The virtual engine room
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Virtualisation adoption has so far been unbowed by the recession
One area of weakness is disk input/ output (IO) capacity, and this is widely regarded as a reason IT shops have been reluctant to move databases, as well as applications such as Exchange, to virtual machines. “Database gurus don’t like virtualisation, as they like to keep databases separate,” points out Capgemini’s Una Du Noyer. “Current virtual machines are not good at disk IO so you might want to keep databases away from the virtualisation pool.”
Improved disk IO and database compatibility is very much a priority for the virtualisation vendors, however, and progress has certainly been made recently in compatibility for applications including Exchange. However, applications that make low-level calls to the operating system, which need very tight controls over latency or which require access to specialist hardware, might never make the jump.
Communications applications that make heavy use of encoding or decoding, such as videoconferencing, or which use specialist IO cards, including Microsoft’s Office Communications Server, will be difficult to integrate. So will manufacturing and industrial control systems, or measurement and monitoring systems used in labs, because of the need for the server to control interface cards.
At a more general level, however, IT departments report growing interest in virtualisation from the business. End-users have seen both performance and reliability improvements from the initial wave of virtualisation, in areas such as web applications, middleware, and file and print. They are now looking for similar improvements from more critical programs.
Businesses have also seen other, ancillary benefits, such as improved business continuity and disaster recovery. The ability to recover a virtual machine to a different physical host or server, or to move a virtual load to a different physical host for upgrades and maintenance, is already improving availability and uptime for businesses.
But the most important factor, when it comes to virtualising a production system, is planning. IT departments need to consider their server capacity, their application loads and which applications are suitable for virtualisation now, and which should wait. “The biggest issue remains what can be virtualised. Not everything is a good candidate,” says Morse’s Gasparini. “And a lot of IT teams don’t know what [servers] they have or what’s running on them.” Careful planning, as well as the right tools, is critical to successful virtualisation of production systems, he adds.
Case studies
Virtualisation unearths cost savings at construction giant
By virtualising its existing ERP platform, one construction firm has seen significant improvements in costs and business flexibility
RLAM upgrades server capacity through virtualisation
Following its decision to virtualise the majority of its servers, one financial services company has seen both a return on investment and solved its computing capacity issues
A fundamental shift is taking place in the computing world. The promise of a leaner, more efficient data centre that provides businesses with more computing power for less money has led many companies to start evaluating the options for virtualising their data centres.
Virtualisation makes it easy to deploy data centre systems at will, providing IT flexibility to quickly respond to the constantly changing demands of today’s business. With virtualisation, administrators manage pooled resources across the enterprise, distributing resources dynamically where they’re needed, as they’re needed.
However, as the move towards the virtual data centre starts to gather momentum, IT departments need to put more focus on Information Security.
The promise of better use of resources, lower costs and potential reduction to both power costs and real estate is providing a compelling reason to move towards virtualisation and service oriented architecture. However, virtualisation poses real risk as it adds greater complexity, pulling together large numbers of applications and services into one consolidated data centre.
IT departments can’t lose sight of data centre management best practices as they move to virtualisation. The impact of poor change and configuration management has even greater results in the virtual world than in the physical because of the greater interdependencies. Using configuration audit and control software that works within the virtualisation engine, enables real-time monitoring and assessment of the implications of configuration and change to highlight security risks and track conformance to internal and external policies.
Only with the right level of visibility across the data centre, can businesses truly feel confident in the potential of embracing a virtual world.
Andrew Heather, General Manager, EMEA, Tripwire, www.tripwire.com
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