VMWare
Moving on to the next generation IT
Financial giant Merrill Lynch is building a stateless data center where it can dynamically combine capacity with operating system and application components to meet its computing needs in real time.
“What we want to get to is someone who comes in and says ‘I need X amount of capacity, I need it for this amount of time, I need it 24 by 7 or I need 20 minutes of capacity and at the end of the month I need 100 units of capacity’ as opposed to ‘I need X number of servers’,” said Jeffrey Birnbaum, managing director and chief technology architect at Merrill Lynch. “This is the shared utility computing model. It is moving away from the dedicated [server or desktop] idea.”
Very interesting. I wrote a while back that the next generation infrastructure should be one in which the application, the infrastructure follows the sun. In effect, everything runs and is hosted wherever the energy costs or carbon footprint is cheapest at that point in time. For example, during London business hours, my infrastructure might be hosted in New York or Sydney, where my other data centers are my bcp, my disaster recovery. That I might take the Sydney data center down to upgrade the ESX servers, the switches firmware etc, and carry out system maintenance without impact to the business or the end user. Where the IT service, the actual web sites, Citrix applications, in-house applications and workload is virtual, and managed according to the infrastructure capacity, the service level agreements and infrastructure availability.
To achieve this you need 3 key things:
- Understanding the application workload requirements
- Abstract the application from the infrastructure
- Have a billing system, a way of providing, managing and supporting service that works with this - decommission the concept that it’s my server. It’s not - you’re buying utility, workload.
Virtualization talk continues
You can always tell when a technology is about to go mainstream; the cutting edge starts to blur the lines with competing or related technologies. PCs become multimedia devices. Cell phones become … well, you name it.
The same seems to be happening with the highly praised virtual desktop. While it was once viewed as virtualization’s answer to the thin client, a new generation of systems is hitting the market claiming to usher in everything from fully centralized computing to the “virtualized workspace.”
There’s a lot of talk about virtualization, how people are deploying their virtual infrastructure, if it’s time to make the desktop virtual etc. What you need to decide within your environment, your business where the key benefits, key drivers are for you.
Virtualization of the desktop certainly is the way forward from a support standpoint, and possibly in terms of energy efficiency, but we need to establish what elements of the IT service we want, what we need and how far we want to go, Citrix everything? Or have virtual desktops for each user? Does each user need a pc? A virtual instance? Can we not do everything they need online in some way?
Interview about virtualization
Virtualization is one of the very few technologies that is a perfect “Go Green”, it not only saves on electricity but also saves capital and operational cost for companies. Virtualization has already started transforming computing as we know it (at least as we used to know it). VMWare, the virtualization technology pioneer is bundling their hypervision software into servers, very soon all servers will be virtualization enabled by default. As more and more companies adopt virtualization, demand for virtualization skills from engineer to Admins will increase ( and we are already seeing it).
I did an email interview with odinjobs about virtualization, including how to get into it and advice in terms of evaluating the technology. The post also includes answers to the same question from Scott Lowe and Bob Plankers.
Introducing new guy need not take forever
Network-delivered computing company Teradici and Dell have collaborated to add Teradici’s PC-over-IP, PCoIP, technology to select Dell Precision workstations.
The PCoIP technology will be integrated with Dell’s Precision R5400 workstation and FX100 remote access product for engineering, product design, animation, and digital imaging.
With the addition of the PCoIP technology, Dell said its Precision platform will offer high resolution, full frame 3D graphics and HD media, with full USB interoperability and secure access for remote workstation users, to enable centrally managed access between the high-performance workstation in the datacenter and a stateless desktop device.
I remain a big fan of the Teradici solution, I saw a demo at the blade systems insight conference and it looks like a great solution for desktop virtualization. It will be interesting to see how Dell can utilize this in the desktop virtualization, trader desktop areas - could we see the Dell virtual trader workstation solution? The Dell blade pc?
