Virtualise now! Or not

Virtualisation is not new. Ask anyone with a passing familiarity with a mainframe. Given the way it has been punted lately, you'd be forgiven for thinking it is new.

Virtualisation, we've been told, will save power, cut costs, reduce administration and management overheads, and do everything almost up to and including making the boss tea in the morning.

Virtualisation technologies will take some time to mature.

Manoj Bhoola, Microsoft SA

If only real life were that simple. Virtualisation can indeed save power, cut costs, reduce overheads and make life easier, but there's some fine print to consider.

First, let's take a step back and examine the virtualisation beast. Virtualisation, as a technique, can be applied to servers, storage, desktops, applications and people. Roughly defined, according to Citrix, virtualisation "abstracts the characteristics of a resource so that it may be accessed in some way that is different from its actual physical form. System virtualisation (often 'server virtualisation' or 'desktop virtualisation', depending on the role of the virtualised system) is the ability to present the resources of a single computer as if it is a collection of separate computers ('virtual machines'), each with its own virtual CPUs, network interfaces, storage and operating system."

As the need to manage an increasing number of servers, while reducing costs, has taken hold, server virtualisation and consolidation projects have become more common. On the other hand, says Microsoft SA server and tools head Manoj Bhoola: "It's still a fledgling market in many respects, and will remain fluid for some time, with many new competitors emerging."

Virtualisation technologies, he says, will take some time to mature, so there is ample opportunity for the thought and market leaders to shift over time. "IDC estimates that less than 5% of all servers are virtualised, so this is still a nascent segment of the market, with significant growth opportunities," he adds.

Hand-in-hand with server virtualisation goes storage virtualisation. Says Steve Buck, MD of Edgetec: "Once you've virtualised your servers, you will want to virtualise your storage as it allows you to create a lot more flexibility in the way you manage and utilise storage. For example, having a certain amount of storage allocated to a particular server makes it easy to increase the amount of storage allocated."

Application virtualisation complements desktop virtualisation and refers to running an application on a remote server rather than on the user's local machine. In one of those loops that pervade the IT industry, desktop virtualisation has heralded the return of the infamous dumb terminal.

"There are several emerging client virtualisation models," said Jeff Groudan, marketing VP for desktop solutions at HP. He was commenting at the company's virtualisation summit held earlier this year.

"Today, the most prevalent is 'remoting' where there is a thin client on the desktop and the compute power and data are at a remote location. Emerging models include OS streaming, where the OS is streamed to a diskless PC, or the Web 2.0 model, where a local device accesses applications and data situated remotely."

The thin client device itself can be a PC, blade or a diskless PC. Says HP product manager for servers Rory Green: "Desktop virtualisation is growing in popularity, but it is not the solution for everyone. Customers looking at Citrix, for example, may want a virtual desktop with a thin client on the desktop that connects to a private virtual machine, ie, their personal machine. In a Citrix environment, you have a very standardised machine to connect to, and potential users need to ensure their applications will run. With VMWare, you do not have that restriction and can run anything that a PC will run. Either option will create more network traffic," he notes.

"Further, the traditional challenges with terminal computing are still there. Printing, for example, is still a challenge."

Virtualisation is not for everyone. As HP's Green points out, if you're an SME with 10 servers and no SAN, it's probably not worth the cost. And as Edgetec's Buck notes: "It's really [suited to] companies that find themselves with more servers and managing them becomes more difficult. The other thing is that if you have a lot of servers and have SANs in place, it makes sense to virtualise because you have two key elements for a virtual environment already in place."

Virtualising adds an additional layer of complexity to an environment. This complexity needs to be managed and it takes qualified skills. From a connectivity point of view, virtualising will increase network traffic, and then there's the old bandwidth issue - it's expensive, and if it goes down, so does your access to your data centre. Redundancy is not an option when you are centralising; it's a must-have. And if you are trying to support remote users in remote locations, where a 56k connection may be advanced technology...

Virtualisation definitely reduces server numbers.

Johan Vorster, GijimaAst

Says Sun Microsystems SA storage lead Manfred Gramlich: "The biggest downside is who are you going to go with? Sun? EMC? Cisco? It's a question of choice. There is no industry standard for virtualisation so end-users should [make their vendor selection] carefully because they will be tied into whichever vendor they choose. We recommend that end-users carefully evaluate with whom they partner."

Something else to be aware of, says Buck, is the hardware upgrade question. "Once you've virtualised and want to upgrade hardware, you need to check if the new hardware will be supported by your virtualisation software. Not all hardware will run virtualisation software. It is literally a question of going to the suppliers' site and checking. It's not a difficult thing, but one needs to be aware of it."

There is no industry standard for virtualisation.

Manfred Gramlich, Sun Microsystems

Another consideration is what to do with your hardware. You can often virtualise with your existing hardware, but what do you do with the spare servers? And what do you do with the now redundant servers if you have to upgrade? Servers that have not reached their end-of-life cannot merely be discarded. Ditto desktops.

"Virtualisation definitely reduces server numbers," says GijimaAst group chief architect Johan Vorster. "However, proper planning is still a requirement, whether it is for new data centres or rationalisation efforts. Virtualisation also reduces total cost of ownership if you adopt an enterprise-planning framework, dependent on skilled/certified people. The number of physical server instances in data centres are reduced, thereby giving you time to manage your information needs and resources that are required as opposed to managing technology."

He points out that virtualisation will provide businesses with the ability to manage a pool of storage and computing needs, thereby adding agility with resources on-demand.

"A lot of people put virtualisation forward as a server consolidation effort to save on footprint. You will definitely do that and you will save on power. But you need to consider certification and training. Who is going to manage it? You need staff and resources.

"Put a strategy up there and map it in terms of your IT strategy map. Then look at roadmaps from vendors. We like to do proper evaluations, do best practice models - people, process, tech - map it and put a proper roadmap out in terms of what we can do, where it makes sense to do it, where not and what platforms we can do it on.

"For big organisations like Sanlam, Standard Bank and Absa, it makes sense to rationalise components, applications and databases, but at the end of the day, someone has to be responsible for ensuring the total strategy for infrastructure is in place before you start doing components of it."

While the jury is still out on what the virtualisation landscape will look like in the next few years, end-users would be well advised to ensure they know exactly what they want their environment to look like.