Everything old is new again: Virtualization in 2005, Part I
Everything old is new again: Virtualization in 2005, Part I
By Mark F. Ewert published: Thursday, January 27 2005
Although the origin of virtualization can be traced back to a paper titled "Time Sharing in Large Fast Computers" written in 1959 by Christopher Strachey for the International Conference on Information Processing at UNESCO, 2004 was the year virtualization moved into seemingly every area of the mainstream modern computing environment.
As the year 2005 begins, the number of vendors incorporating virtualization into their products is only increasing, as are the number of ways in which the concepts of virtualization are leveraged.
Despite being most commonly thought of as a way to better utilize the horsepower of modern high-performance systems by enabling them to run multiple “virtual” computers or operating system platforms simultaneously, the term virtualization is obviously no longer limited to this definition. From systems, to storage, to applications, to enabling Grid and Utility Computing, virtualization will be further leveraged in 2005 to revolutionize the modern computing infrastructure.
However, this expansive use of the concept, and the growing number of vendors announcing the incorporation of some sort of virtualization into their products, threatens to confuse customers and dilute a still embryonic understanding of virtualization technologies.
To better understand the current virtualization market, it is helpful to separate it into four distinct functional areas:
System Virtualization
Data Center Virtualization
Application Virtualization
Storage Virtualization
This month we’ll cover System and Data Center Virtualization. Next month we’ll finish our overview of the 2005 virtualization market with Application and Storage Virtualization.
System Virtualization
System Virtualization is the most widely understood application of virtualization technology. Although originally pioneered by IBM in the sixties, VMware is credited with bringing it from the mainframe world to the modern, inexpensive server and workstation computing platform. Now in its seventh year and owned by EMC, VMware still dominates this sector of the industry. However, 2004 saw the introduction of competing products from such companies as Microsoft and IBM. Earlier this year the open source Xen virtualization project also announced it had received six million dollars in venture capital funding. Soon thereafter both RedHat and Novell announced plans to bundle system virtualization technology with their Linux platforms, theorized by most industry experts to be the Xen offering.
With its expansive line of virtualization products and management tools, combined with its support for more virtualized platforms than any other system, VMware is clearly still the technology leader. But VMware must continue to innovate while closely watching the advances of its competitors and the potential for virtualization technology to become a commodity bundled at little or no cost into the operating system.
None of VMware’s competitors in the pure-play system virtualization market currently offer a product that fully competes with ESX Server. Unlike Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, which runs on top of Windows 2003, ESX Server, like the Xen system, does not require installation on top of a bulky host operating system. ESX and Xen both provide a high-performance, lightweight software-based virtualization environment on top of which virtualized systems have faster and more direct access to underlying systems hardware. Microsoft’s Virtual Server is most comparable to VMsare’s GSX Server, which is separated from the system hardware by either Windows Server or Linux. With this dependence on the underlying multi-purpose host operating system, neither GSX Server nor Microsoft Virtual Server approaches the performance or scalability potential of VMware ESX Server or similarly designed systems.
Unlike the Microsoft, Xen and VMware products, IBM incorporates virtualization technologies gleaned from decades of mainframe experience into underlying POWER5 system hardware to create its eServer OpenPower Consolidation solution. By leveraging hardware and included advanced virtualization technologies such as dynamic partitioning (LPAR), the IBM solution promises higher performance and greater utilization of underlying POWER5 server hardware. On the other hand, IBM’s solution is limited by this dependence on specific IBM POWER5 hardware, unlike the software-based virtualization systems which support numerous Intel and AMD based servers from multiple OEMs. With the expanding availability of inexpensive high-performance 64-bit platforms, most notably the AMD Opteron, and further innovations in lightweight software virtualization platform technology, the performance benefits of specialized hardware virtualization over software virtualization running atop commodity hardware may be nullified.
The IBM solution is also limited by the number of virtual platforms supported. Whereas VMware ESX Server currently supports Windows Server (NT 4, 2000, 2003 all variants), Windows XP, SuSE Linux, RedHat Linux, Novell NetWare (v5.1 through v6.5) and FreeBSD (v4.10), IBM’s eServer OpenPower solution only supports SuSE Linux and IBM AIX. Xen is similarly limited with the capability to virtualize only NetBSD and Linux (multiple kernel 2.4 and 2.6 variants).
Unless IBM and Xen take steps in 2005 to broaden support for more virtualized platforms, most notably Windows, they will remain applicable only to narrow target markets: IBM presumably focused primarily on AIX and the broadening utilization of Linux within the data center; and Xen evidently hoping technologists will choose to replace existing commercial Unix or Windows investments with virtualized open source Linux or NetBSD systems. Unlike the VMware approach, neither of these strategies addresses the broad market demand to consolidate and bring efficiencies to the ever more heterogeneous modern computing environment. In 2005, VMware will likely further increase ESX Server’s platform compatibility to include official support for Sun Solaris x86 v10.
