Increasingly IT is expected to align, support and help achieve business goals. Enterprise IT worldwide is reassessing the way it does business to help support these goals of profitability and growth while maintaining competitive business infrastructure. Some of the major challenges IT faces is expanded and complex distributed infrastructure which is costly to manage, maintain and underutilized. In this environment, one of the ways IT managers are looking to optimize their infrastructure investment is through server virtualization technology.

Server virtualization is increasingly being used to consolidate multiple x86 servers each running its own application to a single server with better utilization. Consolidation through virtualization allows IT managers to reduce the hardware required to perform the computing tasks and improve asset utilization. IT managers determine whether to consolidate based on the hardware cost savings and efficiencies that will be realized as result of the migration and transition to a consolidated virtualized environment. Apart from consolidation, virtualization is also increasingly used for higher availability, data protection, and as a model for flexible infrastructure with rapid disaster recovery.

What is Server Virtualization

Virtualization is a technology that has been around for more than a decade but is finally gaining momentum in the enterprise servers. Virtualization is a software solution that isolates the Operating System (OS) and applications from the hardware.

This allows each instance of a virtual machine to run its own partition with its own copy of the OS. Each VM has its own virtual CPU, memory and storage, and it also shares the hardware devices. This means each physical hardware platform can function as multiple virtual machines. These virtual machines are managed by virtualization software called Virtual Machine Monitors (VMMs). The VMMs prioritize and manage all OS and application requests.

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Hardware assisted virtualization like Intel Virtualization Technology provides hardware assistance to the VMM allowing OS more direct access to the hardware. Thus, reducing the more compute intense software translation from the VMM, which provides for a robust and reliable solution by reducing software conflicts. Introduced in early 2006, hardware assisted virtualization servers are gaining rapid adoption in the enterprise, as they help improve efficiency, security and are more robust.
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Virtualization is finally here to stay and is now a mainstream technology. Yankee group published its 2006 Global Server Virtualization Survey, which finds that 62 percent of the respondents already have a virtualization solution in place or are in the process of migrating to one. As enterprises consolidate and deploy standards based servers, Intel architecture based server processors offer hardware assisted virtualization that provides for a more robust complement to software based virtualization.

There are numerous factors contributing to the accelerated ramp of virtualization technology in the mainstream server market. IT costs continue to rise, increasing hardware, application and operating system licensing costs, cost of hiring, retaining, and training skilled IT professionals. In this environment, IT managers are looking for ways to continually lower costs, improve service levels and become a competitive advantage to businesses.

Additionally, IT organizations went through an immense growth phase in the last decade, and are now facing the daunting task of managing server sprawl and ensuring optimal asset utilization. Not all the hardware in the IT environment is being optimally utilized. In these environments virtualization gives IT managers a tool to better manage and streamline operations, utilize existing and new hardware. Now, with the introduction and availability of robust hardware assisted virtualization technology in the widely deployed Intel based server platforms, virtualization will also boost the adoption of virtualization.

InfoWorld estimates 68 percent of IT staff and management are currently deploying, implementing or testing server virtualization in their enterprise1. These numbers definitely indicate that enterprises have weighed in the costs and benefits of virtualization and have chosen to deploy virtualization. Some of the benefits of server virtualization in the enterprise are:

Lower total cost of ownership: Total cost of ownership is the acquisition, maintenance and operational cost of a system. Enterprise virtualization deployment is expected to lower TCO for IT, as the number of systems to be maintains is reduced, and improve fault isolation and reduce server downtime. Edison Group estimates2 that with a top end dual processor IT can save as much as 32 percent per server and the savings in operational costs become more apparent through a three-year time horizon.

Lower hardware, provisioning and energy costs: Virtualization provides the ability to quickly provision new servers by simply loading virtual images onto existing hardware. The time to provision becomes a mere fraction of what it used to be in the past. The results are twofold: Less time to bring applications/services to market and lower labor costs. With escalating energy costs for cooling and powering a datacenter, fewer energy efficient servers will also help IT lower overall costs. These savings in labor costs, energy costs, asset costs, lower the IT cost of business and can be competitive advantage for enterprises.

