Virtualisation will lower costs, reduce disaster recovery times and allow for truly mobile working, writes.
If you are involved in any way with IT or just in business with some input into planning and budgets, you have been hearing the word ‘virtualisation' with increasing frequency since the start of the decade.
In fact, anyone even vaguely interested in technology has been hearing the V-word recently. Last year was deemed ‘The Year of Virtualisation' by some sections of the IT industry (prematurely, as is the tradition).
Virtualisation began in the data storage field as an architecture with technical advantages and rapidly moved on to servers. Now, virtualisation has become something akin to a new universal strategy or even philosophy with great promise for all enterprise computing needs across the spectrum.
Virtualisation may sound more complex than the traditional server, network and PC infrastructure that we all become used to. What is actually happening with virtualisation is that the total IT infrastructure is becoming more centralised and secure, but also more flexible in practice.
That should probably be the main driver, but most experts among IT vendors will suggest that the economies offered by virtualisation have been the principal motivation so far, especially for larger organisations. “It is being led jointly by the needs of customer organisations and the continuing innovation in virtualisation technology,” said Lewis Gee, senior regional director, VMware for Northern Europe.
“The industry and its clients are al l now clear that virtual infrastructure completely changes the way we look at our whole computing environment. You can combine centralisation and control, with far greater flexibility for applications and services to users.”
He points out that both conceptually and practically, it is the ‘soft’ aspect of virtualisation that transforms: “When your whole computing infrastructure, platforms and applications, is just a file or set of files, a whole world of opportunities opens up. It is actually portable, in the sense that it can be physically hosted anywhere and any way that suits the organisation and the applications services it wishes to give its users.”
A major phenomenon is the virtual desktop, where each individual user's desktop with applications, settings and data is just a file sitting on a server somewhere, anywhere. A user has exactly what set of applications he or she needs, set up to personal preferences within corporate policy, yet is not tethered to any specific device.
One of the many benefits now being reaped from virtualisation, Lewis Gee adds, is the sheer ease of implementing business continuity and disaster recovery solutions. “Once again, the ease of management is accompanied by very significantly reduced costs in both capital and operating expenditure.”
One fundamental reason for virtualisation is that the general level of utilisation of computing resources is very low. “It will surprise non-technical people to hear that today's smart multi-processor servers may have an actual day-today utilisation average of about seven per cent of resources,” said Bryan Hickson, System X and blade centre manager, IBM Ireland.
“Perhaps, this is because application vendors inevitably over-specify their requirements to customers, who are willing, because there is always some fear that smart new projects might run out of horsepower and let the side down.” But there is of course also the tradition of one application, one server and the need to build in capacity for the future. So, the solid appeal of virtualisation is in the prospects of greater efficiency and the ability to readily re-allocate resources.
Another key point he makes is that most organisations have a mix-and-match set of systems that has grown over time, a lot of which will be proprietary. “Virtualisation offers the prospect of uniting al l of that in a coherent way. The main selling point in today's environment is reduced total cost of ownership, rather important when it is usually the CFO [chief financial officer] signing off on new IT investments. You can be looking at savings of about 25 per cent in capital costs and as much as 75 per cent in ongoing operational overhead.”
There are also virtualisation benefits in taking advantage of new technology developments: “It is clearly the best way to manage multi-core processing efficiently, while on the data storage side the move to large enterprise arrays and projects such as ILM[Information Life Cycle Management] implementation can be undertaken without disrupting the business.”
Hewlett-Packard is another major vendor clearly involved in both data storage and servers which has embraced virtualisation: “We see it also encompassing network resources and moving out to the desktop,” said Karl Jordan, enterprise storage manager, HP Ireland. All data storage is ultimately about virtualisation, he said, in the sense that it is not the technology that counts but the importance of the information to the organisation.
“Yes, there are technologies coming along that will help us cope with accelerating demand for capacity and of course the IT industry will continue to respond as it has done to other challenges in the past.” HP is extending virtualisation out beyond the device or the SAN [storage area network] to external storage connected in almost limitless series.
