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‘Cloud computing' is nothing more than a service (ideally self-service) model where business workloads are deployed and transparently executed internally or somewhere on the Internet with businesses only paying for what they consume. With that said, ESG speaks with plenty of IT organizations that deploy two physical servers and a handful of virtual machines and call it their cloud. Are they wrong?
Achieving a highly automated IT environment controlled via business policy requires a few important stepping stones along the way. We also have to keep in mind that businesses may choose to adopt the cloud in many different forms: managed service, SaaS, infrastructure as a service, test/ dev, etc. ESG even sees businesses looking at hosted desktops!
Here are some key stages in the evolution to keep in mind:
Virtualize
Virtualization at all tiers is a key ingredient to cloud computing. Server virtualization, network virtualization, storage virtualization, and desktop virtualization are all important for a dynamic, fluid environment.
Standardize
At this stage, the new computing infrastructure is the platform of choice. For example, companies adopt a “virtualize first” policy. Dedicated physical infrastructure incurs a penalty and new applications are developed either ready to use the cloud or specifically designed for the cloud.
Automate
Now that the environment has becoming highly virtualized and standards are in place, business policies begin to drive the underlying infrastructure. For example, an application or line of business owner utilizes a self service window that transfers the control of being able to dial in (or out) performance, availability, security, bandwidth, etc. and the infrastructure seamlessly reacts—and they only get charged for what they consume. From their perspective, the workload may be using local IT services or Internet based services... but it shouldn’t matter to them.
Cloud computing is ultimately all about operational efficiency that leverages a highly dynamic, self healing, automated IT environment that can grow and shrink on demand—enabling the right size environment all the time.
Bob Laliberte and I recently attended the IBM Cloud Computing Meet the Experts event in Littleton, MA. While other companies are talking about the future of cloud computing, IBM has been actually delivering cloud services to enterprise customers and is now offering packaged solutions. Though just recently announced publicly, IBM has been refining its service offering through actual engagements over the past few years. IBM’s focus is on solving business problems by enabling a new consumption and delivery model for Enterprise IT organizations.
See a full description of IBM’s recent announcements and ESG analysis here.
Edwin Yuen, a Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft's Integrated Virtualization team, recently posted a blog on storage migration in a virtualized environment.
Why is this so important?
- Migrations of any type can be some of the most difficult tasks businesses face and require plenty of careful planning, planned downtime, and lots of meetings. Once you take the workload and deploy it in a virtual machine, the game changes and the migration task is greatly simplified.
- A short term gain with this approach is that it makes the administrator’s job a heck of a lot easier and long term benefit is that this all happens in an automated way—transparent to the business based on policies that the application and line of business owners have predetermined based on security, availability, performance, etc.
- As users “crawl, walk, run” converting from the physical world to the virtual world, they typically move from a good, better, best approach (i.e., ESG speaks with users that deploy server virtualization on DAS and/or local disk, quickly see the benefits of virtualization, standardize on a “virtualize first” policy, and then purchase a SAN as part of their virtualized infrastructure). It then becomes critical that tools are in place to help them make the migration as seamless and transparent as possible.
Imagine for a minute that you have an application that only requires Tier 1 disk performance one week of the month. Why should the VM continue to consume Tier 1 capacity during the other three weeks? It shouldn’t! In a virtualized environment with storage migration tools, you can begin to see the advantage of moving that same VM to Tier 2 storage during the three weeks of the month that it does not require the performance. Everything remains online and available. Now that’s efficiency!
Recently, a number of ESG analysts have been speaking at numerous events sponsored by Dell, Intel, Symantec, and VMware. I thought the days had gone by when you mentioned “VMotion” and everyone’s ears perked up, interested to hear what it was and if it really worked. Not the case. Lately, I have been speaking with more customers that understand the basic consolidation benefits of server virtualization, but are not necessarily familiar with some of its other fairly basic functionality. Which is fine and further demonstrates the rich opportunity in the market. The funny thing is that everyone keeps tweeting about “cloud”—aside from IBM, is anyone actual even doing it?
Another fact is that mature virtualized environments are those that have typically been able to quickly virtualize 20-30% of their x86 environments. I keep saying that is the easy part—for the most part, it is brain dead simple. Achieving that next 5% is what can be extremely difficult.
ITBC (Issues to be Considered):
- Companies are virtualizing without considering optimization.
- Administrators are neglecting the simple things, like the role-based access policies that they apply in the physical world. VM sprawl is primarily caused by too many Indians and an absent chief.
- Server huggers: These are application owners that want to go in the data center and see the lights flashing on “their” server. We need to start immediately demonstrating the benefits of virtualization to these folks: improved availability, DR, simplified test/dev, etc.
I do see IT shops achieving near 100% virtualized environments, which is encouraging. The common factor here is that virtualization was driven by both IT and the business—both entities shared a common vision and understood the return on investment.
Though centrally executing and managing desktop images offers many benefits to both IT and end-users, the potential impact on the network and other underlying data center infrastructure should not be overlooked. VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) solutions centralize entire, personalized end-user desktop operating environments so that they can be efficiently accessed, managed, and protected from a single location and delivered via the network. In theory, these solutions allow organizations to reduce operational costs, improve service levels, and satisfy compliance and information security requirements—all while maintaining a seamless end-user computing experience.
ESG research respondents reported significant early use of, as well as interest in, VDI technology: 21% of respondents said their organization currently has some form of VDI initiative (in the form of an active production or test implementation. VDI early adopters surveyed by ESG included two network-related issues in the top five challenges they claim to have experienced since deploying the technology. Specifically, 26% of organizations indicated that poor performance (i.e., application response time) has been a problem, while another 25% identified increased network bandwidth requirements as a pain point (see figure).
