what to expect with virtualization … · hypervisorpatched,correctlyconfiguredandupto date....

an Networking eBook

What to ExpectWith Virtualization

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contentsThis content was adapted from Internet.com'sServerWatch, InternetNews and Small BusinessComputingWeb site. Contributors: Drew Robb,Paul Rubens, Amy Newman, Larry Barrett, andDavid Strom.

What to Expect With Virtualization, An Internet.com Networking eBook.© 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.

2 Seven VirtualizationTrends to WatchAmy Newman

4 Virtualization Craze Bringsthe Bad With the GoodLarry Barrett

7 Hardware for Virtualization:Do’s and Don’tsDrew Robb

11 Storage VirtualizationPlays Catch UpDrew Robb

14 Virtual Servers Update:VMware vs. Microsoft vs. XenDavid Strom

17 Virtualization Enters theSMB WorldDrew Robb

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What to Expect With Virtualization[ ]

It would be hard to argue that 2007 was a watershedfor virtualization technology. From chipmakers toISVs, every IT demographic felt a virtual tug as the

technology made its way into the mainstream.

Virtualization is even starting to impact which serversare leaving the factory. According to research firmIDC, third-quarter factoryrevenue in the worldwideserver market grew 0.5percent year-over-year,while the number of serverunits shipped grew 1.5 per-cent less than it did for theprevious period in 2006. Isthis an indicator of a big-ger trend, as companiessoup-up hardware to scaleout an go virtual?

Perhaps. But there's littledoubt that going virtualwill bring sweeping changes to IT organizations andthe data centers they support. Here are some trendsto keep an eye on:

1. Security Will Loom LargeDespite data breaches, spam, and viruses under pret-ty much any rock you pick up, virtualization remainedlargely immune so far. This will most likely change. In

2007, Gartner began singing a tune of caution forenterprises in the process of virtualizing their infra-structures, noting "that security issues are endemic tovirtualization. They begin at the architecture level.Even the hypervisor itself represents a threat thatmalicious hackers will target."

This is because, as vicepresident and Gartner fel-low, Neil MacDonald said,"You have 10 workloadsand you merge them ontoone, that's a very attractivetarget for a bad guy. Now,if I compromise just onethin layer I get all 10machines… And this layerwill be targeted."

Such a breach did notoccur in 2007. However,deployments are increas-ing, and enterprises remain

complacent about security. The advice here is obvi-ous: Be proactive and tighten up your virtualmachines because a breach is inevitable.

MacDonald noted that managing the security in a vir-tualized environment is a lot like managing yet anoth-er operating system. Therefore be sure to keep the

2 What to Expect With Virtualization, An Internet.com Networking eBook. © 2008, Jupitermedia Corp.


Seven Virtualization Trends to WatchBy Amy Newman

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The advice here is obvious: Be proactive and tighten up your virtualmachines because a breach is inevitable.

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hypervisor patched, correctly configured and up todate.

2. Easy Money Won't Be Quite So Easy AnymoreIn 2007, any vendor that put "virtual" in front of itsname or its product's name was able to pretty muchwrite its own ticket. This will most likely change. Withthe economy tightening and virtualization offeringsexceeding deployment and deployment plans, it'sdoubtful the venture capital firms that have beenfunding this whole exercise will continue to be sogenerous. Ideas will need to be more solid to receivefunding, and venture capital firms may be ready tocash out, whether through a sale or IPO.

3. Value-Add Will Be CriticalWhat the virtualization vendors offer beyond thehypervisor will be the deciding factor for their success.

In early 2007, "it's all about the management," wasthe mantra. By now, user enterprises and ISVs havedrunk the Kool-Aid. Management options are outthere — whether they're being used properly isunclear, but they are available. In the latter half of2007, attention moved to performance, integrationand usability. In some cases enterprises are growingtheir own options. In other cases they are partnering.VMware, which traditionally has been a go-it-alonetype of company, announced a partnership with SAP.Expect to see much more of such deal between thevirtualization vendors and ISVs, as its less expensiveand more efficient for all parties to do it this way.

4. Vendor Consolidation Will ContinueEMC may have given VMware a longer leash, butother vendors that played in the virtual playgroundwere swallowed up. HP acquired Opsware; Citrix swal-lowed Xen. Virtual Iron and SWsoft (recently rechris-tened Parallels) remain independent. With Microsoftcoming on the scene, the competition will tighten.Virtual Iron plays the partnership card well, and wherethat will take it is anyone's guess.