“So long as the data transfer speeds are able to cope, you can extend storage device connections almost indefinitely and yet treat the entire as one virtualised pool.”
Within that logical pool, Karl Jordan explains, there can be a wide range of physical equipment. The salient point is that it can vary from high-performance enterprise data storage for important current applications all the way out through tiers of cheaper, lower specification disk arrays.
“It's as if you have ILM and data storage tiering all in the one box, more easily managed according to your business rules and with compelling economics. You can keep adding storage up to a theoretical, but untried limit of perhaps 300 petabytes.” He adds the important point that the storage systems can be heterogeneous in technology and vendors.
Another concept now being applied in practice by HP is ‘thin provisioning' which can, according to Jordan, get over a problem that is common in all storage systems. “Essentially, most enterprise applications need to have a certain amount of storage capacity allocated exclusively to them. Administrators will prudently add perhaps a year's worth or more of additional capacity to allow for growth because re-provisioning can be cumbersome and disruptive.”
Thin provisioning is like virtualisation, Jordan explains, in that it allows the space allocations from the general pool to be nominal. It allows space to be easily allocated to servers, on a just-enough and just-in-time basis. “Taking out all of the spare capacity for dozens or even hundreds of applications, which will usually be in the top tier systems, can free up a lot of the most expensive data storage capacity.”
In terms of the overall IT market, the most important commitment to virtualisation in some respects is that by Microsoft. It has entered the server virtualisation fray with Virtual Server and Virtual PC and now Windows Server 2008, which will have virtualisation built in. Significantly, Microsoft describes its virtualisation vision as extending “from the desktop to the data centre.”
Just about 5 per cent of the world's millions of servers are virtualised right now, according to Bill O'Brien, business lead for servers and tools, Microsoft Ireland. “Desktop virtualisation is in its infancy. But it is very clear that virtualisation is the way of the future and we believe that growth from now on will be exponential. Our survey of Irish enterprises last year, showed that over 60 per cent have tested or are evaluating server virtualisation.”
We are seeing the technology maturing, according to O'Brien, and costs reducing. At the same time, high-performance hardware allows organisations to consolidate their systems on fewer physical servers. “Reductions of the order of 10:1 are quite common and we seen instances as high as 16:1with modern multi-core servers as well as much higher utilisation within those boxes, up to perhaps 70 or even 80 per cent.”
Driving costs down is clearly a major motivator for adoption of these technologies. But O'Brien says that the Microsoft ‘Dynamic IT' vision will also serve to answer the restrictions of perceived or actual technical complexity requiring external IT expertise. “In the near future, if you are a person who can set up or patch an operating system you will be able to set up a virtual server environment, with our Hyper-V software out of the box. A simple to use onscreen management console will give terrific capability right across an organisation's IT resources.”
However, it has to be acknowledged that although the Irish market is well informed, actual adoption of virtualisation is at a very early stage according to Justin Owens, managing director, Commtech, VMware distributor in Ire land. He is happy to accept that the drivers in the immediate future are going to be the practical ones like cost reduction. “The selling points are consolidation of server and storage resources, the central IT resources that are common to all organisations.”
Virtualisation also enables more flexible, simple and economic solutions for business continuity and disaster recovery. VMware technology partner Vizioncore has developed recovery solutions that can even be used in smaller organisations with no in-house IT expertise. “We would be looking at say five to 50 servers, which would of course be even fewer physical machines,” said Owens.
It might take 24 hours or several days to restore a traditional server if it goes down, he points out.
“With a virtual machine and say about 750 gigabytes of data that could be done in 10 minutes. This illustrates the point that virtualisation as an infrastructure strategy, is now well within the aspiration level of medium-sized Irish businesses. Disaster recovery is just one of the benefits, but it is so dramatically superior that it enhances the business appeal of VMware in this space.”