Availability and rapid disaster recovery: Virtualization enhances availability. A virtual server can be serviced and upgraded without any impact to the applications or to the users. In a scenario where a system is impacted, IT managers can move the VMs to another host system while the physical servers is being replaced thus minimizing impact to services or users. Fault isolation prevents the VM that has been impacted from affecting the entire system. The compromised VM can then be cleaned or deleted and a clean VM re-loaded.

Data protection: Data protection and security continue to be among the key challenges for most IT organizations. McAfee Avert labs recently reported that the rate at which new security threats appear has doubled in recent years3. Virtualization allows IT managers to create logically discrete systems on the same physical platform, thus isolating mission critical applications such as databases and enabling better safeguards against applications that are more vulnerable to security risk, for example e-mail applications.

Business advantage: Virtualization allows IT to deploy applications flexibly to meet demand. This ability to provision servers to meet business demands will enable IT to save time, costs and also act as a competitive advantage. Ultimately IT managers want to enable the business agility, provide differentiation and competitive advantage. An organization that can better manage costs, utilize resources, deploy newer services faster can gain a competitive advantage in today's market. Virtualization is one of the key technologies which will enable businesses to gain that advantage in the market.

Despite the recent ramp, rapid adoption of virtualization in the enterprise, there are still a few issues facing IT managers who migrate their data centers and broadly deploy virtualization in the enterprise. Some of the key issues are:

Application readiness: Not all applications are ready to be virtualized, nor is virtualization appropriate for every application. Applications that hog I/O and memory resources are not ideal candidates to be virtualized. Virtualization also consumes its own server resources which impacts application performance. This can be countered by running applications on powerful servers and using VM portability to offset the impact to performance. To counter this issue, IT managers need to be cognizant of the application, I/O issues and ensure there are trained personnel who can identify the suitable applications, address any issues and then migrate to virtualization environment in a phased approach.

Migration and management: In an enterprise environment, the deployment of VMs and application migration is not an area where IT has expertise. Outsourcing and training are some of the costs that enterprises need to be prepared to incur for deployment. Most IT environments have a combination of legacy and new servers. Provisioning and managing these solutions wherein the management solutions and interfaces are not the same, is one of the unique challenges. Nor do all the virtualization software solutions in the market today have the tools to manage the entire infrastructure in an integrated fashion. IT managers need to evaluate the management tools and understand their limitations and capabilities prior to moving their mission critical applications onto virtualized environments. Virtualization tool vendors recognize the market needs and are continually investing to provide an integrated manageability solution.

Complexity: Datacenters are complex to set up, provision and maintain. In this environment virtualization adds to the complexity. Not all IT departments are set up to handle the complexity of migration. Getting help from seasoned consultants who have experience in handling complex migration will enable a smooth deployment. IT managers will need to ensure their IT personnel get the adequate training to manage, maintain, continue to provision and deploy systems in a virtualized environment.

VMware is the leading virtualization software solution provider. Others virtualization solutions include Xen and Microsoft. The industry is extremely bullish on the future of enterprise virtualization. Most major analyst firms, media companies, industry groups, are hosting executive discussion forums, training sessions, seminars, webinars to gather decision makers' insights into key business drivers, enablers and benefits of virtualization and broadly promote virtualization.

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Server virtualization is rapidly gaining momentum and becoming mainstream on widely deployed Intel architecture based servers. The benefits are real, the savings can be dramatic and enterprise IT is embracing server virtualization to enable business growth, agility and business continuity. Intel, the leading server platforms provider for today's business, is working with industry players like VMware, Microsoft and others to reduce the barriers to adoption. Intel has partnered with VMware (Virtualize ASAP program-www.VirtualizeASAP.com) to accelerate virtualization deployment by ensuring application readiness on its server platforms.
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Enterprise virtualization technologies create an infrastructure that is lower cost, flexible and which enables IT managers to deploy servers and applications faster, and to dynamically manage their platforms to meet business needs. Virtualization can provide immense potential benefits if deployed right. More and more organizations are realizing the time to virtualize is now! ENS