, RED SOFTWARE announced the confirmation of the performance of Red OS 7.1 Moore Server in the virtualization environment of Rosplatforma.

The test environment for the operating system Red OS 7.1 Murom Server was prepared on the basis of a hyperconverged platform from the products "P-Virtualization" and "P-Storage." The platform and operating system were tested and checked for compatibility as a guest system. Read more here.

Classic and hyperconverged stacks

2017: P-Virtualization vs. KVM

(data current as of July 2017)

Orgpart

• The team of specialists is the only one in Russia, which is part of the TOP-5 of international creditor-pro-profile open projects libvirt/QEMU/KVM. And that means:
  • has a direct impact on basic (upstream) world projects
  • as part of the Rosplatform products, fresh fixes and new functions that are not available during simple re-assembly/use of open upstream versions

• Commercial full-cycle support from local vendor - including necessary code corrections, release of operational updates and improvements for the needs of Russian customers
• Finished product with continuous development and roadmap

Technical part

• Two types of virtualization in one solution:
  • virtual machines on a hypervisor -with increased performance by 30-40%
  • containers with high density - up to 2 more virtual environments on the same hardware

• Integrated visual tools for unified management of virtual machines, containers (graphical web interface) and storage
• Built-in backup (backup)
• Built-in upgrade and migration tools
• Non-Reboot Kernel Upgrade Tools (Non-Reboot Security Patch)
• More than 200 patches of upstream components for optimizing operation and correcting errors - including adaptive memory management policies
• Windows Guest Utilities
• Ability to work with OpenStack
• Integration with Distributed Data WarehouseR-Storage for Converged Systems

2016