Virtualisation is a mature technology, the industry experts agree, but of course some elements are proven over a longer period and servers and data storage would be top of the list. Appliance Technology is the specialist company within the Morse Group, which combines its status as platinum partner for storage vendor NetApp with VMware virtualisation consultancy.
“Businesses are facing multiple challenges and virtualisation is succeeding where it is seen to answer any of those needs effectively,” said Sandra Dunne, general manager, Appliance Technology. “So consolidating on fewer servers with better utilisation, cutting storage capacity requirements by maybe 50 per cent or more and reducing energy costs have al l been strong drivers. The Irish market is cautious anyway - in terms of accepting new technology - but strong, proven bottom-line benefits will always sell.”
That said, Dunne reckons that more and more organisations are looking at the other major gains and opportunities presented by virtualisation strategies.
“Flexibility can provide significant business benefits. For example, virtualisation and then data cloning for replication can lead to very effective and speedy disaster recovery Solutions. The flip side of that same coin, is that new resources-from an additional server to a new application or a complete branch systems roll-out can be delivered much faster.”
One vendor that is naturally happy to play up the transforming nature of virtualisation as against simple cost-base arguments is Citrix.
With its own reputation based on delivering thin client computing, including web-based ‘any time, any where' applications, Citrix embraced the virtualisation concept.
That commitment led to the acquisition, late last year, of Xensource, recognised as the open-source leader in virtualisation and both the leader of the Xen developer community (based on the work of the Xen project in the University of Cambridge) and a value-added seller of enterprise solutions based on it.
Xensource itself is working with both Microsoft and the Linux vendors including Novell and Red Hat. “The exciting thing is that virtualisation impacts on everything and is going to deliver unprecedented agility and flexibility to any and every type of organisation,” said Patrick Irwin, product marketing manager for Ireland and Britain, Citrix.
“It has enormous appeal to the CEO [chief executive officer], the CIO and the financial side because it brings advantages to the business and to application delivery from a centralised, secure and easily controlled central platform. It then does all of that more effectively and at lower cost than traditional technology.”
The various strands of virtualisation have already reached maturity, according to Irwin, with proven performance from the data centre to the individual desktop.
“If you think about it philosophically, applications and data are what an organisation runs on. Virtualisation effectively decouples the hardware and the software, which can then be re-assembled in various ways to suit the needs of the business.”
“Traditionally, you built a physical infrastructure to get the applications to the devices your users were working on. Today, the solutions are much more fluid,” Irwin said, “starting with mobility and multiple possible working locations - like home or hotel - but also partner premises, airports and so on.
“Users reach their applications in various ways and the virtualised desktop is an ideal solution not just in terms of central control and security, but also complete flexibility.”
The simply enormous potential of the virtual desktop is also emphasised by Paul Hourican, managing director, PFH Technology, an Irish VMware partner for some years and some major clients such as An Bord Ga/is.
“There has been a lot of progress in the data storage and server areas but, so far, the virtualisation trick the market has really missed is the desktop. We have rapidly developed very complex structures around the needs of remote working, but now the combination of a virtualised desktop and internet access will satisfy almost all such needs.”
A virtualised desktop really delivers on the IT industry's long standing promise to allow work ‘any where, any time, on any device', Hourican believes. But like our other interviewees he concedes that the immediate benefits of reducing the numbers of physical servers, doing more with less, is the major appeal in this market.
“But another major factor is the ease and quality of disaster recovery compared to traditional technologies. In pharmaceutical and other regulated industries, business continuity planning and assured data restoration is now a key aspect of compliance.” Paul Hourican recalls being involved last year with a complete, multi-server disaster recovery exercise in a client company that took just over two hours, because the data storage and servers were virtualised.
“That would have taken up to eight days using traditional technology. Of course, I could not help thinking that those were also my company's support hours being drastically reduced. But it really illustrates the value of virtualisation in business continuity as in the other areas, essentially because when data and applications are entirely ‘soft' you have ultimate flexibility.”
