By Barb Goldworm
published: Friday, October 19 2007
To kick off this series for Virtual Strategy Magazine, I wanted to share some of our top-level view of various areas of virtualization – including what we’re hearing from users, the state of the industry for that technology segment, and what’s new and interesting in that area. This month, I’m starting with server virtualization, and next month will look at virtual desktop options. In the coming months, I’ll move on to other areas including presentation virtualization, application virtualization, isolation and streaming, and virtualization management. I’d love to dig into your favorite issues as well, so if you have questions, stories, opinions or suggestions you’d like to share, I invite you to send them to me at
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, to help shape our future discussion. If you’re new to virtualization and need help with the alphabet soup, there are some resources listed at the end of this column that can help you get started.
Server Virtualization
The past few years have shown dramatic growth in server virtualization adoption, with 50-75% of large IT organizations currently implementing or planning to deploy this year. Still, virtualized servers only represent 5% of the total number of servers installed, so there’s lots more room to go. There are now many large enterprises that have successfully deployed large-scale virtual server implementations, most running some version of VMware, some running SWSoft’s Virtuozzo (which is actually OS virtualization rather than server virtualization, more akin to Solaris containers), some running Microsoft Virtual Server, and a small number running Xen variants. Many shops are running pilots or have implemented solely for consolidating some of their low-utilized, basic function servers. A large number of shops are still at this low-hanging fruit phase – virtualizing the easy ones (avoiding the I/O issues of virtualizing database servers or the politics of virtual clients) and reaping the easy cost reduction benefits of consolidation while getting their virtual feet wet.
VMware
VMware has largely owned the server virtualization space, with their enterprise class ESX product line, now matured to Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3). The management capabilities of VI3 have grown to be very sophisticated – with Virtual Center, VMotion, HA capability, Dynamic Resource Scheduling (DRS), Virtual Consolidated Backup, and the new and soon-to-come features of Site Recovery Manager (for DR), Storage VMotion and Fault Tolerant (lockstep) capability (more on these in future columns). At VMworld, VMware also announced their new embedded hypervisor ESX 3i, which will be available on IBM, HP, Dell, NEC and Fujitsu platforms, as well as their most recent acquisition of Dunes which does workflow management. The recent IPO was hugely successful, and VMware has clearly been leading the race.
Interestingly, despite the advanced management capabilities available with VI3, there seems to be a large part of the VMware base that has not yet upgraded. Some users say this is because the migration is not easy. Some say it’s too expensive. Many just don’t have the staff or the time – they’re so busy wrestling the alligators, that they can’t get find time to drain the swamp. We’ve heard this song before. While we include all the advanced management features on the decision criteria matrices and RFPs, only a small percentage of shops are actually getting to use them. On the high end, though, there are some very sophisticated shops using advanced management tools, and even pushing for more. Eventually, as the market matures, the features will get easier to use, the cost will come down, and better management will become an option (if not a necessity) for almost everyone.
Citrix
The Citrix acquisition of startup XenSource could make for some interesting changes in this space. Citrix has a strong history in application access/delivery, while the XenSource team was the group that developed the Xen open source code, now used in other server virtualization and OS offerings including Virtual Iron, SUSE Linux and Red Hat Linux. XenSource also productized it into a range of products (XenServer through XenEnterprise), some free, but all fairly low cost. XenSource describes Xen as the engine, and XenEnterprise as the very fast car. The most recent version of XenEnterprise (v4) has added a number of management features like XenMotion and XenCenter to better compete with the management of VI3, while challenging VMware’s high priced model. XenEnterprise v4 also includes an interesting integration with Symantec’s Storage Foundation, offering a more open storage alternative to VMware’s proprietary VMFS (Virtual Machine File System). Another XenSource partner, Marathon Technology, just won the "Best of VMworld Award" for their everRun product which brings Lockstep Fault Tolerance capabilities to the XenSource platform today. XenSource had also announced their embedded hypervisor offering prior to VMware’s launch at VMworld. As the Xen momentum has grown, it has started to become more of an enterprise contender. Since June, XenSource doubled their customer base to more than 1100.
