Virtualization Management

Applying Virtualization Technology to IT

by GroundWork CTO, Craig Thomas

Last month's article laid the groundwork about virtualization technology. This month we'll take a look at the state of the industry in applying this technology to information technology.

Here are the key business needs IT can address with virtualization:

• Production Server Consolidation
• Business Continuity Management
• Test and Development
• Dynamic Datacenter
• Virtual Desktop

Production server consolidation

Production server consolidation aims to achieve effective utilization of the investment in compute infrastructure. There are two related approaches:

• Reduce, or at least reduce the rate of growth in, the number of servers required. Benefits here are potentially considerable: most businesses over-invest in server hardware; some estimates are that there could be as little as 10% utilization of the hardware investment. Fewer servers also means significant savings in power: less power consumption by the servers themselves, and less power required to cool them. Smaller or fewer computer rooms can also result, and the savings here are potentially considerable.
• Leverage under utilized servers to offload over utilized servers. One IT buying pattern is to dedicate servers to applications. If one application is overrunning its server allocation, while other applications are making meager demands on their servers, a virtual server platform that spans multiple physical servers can provide effective sharing of the existing resources.

Business continuity management

Business continuity management is a comprehensive process that includes disaster recovery, business resumption, and reduction of service interruptions. Virtualization supports business continuity management through virtual machines deployed on clustered hardware - hardware failure awareness is isolated in the virtualization technology; applications need not be aware of clustering and failover. And stateful hot-backup of virtual machines enables rapid recovery in a remote location, allowing business resumption in a disaster recovery scenario.

Test and development

Test and development environments can be facilitated through the use of virtualization. Server consolidation makes multiple environments more practical by reducing the cost of hardware. Stateful backup of virtual machines allows rapid provisioning of test and development environments, and enables checkpointing of complex test states. A production environment can be quickly duplicated for use in a test scenario, and this snapshot can be restored and reused as needed.

Dynamic datacenters

Dynamic datacenters leverage the ability of virtualization to abstract and manage hardware and software requirements of IT separately. A virtual infrastructure can be constructed from the servers, disk systems, and network resources. Virtualized applications can be deployed as needed, encumbering only the resources they require, monitoring and scaling up applications that are in demand and scaling down those that are more idle. For example, the month-end accounting application can be optimized for throughput during month-end while remaining idle most of the time. Virtualization management systems are available which monitor and dynamically respond to the workload requirements in the dynamic datacenter.

Virtual desktops

Virtual desktops bring the practical power of virtualized environments and virtualization management to the desktop. IT systems administrators can take charge of desktops by managing deployments of virtual machines. For example, a standardized guest desktop operating system, complete with applications, pre-configured with corporate security policies, can be packaged for download to end users' PCs. The virtual desktop is isolated from any other software on the user's PC, and can be managed and monitored remotely. IT doesn't have to try to configure and control the physical PC, just the virtual desktop. This approach is suited to employee workplaces, and also to, say, contractors who need temporary access to resources on the company's network, or to remote workers and telecommuters.

Next month, we'll get some practical insights into how mid-market IT managers are adopting virtualization.