As for who might be acquiring — watch the hardwareside carefully. Theories about Intel, Sun Microsystems,and IBM going on shopping sprees have surfaced inthe blogosphere in recent months.

5. Microsoft Will Make WavesMicrosoft may be easy to mock, and the oft-described

Redmond behemoth hardly ever comes out with any-thing new, technology-wise. It didn't become what itdid by being stupid, however, and it has acknowl-edged that virtualization is here and it's here to stay.Therefore, a cannon bigger than Microsoft VirtualServer will be needed. Enter Hyper-V, the hypervisorformerly known as Viridian, which Microsoft intro-duced with Windows Server 2008.

Hyper-V will have an enormous and direct impact onthe virtualization landscape once it ships. But doesthat even matter in user communities that have largelyaccepted beta to be nearly as good as gold — espe-cially from Microsoft, known for its constant patchingand release packs?

More organizations deploy Microsoft than any otheroperating system. With Hyper-V a standard compo-nent, enterprises still on the virtual fence will be ableto dip a toe in the water, easily and inexpensively.This will make VMware and its ilk a tougher sell, espe-cially if Microsoft truly plays nice with other operatingsystems. The value VMware and other competitorsadd will need to be enough to justify their price.

6. Storage and Servers Will ConvergeConvergence has been a buzzword in the dot-comera. Sometimes it holds true, sometimes not. The stor-age and server infrastructures have been skirting eachother for years, and storage has a legacy of its ownwith virtualization. RAID arrays really aren't that differ-ent from virtual machines, after all.

VMware unwrapped a new version of VirtualInfrastructure, and Virtual Iron took a new version ofits software out of the bag. Both vendors emphasizedstorage, and the evidence of melding is pretty clear.

7. I/O and Automation Will BecomeIncreasingly CriticalNot that they weren't before. When you're movingworkloads around and planning out deployments, it'simportant to have an understanding of your needsand limitations. As more workloads are moved aroundvirtually, it's even more paramount.

A recent survey from Xsigo Systems highlighted I/Oproblems that have been surfacing. As for automa-tion, consider the price HP paid for Opsware and howquickly it integrated it into the organization. �



Although the technology required to virtualizedata centers has been around for more than 40years, 2007 will go down in history as the end

of the beginning — the year the technology vaultedinto mainstream consciousness and hurtled to the topof every CIO's "must-do" list.

Now that everyone has caught on to the benefits thistechnology can deliver,chiefly, the ability to reducean organization's data cen-ter footprint by a factor ofsix, eight or 12, the focus isturning to making sure allthese efficiencies and costsavings don't come at theexpense of data availabilityand security.

"We've jumped over thechasm without even lookingdown below," DonNorbeck, director of prod-uct development atSunGard, toldInternetNews.com. "Luckily,we'll probably land on the other side. But there's stillplenty of risk."

These risks, from an organizational standpoint, startlong before the first virtualization application is

downloaded.

Just like any other software installation, committing toa virtualization project requires not only an apprecia-tion for the technological vulnerabilities inherent inany operating system — like bugs, malware, andaccess control — but also a fundamental understand-ing of exactly which applications and systems are

used the most, which arethe most critical to opera-tions, when they're used,and how to orchestrate theworkload of all these appli-cations running on bothphysical and virtual servers.

For those charged with theresponsibility of managingand maintaining one datacenter or multiple datacenters, the temptation tosimply initiate a straight-line consolidation — takethe workloads running on100 servers and cram themon to 10 or 15 servers — is

alluring. Every company wants to get greener, lowerenergy consumption, reduce the size of their datacenters and have the ability to shift workloads with asimple click of a button.



Virtualization Craze Bringsthe Bad With the Good

By Larry Barrett

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Every company wants to get greener, lower energy consumption,reduce the size of their data centers and have the ability to shift workloads

with a simple click of a button.

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"Now that everything is in the pool, people just haveto push a button," Norbeck said. "And they'll keeppushing the button until the button doesn't work any-more. Without proper planning and provisioning,you're back to where you were before. How do youaudit it? You push a button and then wait to see whostarts complaining."

In other words, just as all servers are not createdequal, neither are the applications running in a corpo-rate data center.