Businesses that have deployed VDI for specific use cases are seeing great success. For example:
- One customer ESG interviewed was able to eliminate the need for another data center for outsourced developers in India. Instead, they chose to implement VDI and maintain control of their intellectual property while still keeping the developers productive.
- Another health care organization reduced a lengthy logon process from minutes to seconds. This ultimately equated to turning wasted time into billable time.
VDI is not for every end-user, but it does make a compelling fit for specific roles in an organization. ESG also finds that as VDI is rolled out, users want access from home and remote offices. As you plan your VDI deployments, consider the impact it will have on the LAN and WAN. With that said, we are now seeing successful deployments in the thousands that are delivering great user experience and having minimal impact to the network—you just have to plan for it.
You don't have to look to far back in the rear view mirror to remember when VIrtual Iron had a solution that was on par with VMware's. VMware proceeded to lay its foot down on the accelerator and rapidly outpace Virtual Iron, but the company's technology has always been very good. ESG performed a Lab Validation on Virtual Iron and revealed that it is easy to install, has advanced capabilities and provides the mobility, policies and availability that customers are looking for in a server virtualization solution. The below graphic clearly shows that VMware & Microsoft are the leading solutions deployed as companies' primary server virtualization solutions, but with the Sun and Virtual Iron acquisitions Oracle is served a bigger piece of pie. It will also be important to watch how the company takes three (Oracle, Sun and Virtual Iron) open source Xen based solutions and combines them into a single solution. The other significant angle can be on the desktop just as Citrix has taken the XenSource acquisition to accelerate them into the desktop virtualization market. The other interesting angle Oracle could potentially take is to enable desktop virtualization with access to productivity applications (Sun OpenOffice?) and business applications a la Java without purchasing a single Microsoft license. 
Businesses are seeing great benefits in the initial adoption of virtualization, but many are hitting a plateau which is slowing the migration of physical to virtual machines. A primary stalling factor is security.
- Application administrators, CIOs and server administrators are caught up in dealing with what is perception versus reality. Businesses are still genuinely concerned about compromising the hypervisor. The idea is once you get the "master key" all VMs can potentially be compromised.
- The benefits of encapsulation and mobility are also perceived as a risk. Could a VM be copied onto a USB key and started on an entirely different virtualized infrastructure. Yes, but will it have access to the networked storage where all the data is? Probably not.
In reality, moving workloads to a virtualized environment can actually improve security if implemented correctly. It's important to understand the security policies that are already in place and understand how they apply to the physical world.
I like to travel to CA for the nice sunny bright blue skies, but on April 21, 2009, ESG will be attending the VMware Big Day that will certainly be focused on clouds. If you have seen any of the past VMworld 2008 or VMworld Europe 2009 keynotes you have seen a preview of what is expected to be launched at the end of the month:
- vSphere.......
- VMware FT - Hardware Fault Tolerance
- VMware DPM - Distributed power management
- Performance Boost - Support for more memory, faster CPUs, and more IOPS
- vStorage Thin Provisioning - Capacity savings executed at server virtualization layer
- vCenter Server Linked Mode - Manage multiple vCenters
- As well as networking, security, and data protection improvements
In an effort to support cloud computing and quickly demonstrate its value, VMware, Cisco and EMC are one of the teams running with the ball to demonstrate its value and usefulness to the business. ESG recently did a Multi-Vendor Analysis on the three companies: Download ESG Report Virtualization with EMC Cisco VMware Mar 09 .
Everyone likes a guarantee and assurance when we make a purchase. It makes us feel like we are getting a good deal and the company we are purchasing from understands our needs under the current economic strains. One recent TV ad that caught my attention was the current special offer Hyundai is making. As a consumer considering a new car purchase, it is a comforting feeling to know that an automobile manufacturer understands your concerns and is willing to actually take back the car if things really start to head downhill.
 VMware now offers a guarantee of at least 50% on server hardware for your virtualization deployment and will even work with you through a third party to take old server assets off the books. Qualifying for the guarantee does require a services engagement, but this is not only a great opportunity to get VMware in the door to demonstrate server savings, it also is an ideal opportunity to start planning for data protection and disaster recovery. It can also help you make sure you are setting the foundation for cloud computing, as VMware evolves its offerings and helps IT become a service led model delivery mechanism to the business. In a recent Data Center Spending Intentions Survey, ESG Research found that businesses will spend money to save money and are willing to make frugal investments today that deliver the building blocks of the next generation data center. ESG also discovered (as shown in the below figure) that virtualization ranks at the top of the list of where organizations will spend money. VMware is committing itself to helping the customer extend the benefits and savings as more production applications are migrated to the virtual world.
First of all to even begin thinking about the Cisco UCS architecture you better be placing some pretty heavy bets on virtualization. It does not factor in the physical environment and remember the majority of virtualized workloads are Windows based. With that in mind, the architecture is designed for high density, resource intensive and I/O demanding workloads in environments that scale to thousands of virtual machines. Server virtualization is widely popular, but don't get distracted by an architecture that is designed for highly sophisticated and mature virtualized IT environments that have $1M++ IT budgets. With that said, the CIsco UCS is a fine piece of innovation that if nothing else will accelerate the rest of the market to put forth their best effort and deliver architectures that meet the demands of the modern data center. Those of you that see the benefits of cloud computing as it applies to a virtualized environment will also see the value Cisco brings to the table. All storage and network I/O traffic is converged through the Cisco UCS Fabric Interconnect, tightly integrated server and networking management and the potential to deploy server blades that scale beyond anything currently offered in the market.
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