The benefits of the virtual desktop in terms of security (hardware and software) as well as the operational benefits of a centralized solution can be very impressive. I wonder if this is the next big thing not just in the city (where we talk about the traders, the developers with their several pcs), but the small/medium business. Where adding a new team member, rebuilding that desktop might simply mean rebooting, deploying a new virtual machine, not the current physical deploy pc, install Windows image, configure for user and everything else. Where bringing a new user on stream might take 30 minutes rather than days - those conversations I’ve had with CIO’s, I can bring a new guy on site in days, but it might take me weeks to set him up, to get him a working computer and email account.
Could it not all be scripted, all part of the click to deploy new user function - deploy a new virtual machine, and run the configure user scripts?
Verari continues to innovate blades for VMWare
http://virtualization.sys-con.com/read/617686.htm
Verari Systems announced that the Verari Systems’ VB1257 VMware ESX 3.5 certified blade delivers twice the number of VMware virtual machines per blade than similar competitive blade offerings while consuming 50% less power. On a per VMware image basis, the VB1257 for the BladeRack 2 XL (BR2-XL) platform provides better total cost of ownership than any competing blade server products. VMware provides TAP program members with tools to develop products that are complementary to VMware virtualization software and help deliver high-value solutions to our joint customers.
The Verari Systems’ VB1257 blade is certified on VMware ESX 3.5 and powered by the latest low power Quad-Core Intel Xeon Processors. When combined with the BR2-XL platform, the solution delivers twice the number of VMware virtual machines with energy efficiency, density and scalability while reducing operational expenses.
Configuring the hypervisor, the application or the layered components to your platform is the best way to achieve the most from your infrastructure. Ensuring that the optimal driver packs, firmware and configurations are deployed can change the results of performance and reliability not just of the core hardware, the blade, the server but of the components, the fibre cards etc.
These new Verari blade servers sound interesting, I’ll need to check them out, the fewer physical blades, network cards and infrastructure I have to deploy to deliver my IT, the lower the provisioning, operational and support costs. This becomes an ever important concept as the cost of energy and cooling continues to rise.
VMWare Infrastructure 3 gains award
PALO ALTO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–VMware, Inc., (NYSE:VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced that VMware Infrastructure 3, the industry-leading virtualization and management suite, was named the winner of the Best of Tech Ed 2008 IT Professional Award in the virtualization category by Penton Media’s Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine. The winners were announced at the Tech Ed 2008 IT Professionals Conference in Orlando, Florida last month. More information is available at www.WindowsITPro.com/awards.
The Best of Tech Ed 2008 IT Professional Awards recognize companies who offer the most innovative products in the industry and who are leading the charge in their category. Entrants were judged based on strategic importance to the market, competitive advantage, and value to customers. The judges reviewed more than 220 products and services submitted for the contest and chose 29 finalists, from which one winner was selected for each of the 10 categories.
“Choosing from such a wide variety of outstanding entries is a challenge every year, and the quality of this year’s entries was particularly high,” said Karen Forster, group editorial and strategy director for Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine. “The winners clearly reflect our judging criteria: innovation, strategic importance to the market, competitive advantage and exceptional value to customers.”
Well done to VMWare, virtualization of the desktop and the server continues to bring new opportunities for business, for platform innovation as well as enabling and empowering the end user to have a more adaptive infrastructure. Whether you choose VMWare, x-VM, Hyper-V, Xen or the others, that you realize the objectives you set out to, that technology can act as an enabler to your business is key.
Using virtualization as an enabler
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=1A0B5DF0-2284-40A0-B717-A6DD1649A14B
VMware, a provider of virtualization solutions, has announced that Campbell Clinic, a center of orthopaedic teaching and practice, has deployed VMware’s Infrastructure 3 to virtualize its mission-critical applications and create a flexible, easily administered virtual infrastructure.
When its server infrastructure was due for a technology refresh, Campbell Clinic faced the choice of either replacing its servers entirely with physical boxes, or utilizing a combination of hardware and software to create a virtual infrastructure. Campbell Clinic selected the VMware Infrastructure 3 suite as the best solution for its virtualization needs.
Check out this article which is talking about how this clinic used VMWare as a way of deploying more flexible and manageable infrastructure. It’s always great to read/speak with people and see what they’re doing to achieve their objectives with the technology - are they using blades? What type of virtualization are they using?
