Implementing Virtualization: The Importance of Management By Amir Husain published: Tuesday, December 18 2007
Virtualization has taken the enterprise by storm. Recent surveys indicate that a majority of CIOs are contemplating virtualization deployments, even looking beyond server virtualization to areas such as VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure). By removing the dependency an operating system has on a physical server or PC, Virtualization presents a huge opportunity for IT groups to more effectively manage their environments, optimize resource loads for the physical machines at their disposal and even get by with less hardware. Virtualization represents a seismic shift to application rollout, OS deployment and capacity expansion methodologies implemented in the x86 world over the last 25 years. It would be a mistake, however, to get too focused on the Virtualization technology itself.
The Hypervisor or VM Monitor technologies, such as those built by VMware, Microsoft and the Open Source Xen project, are becoming increasingly commoditized. In the long term, they deserve as much focus as any other piece of hardware enablement technology, for example the BIOS. In reality, the excitement is not necessarily about the Virtualization enablement software, but the opportunities it brings about. As is always the case in the software industry, it’s the application that delivers the most value, not the plumbing.
It doesn’t take much to deduce that the promise of virtualization is not realized merely by adopting a Hypervisor or VM Monitor and running Virtual Machines. In fact, where this new model presents opportunities, it also creates new management challenges. The proliferation of thousands of potentially unmanaged Virtual Machines is only one of them. In order to truly benefit from the fertile territory that is Virtualization, effective management strategies and tools need to be put into place that capitalize on the fundamental differences in architecture between the Physical and Virtual models. And that need is addressed by a plane of innovation a level above the VM software itself; VM management applications.
Let’s consider a few examples. Application license management is a huge responsibility that all enterprise IT departments are faced with. In a purely physical environment, since there is a one to one correlation between the number of computers and the potential copies of applications or operating systems, there is a well defined set of resources to track. In the virtual world, this is not so. A single server can run dozens of virtual machines, each containing independent copies of applications and operating systems. Moreover, the issue of “dormant” virtual machines makes tracking licenses even more difficult.
Since all available virtual machines may not be in a running state even when the physical machine they are hosted on is on and available, merely compiling complete inventories of software applications in the environment can pose a challenge. Combine this with the ease with which Virtual Machines can be cloned, and you can begin to grasp the magnitude of the issue. With the right management capabilities; license management tools with VM awareness and Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) introspection capabilities on non-running VMs, this problem can be effectively tackled. Without it, VMs can become a nightmare for IT teams charged with license compliance.
Another issue IT teams are faced with daily is capacity planning and management. In other words, allocating the right machine – server, PC or storage – for the task most suited to it. Under allocating processor power to a compute bound application can wreak havoc with the Quality of Service. In most large enterprises, capacity planning is not so much about the lack of sufficient resources, but simply about not being able to allocate and reallocate them easily. The task of moving users, applications and operating systems to the physical machines most suited to run them is slow, expensive and problematic in a traditional IT environment.
For instance, if a new front desk assistant is brought on board and the standard corporate desktop is a 2+ Ghz dual core system, that’s what he or she will get from the IT dept. Nevermind that the only applications that ever run on it are a browser and a word processor. At the same time, a developer on the 14th floor is whiling away his time waiting for his 1.8 Ghz single core P4 system to compile his application. Because moving the developer to the new hardware and providing the front desk employee with the older machine involves physical re-imaging, multiple reboots, physical movement of equipment and multiple data backups, it is almost never done.
The cost of a physical desktop move in large enterprises can run into the hundreds of dollars. With Virtual Machines, since the entire operating environment – including the OS, patches, applications, data and user initiated customizations – is just a single file, moves can be much simpler. Whether it is a question of moving a VM from one location to another or hosting it on a SAN and allowing multiple physical machines to run it, the differences in architecture allow a simple and elegant solution. But, once again, not without the right management tools.
While VMs can be moved easily, how exactly do you move them? In a large environment, clearly the answer is not to be found in a manual process. Similarly, how do you keep track of which user is mapped onto which VM? An Excel table just doesn’t cut it. However, with Connection Brokers this task is made very manageable and in fact, even automated. The connection broker manages resource allocation, it stores all the mappings between end users and their Virtual Machines, integrates with Active Directory and the more sophisticated products even provide software based load balancing for real-time optimization of available capacity.
These examples just scratch the surface, but hopefully do illustrate that while Virtualization presents a very rich alternate architecture for enterprise computing, the inherent benefits of the technology are not fully actualized without the right management tools. In some cases, deploying a base level Virtualization product without having the right management tools in place might actually make life more difficult for the CIO! Virtualization Management is an exciting space and is destined to grow very rapidly as initiatives such as VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) take off.
The number of resources that are virtualized increases dramatically as Virtualization makes its way into the desktop space, which is where the larger opportunity exists. Free of the physical dependency on hardware, able to move from one machine to another, easily cloned and able to encapsulate an entire user environment, Virtual Machines are poised to become the basic building block of enterprise computing. For companies and IT departments looking to virtualize their infrastructure, management technologies that pair up well with the new architecture are an absolute necessity. This space is already hot, but is threatening to get hotter still. A lot of innovation is sure to come our way over the next couple of years. Stay tuned!
Amir Husain is the chief technology officer spearheading the strategic development of cutting-edge products that deliver increasing value to ClearCube’s customers. Amir is the inventor of ClearCube’s patented and proprietary Distributed Computing Infrastructure and he holds more than a dozen filed and awarded patents. More information about Amir, and ClearCube, is online at www.clearcube.com.
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