Paul Mah of CIO breaks down the six most tangible benefits of server virtualization for small and mid-sized businesses.

1. Server Efficiency: the foremost and most traditional benefit of switching to virtualization is to make more efficient use of processor cycles and RAM which can result in energy and cooling savings along with physical server savings.  Important to note that even small and mid-sized businesses need to be aware of “virtual sprawl”.
2. Disaster Recovery: backing up and storing VM files is a far easier than hardware servers. Plus, it is very cost effective to host servers at an alternative location incase onsite servers go down. That said, using server virtualization for disaster recovery still requires the same forethought and planning as other recovery methods.
3. Business Continuity: the goal of business continuity is to minimize service disruptions. Server virtualization enables live migration allowing administrators to seamlessly move VM files between physical server hosts without having to first power the servers down.
4. Software Development: virtualization allows for development costs as no additional hardware is needed for test environments.
5. Security Updates and Patch Testing: again, virtualization makes testing for bugs and errors on new software extremely easy.
6. Desktop Virtualization: server virtualization opens the door for client virtualization.

In his article “Reigning in Unstructured Data” for Computer Technology Review, Ken Cheney talks about unstructured data in a virtualized world.

With the proliferation of NAS storage devices, diverse file servers running all sorts of apps (not just databases), and cloud-based services, the growth of unstructured data in businesses is unfettered.

According to Cheney, in the wild and wooly world of unstructured data it’s important for companies to think out their data management and storage plans up front to ensure all of that info is handled correctly.

As more companies (and more smaller companies) jump on the virtualization bandwagon, things will only get more complicated when it comes to securing their unstructured data like the reams of Word and PowerPoint and PDF documents stuffed into their soon-to-be virtualized servers. Of course, these companies want to reap the cost-savings associated with server virtualization, but fail to think through the security implications as they make this move.

If you need more proof that the need for good, secure management of storage in our ever-virtualizing world is only going to grow, you only have to look to IDC’s latest numbers on the storage software market. The total size of that market segment hit $3.4 billion this quarter, up 11.3% over the year-ago-quarter. Within the overall storage software category, data protection and recovery software sales accounted for more than one-third (34.2%) of the total.

At the recent Gartner Symposium IT/Expo in Orlando, David Cappuccio of Gartner presented 10 technology-related trends he feels will impact enterprise infrastructures in the next year. Michael Cooney of Network World shares the highlights in his article “Gartner: 10 key IT trends for 2012.”

1. The evolution of virtualization: Cappuccio says virtualization will drive more companies to tread IT like a business.

2. Big data, patterns and analytics: Unstructured data will grow 80% over the next five years,
so technologies that can manage it will become more important.

3. Energy efficiency and monitoring: Tools that watch and analyze power usage will help companies identify and eliminate the underutilization of their systems.

4. Context aware applications: How do we take advantage of smartphones? Context-based computing will go beyond business intelligence applications and create a unified communications environment with data from social networks and mobile devices.

5. Staff retention and retraining: Since loyalty is not common with new workers, companies need to get them excited enough about their jobs to stay.

6. Social networks: The collective voice of individuals and communities has an impact on business operations and strategies, so companies must enable and embrace it, but never ignore it.

7. Consumerization: New applications will be developed to address mobile users, but they won’t be desktop replacement applications.

8. Compute per square foot: The two issues facing the continued success of virtualization are the number of cores per server and overall data center energy trends.

9. Cloud computing: Cost, built-in elasticity and scalability will continue as big benefits for small companies, but once certain IT functions (like email) become less customized, larger organizations will also benefit from cloud computing.

10. Fabrics: The vertical integration of server, storage, and network systems and components with software to optimize shared data center resources efficiently and dynamically. Systems put out so far by Cisco and HP will unify network control but are not there yet.

Jim Duffy of Network world in his article titled “Six factors slowing adoption of converged I/O” takes a look at the conversations IT organizations are having nationwide regarding networking. Drivers of converged I/O interest have been the growth in server virtualization, cloud deployments and the increasing amount of server-to-server traffic.

Converged I/O is running local area networks (LAN) and storage data through the same wires and switches to reduce elements and cost. Converged I/O constitutes three key elements: 10 Gbps Ethernet, Fibre Channel-over-Ethernet and Ethernet equipped with lossless Data Center Bridging standard. Despite converged I/O being a hot topic in the IT industry here are some reasons why it is a process to think through before rushing to implement:

• Converged I/O is new technology and is attempting to replace proven and reliable methods. The storage networking side of an IT organization, in particular, can be very risk adverse to new technologies due to the criticality of their networks.
• New standards and proprietary techniques for extending converged I/O from the server rack and access switch are still in the development.
• There is still a question regarding the benefits of converged I/O beyond the server and access switch layer.

Mr. Duffy points out that converged I/O is a “years-long journey” not a technology to be rushed into. IT organizations need to have a foundation to work from of where they want to go and how they want to get there.