And the stakes are increasing.In December, SAP announced it will now begin sup-porting its virtualized enterprise resource planning(ERP) software running on VMware and 64-bitWindows, Linux, and Solaris platforms. It's a sign ofthe virtualized times.

After all, it's one thing to have the corporate e-mailsystem or some back-end storage system running ona virtualized machine, but companies are now virtual-izing their most critical applications. Workloads canspike unpredictably. Power outages occur. One mali-cious bit of code has the potential to infiltrate multi-ple applications. Patching, more than ever, becomes apreoccupation.

And no data center is an island unto itself. It'sdependent on multiple vendors to make it all work:security, storage, applications, operating systems, andnetworking equipment.

"Virtualization, as with any emerging technology, willbe the target of new security threats," NeilMacDonald, an analyst at Gartner, said in a researchreport published earlier this year. "Many organizationsmistakenly assume that their approach for securingvirtual machines will be the same as securing any OSand thus plan to apply their existing configurationguidelines, standards and tools. While this is start,simply applying the technologies and best practicesfor securing physical servers won't provide sufficientprotections for VMs."

MacDonald said that through 2009, 60 percent of pro-duction virtual machines will be less secure than theirphysical counterparts.

At the architecture level, it starts with the hypervisor,

which is basically a stripped down version of theWindows or Linux or Solaris operating system.

You have 10 workloads and you merge them ontoone," MacDonald said. "That's a very attractive targetfor a bad guy. Now, if I compromise just one thinlayer, I get all 10 machines."

Nand Mulchandani, senior director of security productmanagement and marketing at VMware, deals withthe security implications of his company's industry-leading software all day long. Not surprisingly, hethinks most of the security concerns raised by themedia and some security experts are overblown.

"Virtualization in some sense looks like a titanic shiftin computing," he said in an interview withInternetNews.com. "But frankly, from a security andtechnology standpoint, it's not as radical as it's beenportrayed.

"It's a temporal issue," he said. "The thinking is thatanything new and different is going to have problems.Everyone is looking for a big Achilles' heel that noone is talking about. We have to roll with the punch-es. Tomorrow there will be another new thing in theindustry that everyone will call insecure. That's life."

For VMware, Microsoft, Virtual Iron, XenSource andnow Oracle, the focus will shift from functionality tosecurity as the virtualization software industry matures.

Misconfiguration and mismanagement — the propen-sity to set up default passwords insecurely — hasbeen the scourge of operating systems since theirinception. And while virtualization vendors continue tostrip down the core operating system in the hypervi-sor, there's no such thing as a foolproof virtualizationproject.

"From a threat profile, the most important thing cus-tomers should worry about is hardening their plat-forms," Mulchandini said. "Locking down your plat-form is something most people in the Windows orLinux world are used to doing. Securing the systemand the code is purely and primarily on us."

Because all large corporations — and most small- andmidsize firms — didn't have the benefit of a crystalball, applications and the operating systems running



those applications grew in a staggered, chaotic fash-ion and can't always be configured, provisioned, ormoved around in a tidy, virtualization-friendly box.

But that probably won't dissuade companies fromeventually embracing virtualization in their data cen-ters.

"Where money is involved and efficiency is involved,people tend to overlook whatever minor queasinessthey might have," Mulchandini said. �



Virtualization is catching on like never before.Just about every server vendor is advocating itheavily, and IT departments worldwide are buy-

ing into the technology in ever-increasing numbers.

"The use of virtualization in the mainstream is now rel-atively commonplace, rather than just in developmentand test," said Clive Longbottom, an analyst at U.K.-based Quocirca. "In addition, business continuitybased on long-distance vir-tualization is being seenmore often."

As a result, the time hascome to more closely alignhardware purchasing withvirtualization deployment. Sowhat are some of the impor-tant do's and don'ts of buy-ing servers and other hard-ware for a virtual data centerinfrastructure? What ques-tions should IT managers askbefore they make selectiondecisions on servers? And how should storage virtual-ization gear be integrated into the data center?

Do’s and Don’tsThere are, of course, plenty of ways to virtualize,depending on the applications being addressed. This

article will focus on a typical case where infrastructureand business logic applications are the main targets.

With that in mind, one obvious target is memory. It isa smart policy to buy larger servers that hold morememory to get the best return on investment. Whilesingle- and dual-processor systems can host multipleapplications under normal circumstances, problemsarise when two or more hit peak usage periods.