With the acquisition closing, (pending final legal and regulatory steps, it is expected to close by the end of October), as XenSource merges into Citrix, there are some significant opportunities. As VMware has owned the server virtualization market, Citrix has owned the centralized desktop market (aka Server Based Computing, Presentation Virtualization, Terminal Services, etc.) and touts a customer base of over 200,000 companies using Citrix to deliver applications and over 70 million corporate users touched somehow by Citrix. In addition, Citrix has considerable resources to bring both to the XenSource product line and to leveraging and integrating Xen technology into the rest of Citrix.
The other interesting aspect of this is the relationship with Microsoft. While the Citrix/Microsoft relationship has had some ups and downs, it has clearly been good for both parties. With Citrix Presentation Server riding on Terminal Services Licenses, and adding significant capabilities on top, it has been extremely successful for both. XenSource also had an interesting licensing arrangement with Microsoft, which will guarantee some level of cooperation and interoperability around Xen, Linux, Windows and Windows Server Virtualization (aka Viridian). Both XenSource and Citrix have teams in Redmond, and it will be interesting to see how the Xen/Microsoft future might parallel the Citrix/Microsoft past and what this alliance will mean to VMware. Overall, there is great opportunity, pending successful execution.
Microsoft
Microsoft has had virtual server technology for several years, but given that Virtual Server is not hypervisor based, it has not penetrated the enterprise market. The Viridian hypervisor (now called Windows Server Virtualization), an add-on to Windows Server 2008 is just now making its first real appearance in the marketplace as a CTP (Community Technical Preview) included in the Windows Server 2008 beta 3 Release Candidate.
Although it is being released without several key management features as previously announced by Microsoft (e.g., live migration akin to VMotion, hot-add of storage, networking, memory, and processor resources, and support for 64-core systems), early response has been good. In addition, Microsoft just released Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager, which offers virtualization management capability integrated in with other Systems Center tools. The initial release works with Virtual Server 2005 R2, but the next release will also manage Viridian. Though coming late to the hypervisor party, Viridian will have a significant impact on the marketplace, both in pricing and in market share. When Virtual Server became free, VMware responded by making VMware Server free. As a free Microsoft hypervisor enters the game, the rules will change again.
As the market shifts away from a largely one-horse race, hypervisors will become ubiquitous, and management will be the key. We’ll drill down into management issues, and look at the new OVF (Open Virtual Machine Format) virtualization management standard from the DMTF and what it might mean, in a future column.
Resources
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Barb Goldworm is president and chief analyst of Focus Consulting, a market research, analyst and consulting firm focused on systems, software and storage. Barb has spent 30 years in various senior management, marketing, sales, engineering, technical and industry analyst roles with IBM, StorageTek, Novell, Enterprise Management Associates and several successful startup ventures. Barb began working with virtualization at IBM in the late 1970s (as a VM technical specialist), and later was VP of Marketing for the company that developed the first PC software distribution product in the mid-1980s (acquired by Novell in 1992). In 2006, she was commissioned by Wiley Publishing to write a book on blades - she agreed but changed the focus of the book to include a major emphasis on virtualization - the book was released in 2007, entitled "Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs", available on Amazon.com, Borders and Barnes and Noble.
Barb is a frequent keynote speaker, chair, and presenter at industry events. In 2007, she chaired the Server Blade Summit on Blades and Virtualization, and has been the keynote speaker for numerous Virtualization Summits this year. She also created and chaired the Interop Network Storage Track and has been one of the top 3 ranked analyst/ knowledge expert speakers at SNW.
Barb has published extensively since the 1990s, and has been a regular contributor to Network World, Computerworld, Computerworld Storage Networking World Online, Tech Target, and now Virtual Strategy Magazine. She has authored numerous research studies, landscape reports, and business and technical white papers on systems, software, storage, storage networking and enterprise management. Barb can be reached at
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