Server virtualization can bring about two common storage complications, storage utilization and increased input/output patterns states Jon Brodkin of Network World. In Mr. Brodkin’s article “How can IT shops reduce server virtualization’s impact on storage” he states that virtualizing servers requires changes to the physical storage system which can result in under utilization and issues with handling increase I/O traffic. Two solutions can help minimize these impacts to storage: thin provisioning storage and wide striping technology.

First, thin provisioning which is enabled by server virtualization allows for increased storage capacity but at a higher level versus allocating at the application level. This allows applications to share storage and access it when it is needed helping to increase utilization.

Second, server virtualization can bring about what Mr Brodkin calls “the dreaded I/O blender effect.” In other words, as virtual machines are added to the physical server the server and connected systems have to handle more I/O patterns which can potentially harm application performance. Using “wide striping” technology the I/O traffic is distributed across many disks reducing bottlenecks and allowing for higher virtual machine densities.

IDC points out that the recent increase in server virtualization to create a more dynamic and agile datacenter has led to an increase in complexity and costs associated with managing the network.

How does an organization keep total cost of ownership low? IDC Analyst, Matthew Eastwood, recommends automating network orchestration and freeing up human resources to focus on the right priorities in the data center which will lead to operating consistency and visibility across the server and network infrastructure. Data center networks built on these principles will manage capital and operational costs while providing flexibility, security and scalability necessary to tackle business challenges.

As an early adopter of  Server Virtualization, Evolving Solutions also understands the benefit of providing its customers open source virtualization.

As IDC Analyst, Matthew Eastwood, explains in his whitepaper titled “Managing Server Virtualization on Datacenter Networks”, with virtual environments becoming increasingly heterogeneous, an open platform leverages publicly-available APIs to communicate with virtual switches provided by a variety of hypervisor suppliers. Interoperability enables partners to build and deploy applications that are smart, simple and run on any physical server or operating system; whereas proprietary solutions built on a vendor’s own platform can reduce business agility and options.

Don’t miss the last post in this series on Server Virtualization on Wednesday, April 13th – “Impact on Total Cost of Ownership”.

The increase in server virtualization requires server and network administrators to automatically provision physical networks so they’re in sync with virtual networks in order to prevent policy-enforcement issues and virtual machine (VM) mobility failures.  In a recent whitepaper titled “Managing Server Virtualization on Datacenter Networks”, IDC Analyst, Matthew Eastwood, provided the following guidelines for an optimal approach:

• End-to-end physical and virtual network orchestration
• Automatic orchestration and elimination of errors caused by out-of-sync physical and virtual networks
• Unified network and security policies between virtual and physical networks
• Scalability and performance to manage large number of hosts

Check back on Monday, April 11th for the next post in this series – “Open Versus a Proprietary Solution”.

Rapid adoption of server virtualization in today’s enterprise and data center has led to an exponential increase in the number of virtual machines and the frequency of VM migration.  According to IDC Analyst, Matthew Eastwood, this trend is going to continue in the foreseeable future.

In his recent whitepaper on “Managing Server Virtualization on Data Center Networks”, Eastwood says that this growth is compounded by the fact
that many server administrators continue to rely on manual processes when they manage their growing virtual environments. However, as virtualization adoption matures over the next few years, IDC expects server administrators to increasingly leverage live migration as a fundamental component of an assured-computing strategy in their datacenters.

In today’s data center environments, live migration requires human intervention and coordination between the server and network administrators, which is expensive. This, in turn, exposes the VM migration to errors.  IDC customers say that the mismatch between the physical and virtual network seems to be the leading cause of VM migration failures.

Adding to the complexity is the variation of virtual machine options. While many enterprise customers associate VMware (VMware Server, VMware ESX, and VMware ESXi) with server virtualization, the reality is that there are many types of hypervisors available, including Citrix (XenServer), IBM (PowerVM), Microsoft (Virtual Server, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, and Hyper-V Server) Containers, and open source Xen hypervisors.

What needs to happen to allow organizations to choose the right virtualization platform for their workload needs, is the creation of a network architecture that is flexible enough to provide bandwidth, quality of service and security to all virtual machines.

Server virtualization has blurred the lines between the traditional roles and responsibilities of server and network administration.  IDC Analyst, Matthew Eastwood, recently discussed this issue in his white paper on “Managing Server Virtualization on Datacenter Networks.”

When server virtualization is in its initial server-consolidation phase of adoption, simple switching between virtual machines running on a single physical host server is not a problem.  However, Eastwood says that as virtualization matures to become the foundation of virtualized IT
datacenters and expands to include an array of mission-critical applications, there is a need for the network to be an active participant in virtual switching.

There is an increasing need to manage “virtual networks” and specifically, to associate virtual machines operated by server administrators with the policies defined by the network administrators. The challenge is that tools network operators currently use to manage their physical infrastructure provide no access to, or visibility into, the virtual infrastructure, and server administrators are burdened with the task of managing the “virtual
network.”