Day-to-day operation.
WHAT TO STANDARDISE
Templates, from which machines are created Naming Resource allocations by role Monitoring, applied automatically
WHY TEMPLATES
Consistency, and provisioning in minutes rather than hours.
WHAT TO INCLUDE IN A TEMPLATE
A current, patched system Monitoring and backup agents Standard configuration and hardening Nothing unique to one machine
WHAT TO REMOVE BEFORE TEMPLATING
Host identity, keys, and anything that must be unique.
WHY
Duplicated identities cause confusing conflicts.
WHAT SNAPSHOTS PROVIDE
A point-in-time state to return to.
WHAT THEY ARE NOT
A backup.
WHY
They depend on the original storage, and they grow.
WHAT LONG-LIVED SNAPSHOTS CAUSE
Storage exhaustion, and severe performance degradation.
WHAT TO DO
Take one before a change, and remove it once the change is confirmed.
WHAT TO MONITOR
Snapshot age and size.
WHAT LIVE MIGRATION PROVIDES
Moving a running machine between hosts without interruption.
WHAT IT REQUIRES
Shared or replicated storage, and compatible processors.