"Our field experience hasshown that you can hostmore VMs [virtual machines]per processor and drivehigher overall utilization onthe server if there are moreresources within the physi-cal system," said JayBretzmann, worldwide mar-keting manager, System x atIBM. "VMware's code per-mits dynamic load balanc-ing across the unusedprocessor resources allocat-

ed to separate virtual machines."

He advised buying servers with more reliability fea-tures, especially those that predict pending failuresand send alerts to move the workloads before the sys-tem experiences a hard failure. Despite the addedcost, organizations should bear in mind that such



Hardware for Virtualization:Do’s and Don’ts

By Drew Robb

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What questions should IT managers ask before they make selectiondecisions on servers? And how should storage virtualization gear be

integrated into the data center?

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servers are the cornerstone of any virtualization solu-tion. Therefore, they deserve the lion's share of invest-ment.

"Businesses will lose significant productivity if the con-solidation server fails," said Bretzmann. "A hard crashcan lead to hours of downtime depending upon whatfailed."

Longbottom, however, made the point that an organi-zation need not spend an arm and a leg for virtualiza-tion hardware — as long as it doesn't go too low end.

"Cost of items should be low — these items may needswapping in and out as time goes on," saidLongbottom. "But don't just go for cheapest kitaround — make sure that you get what is needed."

This is best achieved by looking for highly dense sys-tems. Think either stackable within a 19-inch rack orusable as a blade chassis system. By focusing on suchsystems, overall cooling and power budgets can bebetter contained. Remember, too, not every server iscapable of being managed in a virtual environment.Therefore, all assets should be recognizable by stan-dard systems management tools.

Just as there are things you must do, several keydon'ts should be observed as well. One that is oftenviolated is that servers should not be configured withlots of internal storage.

"Servers that load VMs from local storage don't havethe ability to use technologies like VMotion to moveworkloads from one server to another," cautionedBretzmann.

What about virtualizing everything? That's a no-no,too. Although many applications benefit from this



Microsoft's hypervisor-based virtualization technolo-gy will hit the streets in its final version some timethis summer. Hyper-V, formerly known as Viridian,will be rolled into the Data Center and EnterpriseEditions of Windows Server 2008.

Although much hyped, this is not Microsoft's firstventure into virtualization. Its Virtual Server productholds that distinction. Hyper-V, however, is its firstproduct to use the same hypervisor-based technologyas market leader VMware and Citrix with its opensource Xen.

What is significant about Microsoft's move is thatalthough hypervisor technology makes hardware-assisted virtualization extremely efficient and serversvirtualized in this way suffer very little performancepenalty, the market is relatively immature. VMwarecurrently has the largest market share by far, but thepercentage of servers actually virtualized remainssmall.

"In the virtualization space, there is still everythingleft to play for," said Barb Goldworm, president andchief analyst at Boulder, Colo.-based FocusConsulting. "If you look at the virtualization markettoday, 75 percent of large companies have implement-ed some form of virtualization, but probably only 10percent to 15 percent of the servers in the world arevirtualized. So the market is only 10 percent saturat-ed," she added.

This suggests that Microsoft has timed its entry intothe serious virtualization world just about right.Awareness of the benefits of virtualization is high —thanks in no small part to the ongoing marketingefforts of VMware — but plenty of companies have yetto commit to the EMC-owned company.

So although there's little reason for enterprises thathave chosen to go with VMware to switch toMicrosoft's Hyper-V, those that have yet to embracevirtualization technology have every reason to con-sider Hyper-V — especially if it comes bundled withWindows Server 2008.

"We are certainly not getting the idea that there isany dissatisfaction with VMware," said Chris Ingle, a

Will Hyper-V 'Netscape'VMware?By Paul Rubens

Just as there are things youmust do, several key don'ts should

be observed as well.

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technology, in some cases, it actually makes thingsworse. For example, database servers should not bevirtualized for performance reasons.

Support is another important issue to consider."Find out if the adoption of virtualization will causeany application support problems," said Bretzmann."Not all ISVs have tested their applications withVMware."

Storage VirtualizationMost of the provisos covered above also apply topurchasing gear for storage virtualization.

"Most of the same rules for classic physical environ-ments still apply to virtual environments — it's really aquestion of providing a robust environment for theapplication and its data," said John Lallier, vice presi-dent of technology at FalconStor Software.