VMWare and virtualization in China
VMware has found a partner to help it spread the gospel of virtualization in China. It’s teamed up with the leading Chinese server maker, Inspur Servers, which will sell, distribute, and support VMware’s Infrastructure suite.
CEO Diane Greene said VMware believes the alliance will allow builders of Chinese data centers to conserve energy and consolidate servers at an earlier stage than their European and American counterparts. China’s rapid growth “has spurred the need for customers to adopt the best solutions for meeting business demands while enabling a green data center,” she said.
The potential growth in demand for infrastructure, for IT services continues in the BRIC countries including China, as we bring more consumers online, bring new services and create new opportunities, we need cost and energy efficient infrastructure to achieve this working within our current and future operational constraints. It will be great to see how companies like VMWare reach out to these differing regions, what differences there are in the way they do business, in their requirements etc. We’ll have to see, do check it out.
Managing the virtual world
Fortisphere CTO John Suit meets with a lot of companies who are trying to get a better grip on managing virtualization. In the field lately, he sees the results of the virtualization downside that IT leaders have been telling us about for months: VMs roll out awfully quickly. This speed is a blessing and a curse, since each VM you create is another one you must track, manage and secure. Unfortunately, it becomes even more complicated to keep track of VM sprawl and related worries when you start playing with more than one vendor’s virtualization technology.
The challenges around virtual server management can be just as significant in many ways, particularly if you consider management from an administration standpoint: licensing, monitoring, security patching and billing.
We also have to consider the marginal cost element, that an extra virtual machine might require additional infrastructure, understanding what we have, what systems/workload is being hosted on which hardware becomes key. Understanding workloads against capacity, thinking about pre-provisioning can be something to consider, that the capacity should grow with demand, that as blade enclosure 7 or the last few rack servers start getting used to host virtual machines, IT should be provisioning or ordering extra capacity.
As with your physical estate though, we need not only someone to manage these machines, but to manage the estate:
- What servers do we have - are they still in use, can they be decommissioned
- What systems/applications have similar workload profiles - could we host them on the same infrastructure
- Can we consolidate server roles - can we not have one large virtual/physical machine running SQL than 6 virtual machines
- What level of patches/hot fixes and layered component levels are we at - to keep everything in line with vendor requirements
- Can we make small changes to improve performance/reliability?
- Reporting on system utilization/use - does that virtual machine need that much disk space/memory/cpu? Does it justify a virtual machine or could we share load with another virtual machine - shared infrastructure
Council benefits from Virtualization using VMWare
http://www.publictechnology.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=16220
Bracknell Forest Borough Council, which provides support services to over 115,000 residents in Central Berkshire, Southern England, has used VMware’s virtualization and management platform, VMware Infrastructure 3, to drive down operating costs, be more flexible, improve business continuity and disaster recovery, and accelerate the delivery of new applications and services to the public.
Among the new services rolled out on VMware Infrastructure are an Integrated Children Services (ICS) system, which is used in the delivery of cutting edge social services to children at risk and in care, and Pericles, a government-sector Revenues and Benefits application, which has allowed the council to streamline its council tax and benefits application and payments processes.
Following an audit of the Council’s infrastructure, which showed that its server farm was running at only around 10 percent of capacity, the management team saw an opportunity to streamline its operations and boost utilization using virtualization. The IT department built a business case for virtualization as part of the Council’s ‘Invest to Save’ initiative, which funds projects that deliver savings in the longer term. Working with technology partner Sol-Tec and Intercept-IT, Bracknell Forest began deploying VMware Infrastructure 3 in June 2007.
“VMware has had a tremendous effect on our IT infrastructure and has drastically improved our ability to deliver applications to the organization much more quickly,” said Richard Dawson, IT Services Manager, Bracknell Forest Borough Council. “On cost savings alone, the benefits are huge – we will save around £75,000 a year on our annual server hardware refresh, while our power and cooling costs have been reduced by around 20%.”
Very cool, it’s always great to see how people are benefiting from the technology, as well as the technologies they have used to achieve this, interestingly the article mentions the power and management benefits. That being able to deploy systems in shorter timescales, allowing IT to be more responsive to the end user needs, very cool. Do check it out.
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