The point is echoed by Kevin Reid, SureSKills, which has worked with Microsoft, VMware and Citrix on virtualisation projects: “A whole new level of dynamic infrastructure is now achievable using virtualisation. We are creating infrastructures that are much more resilient, flexible and in line with the aims of the business. For example, end-to-end virtualisation has been the catalyst for extremely large scale consolidation projects, which in turn is enabling more sophisticated remote access, compliance and disaster avoidance.”
There is some customer scepticism still, he believes, so there is an education challenge facing IT people: “We have to convince Irish business that not only has the virtualisation concept made the transition from niche technology to mainstream production environments, but that it can offer benefits across the wider IT infrastructure - like in applications and remote working, and not just in data storage and servers.”
Ireland is generally a cautious IT market, according to Graeme Gordon, professional services manager of IT consultants and trainers SureSkills. “I reckon we are one-and-a-half to two years behind in adopting virtualisation. It is infrastructural and dramatic, so there is a perceived risk. In addition, organisations may see it as something they do not actively need.”
Costs are a genuine issue, Gordon thinks: “Precisely because you are aggregating resources, virtualisation works far better with newer gear. Modern multi-processor servers with lots of Ram are the ideal platform for server virtualisation, for example, with a typical configuration of two quad-core processors and 32GB of Ram.
SureSkills has seen a greater take-up of virtualisation by medium-sized enterprises. “They can see the potential and act decisively. Reducing their servers from ten to 15 down to say two or three makes immediate sense. If their existing servers are more than about a year old they are down to about two or three years more of useful life in any event. These are often also the kind of high value-added enterprises, like professional practices, where the other benefits of virtualisation can be recognised, sheer flexibility for instance. This is where we would be looking for deployment of virtual desktops as a best practice solution for remote working.”
What the V-Word means
In essence, what virtualisation means is that a set of computing elements is pooled as a single resource. The idea is that if you make all of the separate devices effectively invisible below a control layer then those resources can be managed as if everything were one common pool.
It is conceptually simple but often thoroughly confusing. It is clearest in data storage, that exponentially growing business burden. Users and systems administrators can wield everything easily and the organisation's data can be grouped by human or business logic (customers, accounts, in-company e-mail, HR records or whatever) rather than the specific device each application or database is currently running on.
Policies for Information Life Cycle Management (ILM), for example, can automatically move data to less high performance storage and ultimately to archive. Only the underlying storage system needs to be aware of what's on Location X, Device 1, disk 3, etc.
Exactly the same logic is applied to processing power for applications. The ‘one application, one server' tradition goes out the window. The system simply provides as many virtual servers or processing power as the business applications need at any time. For that reason it is a particularly good fit with today's multi-processor servers.
Similarly, with what is effectively a single consolidated computing resource, it is much easier to set and automatically follow business-defined rules of priority. Today's VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) traffic, say, will have priority over everything except, perhaps, mission-critical transaction systems. Now we are into categories of traffic, so the network management is also becoming application-aware and being virtualised.
A major new phenomenon is the virtual desktop, where each individual user's desktop with applications, settings and data is actually just a file sitting on a server somewhere, anywhere.
Virtualisation is now being successfully applied to data storage, operating systems and servers, networks, applications and individual desktops. Like so many other elements of modern IT, however, we should remind ourselves that the concept is actually being reintroduced to the PC world. Virtualisation was first and successfully implemented on IBM mainframes in the 1960s.
VMware was the pioneer in applying the principles to x86 processors (PCs) in the 90s.
One of the fastest growing businesses in the history of the software industry, VMware was acquired by EMC in 2004, but since operated as a wholly owned but independent subsidiary. The storage company is a natural partner since VMware is server-neutral and has alliances with HP, Dell, IBM, Fujitsu-Siemens, Sun and others. It has grown from 300 employees to over 5,000 in ten years.