While virtual environments can shield users fromhardware specific dependencies, they can also intro-duce other issues. One concern when consolidatingapplications on a single virtualization server, forexample, is that you may be over-consolidating to thedetriment of performance and re-introducing a sin-gle-point-of-failure. When one physical server fails,multiple virtual application servers are affected.

"Customers should look for systems that can providethe same level of data protection that they alreadyenjoy in their physical environments," said Lallier.

He believes, therefore, that storage purchasersshould opt for resilient and highly available gear thatwill keep vital services active no matter what hard-ware problems arise. In addition, Lallier suggestsinvesting in several layers of protection for large dis-tributed applications that may span multiple applica-tion servers. This should include disaster recovery(DR) technology so operations can quickly resume atremote sites. To keep costs down, he said usersshould select DR solutions that do not require anenormous investment in bandwidth.

As a cost-cutting measure, Lallier advocates doublingup virtual environments. If the user is deploying a vir-tual environment to better manage applicationservers, for example, why not use the same virtualiza-



research director at IDC. "But Microsoft will be giv-ing customers an easy opportunity to virtualize ifthey are interested."

HP, Dell and others will effectively be bundlingHyper-V when they supply servers to their customerslater this year. Some vendors, including Dell, HP, andIBM are also offering the option of the embeddedVMware bare-metal virtualization product ESXServer 3i on their servers, via USB storage or a flashmemory card that can be inserted to start the virtual-ized environment.

"It will be interesting to see how OEMs handle this inthe future," said Chris Ingle. "Will they offer embed-ded and bundled hypervisors, or will they offer alter-native SKUs?" he asked.

Competition aside, the most important question iswhether Hyper-V is any good. "What everyone willwant to know is what the final performance of Hyper-Vwill be like," said Ingle. "We haven't seen the numbersyet, and until we see some published performance fig-ures, it is rather difficult to decide," he added.

Support for non-Microsoft guest operating systemsmay also be important to some companies, althoughMicrosoft-only shops will not be too worried aboutthe hypervisor's ability to support Linux. In fact,Microsoft has said Hyper-V will support 32- and 64-bit operating systems, including Server 2003 and2008, and "Linux and other operating systems."Make of that what you will until further announce-ments clarify.

Of course, the hypervisor itself is not really thewhole story. To operate an effective virtualized datacenter, various management tools are needed, andthis is an area that VMware has been at pains tostress with its Virtual Infrastructure concept.VMware has leveraged its virtualization technologyto branch into other areas, including disaster recov-ery and business continuity.

It's certainly true that VMware's management toolsare impressive, especially its much-touted VMotionproduct, which allows virtual machines (VMs) to bemoved on the fly from one host server to another.The company also offers a companion StorageVMotion product, which can move disk storage asso-ciated with a particular VM from one storage medi-um to another without having to stop the VM.

Will Hyper-V 'Netscape' VMware? continued

tion environment to better manage the data protec-tion servers? As an example, FalconStor has createdvirtual appliances for VMware Virtual Infrastructurethat enable users to make use of its continuous dataprotection (CDP) or virtual tape library (VTL) systemsthat can be installed and managed as easily as appli-cation servers in this environment.

Of course, every vendor has a different take. NetworkAppliance, aka NettApp, provides an alternative toFalconStor using the snapshot technology available inits StoreVault S500. This storage array handles instantbackups and restores without disrupting the estab-lished IT environment.

"Useful products are able to host VMs over multipleprotocols, and the StoreVault can do it via NFS, iSCSIor FCP — whatever your environment needs," saidAndrew Meyer StoreVault Product Marketing Managerat NetApp.

"Don't get trapped into buying numerous productsfor each individual solution. One product that is flexi-ble with multiple options (can handle VMs, create aSAN, handle NAS needs, provide snapshots and repli-cation) may be a smarter investment as a piece ofinfrastructure." �



At the moment, Microsoft doesn't have anything thatcan match the feature set of VMotion. For manage-ment software, Microsoft will hitch its wagon to theSystem Center family of products. Most significantwill be the Virtual Machine Manger module. Whenintegrated with the rest of System Center, it promis-es the ability to manage an entire Microsoft infra-structure regardless of whether individual machinesare virtual. In a mixed physical and virtual serverenvironment managed by System Center, VirtualMachine Manager provides features for provisioningand other VM-specific tasks. For example, OperationsManger provides the unified health monitoring,while Data Protection Manager provides the continu-ous data protection for all of the servers — both phys-ical and virtual.