The biggest potential threats to VMware within the pure-play system virtualization market are Microsoft Virtual Server, and the Novell (SuSE)\RedHat plans to bundle virtualization with the operating system. Here too, however, VMware still enjoys a substantial technical lead, currently offering support for 43 virtual platforms in GSX Server compared with Microsoft Virtual Server’s official support for just Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. History has demonstrated time and time again, however, that technical prowess alone does not maintain industry leadership, and the commoditization of virtualization into a low cost or bundled component of standard servers and operating systems will undoubtedly eat into VMware’s GSX Server market share. As a virtualization pioneer, VMware must continue to innovate in 2005 by expanding the capabilities of even its lower-end virtualization platforms and management tools to maintain its market leadership position, or risk losing mindshare to commodity virtualization.
Microsoft has the most to lose in the coming years. Without accepting the need to support virtual platforms other than Windows, Microsoft, like IBM and Xen, is preventing itself from providing a widely applicable system virtualization solution. Moreover, if Microsoft does not take steps to create products to compete with VMware ESX Server it risks completely missing the data center virtualization market. In 2005 Microsoft should leverage its investment in real-time embedded operating systems, such as Embedded Windows 2003, to create a lightweight software virtualization system that provides scalable, high-performance support for both Microsoft and non-Microsoft virtual platforms.
Data Center Virtualization
“Data Center Virtualization” is one of the hottest industry buzz-phrases moving into 2005. Though seemingly newer than System Virtualization, Data Center Virtualization again traces its heritage back to IBM’s pioneering and ongoing work with the mainframe and enterprise computing, and more recently to the efforts of other major data center leaders such as Sun Microsystems.
Whereas Systems Virtualization is primarily focused on maximizing the horsepower of individual servers by enabling them to host multiple virtual systems, Data Center Virtualization has a much wider focus: the entire enterprise data center. It enables corporations to maximize the efficiency of not only individual servers, but whole farms or even entire datacenters full of systems.
Through the integration of sophisticated system virtualization technology with tremendous data center and systems management tools and experience, Data Center Virtualization enables technologists to begin to look at their investment in enterprise technology not as individual servers or islands of applications, but as a cohesive pool of computing resources able to rapidly adjust to new demands.
Using Data Center Virtualization products such as IBM’s Virtualization Engine or Sun’s Solaris Containers (formerly Grid N1), data center administrators using the virtual platform’s management tools can adjust the performance of standardized virtual systems and the applications they host on the fly. In times of peak application demand, additional CPU, memory, and other physical resources can be automatically allocated or de-allocated to and from specific systems across the data center as business needs dictate. Leveraging the systems virtualization and standardized system provisioning tools included with these products, new virtual or physical servers can also be rapidly deployed to expand data center capacity. If more Web, database, or application horsepower is required, standardized virtual or physical system configurations can be rapidly deployed to host hardware with sufficient resources.
IBM’s Virtualization Engine combines the hardware-based OpenPower system virtualization capabilities built into its POWER5 based eSeries Unix servers and zSeries mainframes with IBM’s extensive multi-platform system and application management tools. Though available in two different packages: Virtualization Engine Suite for Servers for IBM Operating Systems and Virtualization Engine Suite for Servers for Windows and Solaris Operating Systems; it is important to note that IBM’s solution is still only able to virtualize the AIX Unix and SuSE Linux operating systems. In stating its abilities to virtualize datacenters comprised not only of IBM backed operating systems but also Windows and Solaris, IBM is leading the trend to apply the term virtualization to any management system that can monitor and adapt the performance of systems (both virtual and physical) running in heterogeneous data centers. It does not mean that these Windows or Solaris based servers and applications are running within virtualized computers, as with the VMware-style solution.
With IBM’s AIX or SuSE Linux, however, IBM is fully able to virtualize and fine tune physical system resources assigned to these virtual platforms. IBM is only able to monitor, manage and adjust the performance of Windows and Solaris based platforms running in the datacenter, but not currently able to virtualize them. This limits the solution’s ability to maximize the utilization of data centers hosting more heterogeneous platforms.
