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Lead
Advantage virtualisation
Faiz Askari takes a look at virualisation technology
and its adoption by enterprises
In India, the government and the PSU sector have shown keen
interest in controller-based storage virtualisation technology. Companies that
have large, diverse and complex environments and want to simplify the management
of these environments are potential candidates for implementing virtualisation.
Virtualisation technology encompasses all IT segments from
servers to networks and storage to the desktop. Though desktop virtualisation
is yet to be a reality, other applications are doing well.
Virtualisation in servers
Server virtualisation was used extensively to perform operations like point-in-time
copy and replication using the computing power of the server. Corporates have
now realised the benefit of using the computing power of servers for applications
and cache power of storage to perform operations on databases.
Atul Sood, Regional Director, Hitachi Data Systems India feels that there may
be some customers who will continue to use server virtualisation due to high
investments that were made initially. Hitachi believes that this would not be
in the interest of customers who wish to migrate to a different system.
Highlighting the progress of virtualisation in the server space, Vaibhav Phadnis,
Director of Windows Server System, Microsoft India adds, “Customers are
on a treadmill of complexity and cost that limit the value IT delivers to businesses.
There are various benefits while implementing virtualisation solutions over
servers, but some of the benefits of virtualisation are multiple operating systems
that can run simultaneously on the same processor. Each independent virtual
machine functions as a self-contained computer. Apart from this, in a virtualised
server, workloads are decoupled from hardware.”
Storage virtualisation
Internationally, storage virtualisation has taken off, but in India it is still
at the concept stage. While companies are showing increasing interest owing
to the benefits of lower costs associated with the various storage resources
within the mixed and shared hardware and media pool, we are yet to witness large-scale
implementation of the SAN virtualisation solution. This is because SAN is still
at an early stage and vendors are still figuring out a universal standard.
Highlighting the market size of virtualisation technology, Tata Rao, Vice-president,
Enterprise SE, Cisco Systems India and SAARC says, “About 85 to 90 percent
of enterprises will be using some form of virtualised storage to take full advantage
of SAN technology. The network storage business is expected to grow by 50 percent.
This optimism is shared by IDC which predicts that the overall storage systems
market would have grown to $250 million by 2005 at a CAGR of 76 percent. It
says that IP SAN is expected to get more than 25 percent of the global storage
market by 2007.”
In addition to securing data and applications on networked computers, end-users
are looking at desktop virtualisation to secure networks from unmanaged devices
such as PCs used by contractors or employees logging on to the corporate network
from home.
“Virtualisation promises to enhance overall platform independence, along
with system flexibility and utilisation. Maximising system flexibility and utilisation
are critical to ensuring that a storage investment is delivering the benefits
and dividends its owners planned for,” says Phadnis.
Enterprise-class infrastructure typically includes multi-vendor server environments,
diverse connectivity technologies, and multi-vendor tiered storage environments.
Organisations require the ability to allocate any storage to any application
based on the needs of the business, and to do so non-disruptively.
Networked storage virtualisation enables organisations to deliver the right
information at adequate performance levels and functionality to the business
at the lowest total cost. Virtualisation also promises to enhance overall platform
independence, along with system flexibility and utilisation.
Ajaz Munsiff, Director, Business Development, Virtualisation Products, EMC feels
that despite the hype, virtualisation does not provide a cure for the common
cold, but it can solve some and mitigate other key issues facing storage customers.
He believes that in essence, virtualisation enables the creation of logical
(virtual) representations of physical IT resources such as memory, networks,
servers and storage which function as if they were actual resources. In virtualised
storage environments, applications can see and interact with these logical components,
which are independent from but able to interact with their physical counterparts
including SANs, disc arrays, tape components and other storage media. Most commercial
solutions are based on one of three architectural models: appliance-enabled,
array-enabled, or network-enabled.
Munsiff says, “In practice, appliance-enabled solutions
feature a mid-range storage controller/server placed in the data path to perform
a variety of virtualisation functions. However, the controller’s position
in the data path tends to add latency, though some vendors enhance controller
performance as a means of addressing this issue.”
In addition, some appliance-enabled solutions utilise cache
for copy processes. While this approach can enhance performance, holding data
in both the appliance and the array can create data integrity issues. Munsiff
feels that while it is possible to address many of the technical and performance
shortcomings of appliance-enabled solutions, some management and functionality
limitations are more troubling. All too often, such solutions only support network
replication and provide no access to array replication processes. In addition,
many solutions require customers to use separate or proprietary management tools.
While this issue might be a minor concern for customers already
utilising the same vendors for other products, it is believed there may be issues
related to the use of these solutions among other businesses.
Virtual network
Commenting on the networking segment, Rao says, “A virtual
network revolves around the concept of virtualising data centre resources. The
typical components that make up the data centre are application servers, database
servers, application accelerators and application optimisers, and storage and
security devices.”
By virtualising these resources, enterprises can offer services
to different parts of the globe from a single centralised or virtualised data
centre for delivering services like the Intranet, Internet access and virtual
contact centres. Moreover, by consolidating all the resources on a single location,
one can increase the effective utilisation of the data centre and network asset,
thereby reducing the operational and maintenance costs and increasing the asset
effectiveness.
Conventionally, networks provide intelligent packet-level
services but can’t interpret message contents. Today, we have technology
which can interpret the kind of application or traffic flowing through the network
and give preferential treatment at the application level.
Seamless network connectivity with preferential network treatment
for application-level traffic flowing through the network in a secure manner
can be delivered. Data centre virtualisation is getting a lot of traction in
the market since the solution benefits are multi-fold, there is quicker RoI,
and also easy manageability.
Virtualisation software
From a software point of view, Phadnis notes that "there
are specific issues driving virtualisation such as security and integrity, inter-operability
and isolated management tools."
He further says that in order to cater to emerging customer
needs, one initiative that Microsoft is
undertaking is Windows hypervisor, an integrated hypervisor technology in the
Windows operating system that will be designed to provide customers with a high-performance
virtualisation solution for Windows and heterogeneous environments. Windows
hypervisor technology is planned for availability in the next Windows operating
system code-named Longhorn.
"From a software perspective, virtualisation is increasingly
gaining traction within Indian enterprises. We expect to see an increase in
the number of deployments over the next two years," Phadnis asserts.
faiz@expresscomputeronline.com
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