Of course, Hyper-V users will not be restricted toMicrosoft-only management products, and it's likelythe company will encourage plug-ins to SystemCenter to enable specific vendors to work with it.Barb Goldworm said she believes things could goeven further, "The Xen product has been architectedas a base hypervisor, then services are built on top ofthat, and then a management layer over that. So itmay end up that people use Hyper-V, services fromCitrix, and management from System Center."

Whatever emerges, it's likely that this will spurVMware to make even more advanced managementproducts for its products, resulting in an increasedsophistication and attraction of the whole virtualiza-tion market.

The thing about Microsoft, however, is that it almostalways gets what it wants. Come late 2008, Hyper-Vis bound to be widely adopted by Microsoft shopsthat have yet to commit to virtualization. What willmake the difference between a widely adopted prod-uct and one that can seriously challenge VMware inthe long term are price, performance, and support-ing tools and infrastructure.

Microsoft knows this, but don't expect VMware to sitthere and do nothing to meet the challenge. �

Will Hyper-V 'Netscape' VMware? continued

While server virtualization rolls onward withseemingly unstoppable momentum, storagevirtualization lags behind. That may be

changing, as storage virtualization moves forward ontwo distinct fronts — block-level and file-level virtual-ization.

The demand to eliminate disruption from IT opera-tions is driving block-level virtual-ization. Taking the SAN down onweekends to perform maintenanceor move data is no longer accept-able.

"Some might be surprised that akey driver of this is planned down-time," said Doc D'Errico, vice pres-ident and general manager of theinfrastructure software group atEMC. "While most people under-stand unplanned events such asnatural and man-made disasters,planed downtime — like schedulemaintenance, data migrations,lease roll-overs, or technologyrefreshes — account for 60 percentto 75 percent of all downtime."

To complicate this, most enterprise-class infrastruc-tures typically include multi-vendor server environ-ments, diverse connectivity technologies, and multi-

vendor tiered storage environments. Organizationsmust be able to allocate any storage to any applica-tion based on the needs of the business, and theymust be able to do so non-disruptively. Enter storagevirtualization — to deliver the right information at theright performance level with the right functionality tothe business at the lowest total cost.

"Without storage virtualization,host servers must be individuallymapped to physical arrays in amany-to-many or server-to-arrayconfiguration," said D'Errico."Administrators are forced to tiertheir infrastructure manually."

If a company's financial data, forexample, must be kept on Tier 1storage and e-mail on Tier 2, thenthe servers running these applica-tions must be manually mappedto an appropriate physical array.With storage virtualization, admin-istrators can instead map allservers to a single endpoint likethe EMC Invista virtualizationapplication for SANs; no need to

manually touch each physical array. The result is muchsimpler SAN administration and easier interoperabilitybetween the multiple data center components.



Storage Virtualization Plays Catch UpBy Drew Robb

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Organizations must be able to allocate any storage to any applicationbased on the needs of the business, and they must be able to do so non-disruptively.

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Other vendors offering block-level virtualizationinclude IBM SVC from IBM, TagmaStore USP fromHitachi Data Systems, and SANmelody from DataCoreSoftware.

DataCore has developed a series of what it callsFeature-Packaged Virtual Storage Solutions. These runon virtualization platforms, such as VMware, MicrosoftVS, Oracle VM, Sun xVM, Virtual Iron and CitrixXenServer. They support anywhere from 2 TB to 32TB. Pricing starts at $4,500.

"They can thin-provision storage capacity, migratedata, accelerate storage performance and createhigh-speed disk copies for fast disk backup and recov-ery," said George Teixeira, president and CEO ofDataCore.

File Virtualization Gains More FANsFile virtualization deals mainly with the virtualization ofthe files stored on NAS boxes, storage servers, andfile servers. File virtualization is also known under theterm "file-area network" or FAN. A FAN is a way toaggregate file systems so they can be moved easierand managed centrally via a logical layer known as aglobal namespace. The benefits are easier serveradministration, file reorganization, and consolidation.Files can be moved without the user being aware thatthey may now physically reside in a completely differ-ent location.

