Brave New (enterprise virtual) World
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Applications, virtualisation, Enterprise, Hardware, Server, HP on
Sometimes weeks have a theme. This last week’s was most definitely virtualisation.
Cannes in February is a refreshing change from an English winter, and it’s where HP were announcing their latest storage virtualisation platform - along with servers that come with VMware’s ESX 3i hypervisor built-in. Getting the right physical infrastructure for your virtualised server farm is becoming increasingly important, along with beign able to deploy your virtualised images quickly.
That’s where ESX 3i comes in handy - it’s a 32MB hypervisor that doesn’t need an OS. Boot your server, connect to the hypervisor from one of VMware’s handy management tools, and you’re ready to configure the hard disk and deploy all the virtual machine images you need (and if you’re using BEA’s Liquid VM thin Java servers that can be a lot!). Now that most of the major industry standard server vendors support ESX 3i, with hardware shipping from IBN, Dell and Fujitsu as well as HP, it’s going to be easy to quickly add new compute resources to a virtual infrastructure. All you’ll need to do is order the appropriate server from your usual vendor, shove it in the rack (or the blade host), and a few mouse clicks later you’ve got a server.
Microsoft is going to have to do a lot to compete with this. Its Hyper-V VM is still several months away - and it will still need its own partition to run and manage the rest of the virtual machines running on your server hardware. Sun’s xVM will have similar issues, as will the open-source Xen hypervisor.
HP’s launch was in its Sophia Antipolis offices, as VMworld Europe was just down the road. With more than 4500 attendees, it was definitely the place to be if you were running a virtual infrastructure. BT’s plans to roll out a service oriented virtual network with global load balancing was a benchmark for the maturity of virtual infrastructures, and a fascinating look at how businesses can encourage the move to virtualisation. BT’s decision to make physical server implementations subject to a rigorous review process and hefty chargebacks is intended to make this an economic decision - with virtualisation the clear winner on ease of deployment and lower costs.
At Vmworld Europe the thin client was one of the elephants in the room. While the server products got the stage time, client virtualization got a set of ropy demonstrations which were, to say the least, confusing. Conflating VMware’s impressive VDI virtualised desktop tools with managed desktop virtual machines, CEO Diane Greene demonstrated how virtual machines could be deployed to desktop PCs, and how thin client applications could be used offline and on the road. Given that presentation it would be easy to confuse two very different ways of managing virtualised desktop environments.
Microsoft made a lot more of client virtualisation at its 2008 server wave launch last Wednesday. That’s not surprising, especially when you consider that its big server success story of the moment is its relatively recent acquisition SoftGrid. Delivering applications over the network is a powerful way of controlling user desktops, and reducing your support costs. SoftGrid’s impressive sales figures are even more impressive, when you realise it’s only available through Microsoft’s volume licensing programme.
Perhaps the ideal infrastructure is a hybrid. VMware virtual servers hosting enterprise applications, with SoftGrid -wrapped applications streaming from the server network on to desktop PCs. The PCs themselves might be thin clients fed by Citrix’s tools running on an array of desktop blades somewhere in your data centre. It’s all a blast from the past - the mainframe is back.
This time, however, it’s an ever-growing array of industry standard servers hosting a virtual infrastructure, while applications are delivered to not green screens, but thin client devices with HD quality LCD panels. It’s a brave new enterprise IT world out there.
–Simon
Rated: 60% (1 votes)
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