Sun’s solution, Solaris Containers (formerly N1 Grid Containers), provides similar data center-wide management capabilities as the IBM solution, but focuses solely on the Solaris operating system. Indeed, Solaris Containers is bundled within the Solaris 10 OS – now available with the same feature set on both Sun Sparc and the Intel x86 hardware platform, including the AMD Opteron. With Sun’s solution, technologists can virtualize instances of Solaris running different applications such as Web, middleware or database components within a virtual “container”. Using its management tools, dedicated physical computing resources such as CPU or RAM can then be assigned to the configuration of Solaris running within each container, and can be adjusted dynamically or manually based on data center demands. Solaris Containers promise to provide tremendous flexibility and efficiency gains to the Solaris-based data center.
Within the Data Center Virtualization market, raw enterprise computing experience and management capabilities are typically more important to legacy data center customers than widespread virtual operating system or host server hardware support. Within this domain commercial Unix is still king, as are IBM and Sun.
However, due to diverse service and application demands, many modern data centers are becoming increasingly heterogeneous. In 2005, both Windows Server and the Linux variants will undoubtedly continue to make inroads into this high temple of computing.
VMware, with ESX Server, flanked by native and third-party management tools, as well as relative newcomers such as Egenera with its BladeFrame ES solution, are positioning their products in 2005 to rapidly move into the heterogeneous datacenter.
Both of these solutions are able to virtualize a more diverse array of operating systems, though only those based on the x86 processor (Intel and AMD). As previously described, VMWare ESX Server supports Windows Server (NT 4, 2000, 2003 all variants), Windows XP, Suse Linux, RedHat Linux, Novell NetWare (v5.1 through v6.5) and FreeBSD (v4.10). The Egenera BladeFrame solution supports RedHat Linux Advanced Server (AS), SuSE Linux Enterprise Server and Microsoft Server 2003, Enterprise and Standard Editions.
Though neither solution is able to virtualize non-x86 architecture based commercial Unix operating systems, such as AIX or HPUX, Sun’s decision to incorporate all of Solaris 10’s feature set within its x86 edition will undoubtedly lead to official virtual Solaris 10 support on all competing x86 based virtualization platforms. Both Solaris 9 and 10 are already supported experimentally in VMware’s GSX Server. It is highly probable that Solaris 10 will be officially supported by VMware ESX Server before the end of 2005. The combination of support for Solaris combined with continued Linux advances into the data center will simply add to the forces eroding the dominance of the other commercial Unix systems.
Helping to keep this erosion at bay are the substantial systems management experience and capabilities provided by the traditional data center vendors. VMware and similar competitors are working to provide tools to close at least the capability gap.
VMware ESX Server, combined with either its own virtualization management tools - VMotion and VirtualCenter, or third-party offerings from such companies as PlateSpin and Leostream, already provides a competitive platform for provisioning, deploying, monitoring and managing the performance of virtual systems deployed on ESX Servers within the data center.
As Egenera’s BladeFrame solution is entirely based on its proprietary blade system hardware architecture, it offers specialized deployment, monitoring and performance management tools for virtual systems running within the BladeFrames.
None of these solutions are really comparable to IBM’s Virtualization Engine, which is more an enterprise management tool than pure-play virtualization platform like VMware or the BladeFrame. Though only able to virtualize AIX or SuSE Linux, the IBM Virtualization Engine is able to monitor and manage systems unrelated to virtualization, such as traditional physical server and network resources. IBM’s sheer breadth and depth of data center experience and reputation are also formidable, though VMware benefits to an extent from its ownership by EMC.
Perhaps the most exciting prospect for Data Center Virtualization in 2005 is the potential to combine virtualization platforms to create even more capable solutions. Heterogeneous data centers could decide for example, to combine VMware’s ESX Server and third-party management tools from PlateSpin or Leostream with IBM’s Virtualization Engine to create an incredibly compatible yet manageable data center environment. Such a solution would support nearly every major data center hardware, software and virtualization platform. Another probable and intriguing combination is Solaris 10 x86 on VMware. Official VMware support for Solaris 10 would enable deployment of virtual Solaris Containers running on virtual Solaris servers hosted on ESX Server, running happily alongside virtual Windows and Linux systems!
2005 promises to be an exciting year for both the System and Data Center Virtualization markets. The healthy competition among the companies discussed in this article and the growing list of other virtualization players such as Qlusters and Virtual Iron is certain to bring tremendous new innovations to the modern computing enterprise.
Next month we’ll cover the other two types of virtualization: Application and Storage.
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Mark F. Ewert, a Freelance Solutions Architect, has been working with information technology for more than 25 years, with seven years hands-on experience with virtualization. Specializing in heterogeneous computing on every scale, Ewert won the 1996 NetWorld\InterOp Network Design Contest. He has designed and implemented hundreds of successful solutions for organizations of all sizes, including Fidelity Investments, the BBN Planet division of GTE Internetworking, and the State of New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services.
