Virtualized Simulation Environment

1. Virtualized Simulation Environment Running OneSAF in a Virtual Computing Environment

2. Background • The Maneuver Support Battle Lab, Fort Leonard Wood transitioned to virtualization to increase the lab’s ability to support concurrent experiments without having to provision individual hardware platforms. • Virtualization has allowed the Battle Lab to transform and “virtualize” the hardware resources of x86-based computers; including the CPU, RAM, hard drive, network controllers and SAN Storage. This effort allowed us to create a fully functional virtual machine environment that can run its own operating system and applications as if it were a “real” hardware workstation or server platform.

3. Hardware & Software • The Maneuver Support Battle Lab selected “best of breed” commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software for our virtualization implementation. • Our hardware platforms include IBM Blades, Network Appliance storage and VMware ESX Server and Virtual Center.

4. System Overview • ESX Server allows us to: • Run multiple virtual machines which share hardware resources without interfering with each other • Safely run several operating systems and applications at the same time on a single computer • The resources of these single computers (blade servers) can be grouped to create resource pools. Then, the administrator is able to assigned the virtual machines into the respective resource pools.

5. Blade Center Architecture • Each blade center has 12 external network connections. When you combine these connections into two six-port ether-channel groups, the blade center effectively provides seamless network failover and a substantially larger network pipe for virtual machine traffic. • The back plane of the blade center allows 4 GB bus speed communications between blade servers, giving a near instantaneous traffic flow between Operating Systems in the virtual environment.

6. OneSAF • There were several testing and integration events, in preparation for Omni Fusion 08, which assessed the new OneSAF Federation on the HLA architecture. • The MSBL started off using a cluster of Common Hardware Platform PCs, then migrating to virtual machines for the cluster. • The cluster consisted of SCAMT, INTEROP, Six SIMCOREs, a battle-master and operator MCT. The virtualized machines performed as well as the real machines.

7. OneSAF • During the Omni Fusion 08 experiment the Battle Lab ran 24 virtual machines with Red Hat Enterprise Linux for OneSAF. • The virtual machines were use for the following OneSAF capabilities. • SCAM-T • INTEROP • SIMCORE

8. OneSAF • The virtual machine count does not include the four Windows 2003 servers that were running in our virtual environment to provide the following network services. • DNS • Windows Active Directory Member Server • Anti-Virus Server • IBM Tivoli Operating System Deployment Server

9. OneSAF • This was all accomplished with great success on 1 IBM Blade Center Chassis with 13 Blade Servers. • The Blade Center Chassis capacity is14 blades: • The fourteenth slot was occupied by an IBM Workstation Blade that was being tested.

10. Value Added Benefits • Our heat signature was also drastically reduced. Prior to the implementation of the blades, each virtual machine would have been a dedicated 1U server, which had a heat signature of about 930 BTUs per hour. • The success of our virtual environment during Omni Fusion 08 proved that the technology works, is viable, and saves taxpayer dollars.

11. Path Forward • The following events will utilize the virtual environment running OneSAF • Omni Fusion 09 • Virtual Base Defense Operation Center • The virtual machines will be used to run the following OneSAF capabilities: • SCAM-T • INTEROP • SIMCORE • OPERATOR

12. Questions