Virtualisation - buzz words and facts
Everyday we hear that virtualisation is more than just carving up big servers; more than providing cost effective IT; more than gaining security in IT infrastructures; but what is it really?
According to IDC surveys, 35% of servers bought in 2007 are in the process of being virtualised, while more than 52% of servers purchased in 2008 will be as well. Of the remaining servers bought, more than half (54%) will be virtualised in the next 18 months. IDC also claim that the largest growth areas for virtualisation are in improving disaster recovery, improving back up and expanding availability of computing resources. Is virtualisation a real technology gain or is it a transient change like distributed computing was in the 1980s?
Virtualisation is mentioned in all of the trendy fields associated with the computing industry including business continuity, blade servers, grid, security, data centre automation and green computing. These are more than buzz words, they are the future of the computing industry. But unless you are in the heart of IT in your company, you will not have come across the need to know about virtualisation as 90% of what virtualisation delivers to your organisation is unseen and as a consequence, not widely appreciated.
IBM was the first company to introduce virtualisation as a technology back in 1972 and was primarily a way to consolidate groups of expensive smaller servers into larger, partitioned servers. From that day onwards we associate virtualisation with partitioning servers. However virtualisation technology has moved on and you can now have storage, network, application and desktop virtualisation.
Server virtualisation – is the process of combining a group of complete server operating systems with their applications into a virtualised environment. This provides the business with a reduced total cost of ownership and provides highly available IT resources by delivering greater efficiencies from server hardware.
Storage virtualisation – addresses the problem that storage devices are never ‘fit and forget’ as they will fill with applications and data, and they need to be backed up and secured. This problem gets more complicated as you add different storage technologies to your network. Storage virtualisation fixes this problem by gathering all of the disparate storage devices and
presents them to a server as a single logical entity with one point of management.
Network virtualisation – is really a subset of the functionality within the virtualisation software when you create virtual servers. The virtual servers are connected together using ‘virtual switches’. The network administrators can decide to connect the virtual switches to physical network adapters or they can be used by the internal virtual servers only. This addresses two primary
business needs of security and LAN traffic optimisation. By keeping the intra-server communications within the virtualisation environment, network administrators can ensure that data traffic is free from eaves dropping, while reducing the amount of data streaming over the physical LAN.
Application virtualisation – is a process of centralising the execution and delivery of applications within an organisation. This requires a set of technologies to manage some of a company’s most expensive resources – applications. In effect, the applications run from a remote server (or virtual servers) rather than on the user’s computer. The application’s DLL (Dynamic Link Library) are redirected to the server’s file system. This provides the organisation with easier application management, upgrading and migration; while optimising the utilisation of available hardware resources. As a consequence, organisations see an increase in cost savings on software and operating system licences.
Desktop virtualisation – is different from application virtualisation in one principle way. Application virtualisation is delivered to the desktop from the servers but uses the operating system on the desktop to manage the desktop’s hardware functions – desktop virtualisation is the server delivering a complete desktop with operating system to the terminal or hardware employed
by the user. In a virtual environment, the provisioning of virtual desktops requires a brokering system in the virtual environment to automatically allocate virtual desktops to users. This allows an organisation to deploy Windows-based thin clients. Finding the right combination of virtualisation technologies for your organisation is important if you are to benefit from:
• Upgrade cycles that are free from manufacturer influence
• Providing support for legacy systems on modern, state-of-the-art hardware
• Dynamic resource sharing that allows servers to be balanced and changed dynamically in response to changes in workload priorities
• Security and fault isolation that helps to increase availability when using an appropriate virtualisation middleware
• Facilitating the use of pooled, centralised storage systems for each server or application
• Maintenance with zero downtime.
Finally, according to IDC, the fastest growth in uses for virtualisation in the past year has been in improving disaster recovery, backup and increasing availability.
Virtualisation Capacity Planning at Equanet
To properly assess your organisation’s capacity and ability to create a virtual environment, Equanet offer a comprehensive Capacity Planning service. In this Service:
• Initially assess the physical infrastructure and define the servers that need to be monitored with you
• Will analyse the servers for a period of time, normally 30 days (to ensure that monthly peaks are observed)
• Build a report to detail from the data gathered
• Analyse which servers are a fit for virtualisation
• Determine how much memory, processing power and i/o will be required in terms of physical infrastructure to support the virtual environment
• Establish server and shared storage specifications to future proof the solution for 2, 3 or 5 years
• Deliver the report to you and discuss various options, such as “aggressive” consolidation, high redundancy and high capacity.
For more details, please contact your account manager.