"A file area network consists of a collection of net-work-attached storage appliances and file servers thatare virtualized and for which the data on them can bemanaged under a single file system," said DeniConnor, an analyst with Storage Strategies Now. "AsNAS appliances proliferate, the management of thembecomes more complex. Rather than managing eachNAS device by itself, combining them into a FAN,allows them to be managed collectively."

Some vendors, such as Acopia (acquired by F5Networks), implement FANs as hardware. Others takea software approach (although they are sometimesdelivered within an appliance), such as StorageX byBrocade Communications Systems. StorageX works inconjunction with the Microsoft Distributed File System(DFS) protocol, which maps logical physical devices tological storage and replicates data across WAN links.

StorageX extends the functionality of DFS by addingglobal namespace capabilities and simplifying datamanagement at remote locations.

"Without virtualization, you can have one server beingfully utilized while others sit idle, and it is cumber-some to move files, reconfigure file systems or makethem available elsewhere in the event of a disaster,"said Philippe Nicolas, technology evangelist for FANsolutions at Brocade. "Such issues are solved byadding a logical layer (via a global namespace)between clients and file systems."

According to a recent study by New York City-basedanalyst firm TheInfoPro, however, EMC Rainfinity is theNo. 1 file virtualization technology. Rainfinity virtual-izes unstructured data environments and moves data(including active, open files) without disruption. It canbe deployed as either software or an appliance.

"Rainfinity continues to accelerate its penetration intoenterprises globally on the strength of its file virtual-ization capabilities for multi-vendor NAS environmentsand is currently being used to virtualize petabytes ofcustomer information in a wide range of industriesand operating environments," said D'Errico.

Virtual ProblemsLike everything else, however, you can get too muchof a good thing. With so much server virtualizationhappening, and now two different categories of stor-age virtualization being deployed in storage environ-ments, it stands to reason that integration must beaddressed.

"Virtualization will become increasingly importantboth for storage and servers," said Mike Karp, an ana-lyst at Enterprise Management Associates. "The chal-lenge here will be managing across the virtual inter-faces — the abstraction layers that separate the physi-cal devices from the management. It is necessary tomanage storage within the context of its connectionwith application servers."

Interestingly, there is a developing field that address-es the management of multiple virtualization tech-nologies. Known as enterprise virtualization, it encom-passes servers and storage.



"IT managers are increasingly considering theprospect of a fully virtualized data center infrastruc-ture," said Emulex's McIntyre. "There is a high degreeof affinity between SANs and server virtualizationbecause the connectivity offered by a SAN simplifiesthe deployment and migration of virtual machines."�



What a difference a year makes with the whirl-wind of the server virtualization world. Newcross-platform management tools, embed-

ded hypervisors, wider acceptance of open sourcemethods, protocols, standards, and simplified pricinghave all made virtualization much more popular withIT managers.

While the market is growing, itstill represents a minor portionof the entire server market-place – less than 10 percent,according to Microsoft repre-sentatives. What is new is thatvirtual machine (VM) servertechnology is now availableand more attractive to mid-tierusers for four reasons:

• The free versions are morecapable.

• Prices are coming down.

• Ease of setup and management is increasing.

• The technology can help reduce power and coolingrequirements just as being green is gaining traction.

Nevertheless, virtual servers are just one part of theentire virtualization market, which is growing to

include all kinds of computing, from storage virtualiza-tion to streaming applications installation, to virtualdesktops.

But in the past year, four trends are obvious:

1) Growth of the hypervisor: The hypervisor is nowfound in more places, both exploited in the latest

processor chips from Intel'sVirtualization Technology vProand AMD-V, and as a standardpackage with most of the pop-ular Linux distributions andsoon for Solaris too. Thehypervisors, or virtual machinecontrol programs, for the threemajor vendors (Microsoft,Citrix and VMware) now sup-port this embedded hardware,which makes for simplifiedinstallation and nearly one-button booting of virtualservers. And VMware hasbegun selling ESXi, a special-ized embedded version that

will begin shipping on servers imminently. HP'sProLiant servers now offer built-in support for Citrix'XenServer; older ProLiants can be upgraded too.

2) Interoperability: Interoperability has taken root,and we have seen in the past year a series of initia-



Virtual Servers Update:VMware vs. Microsoft vs. Xen

By David Strom

Jupiterimages

New cross-platform management tools, embedded hypervisors, wider acceptanceof open source methods, protocols, standards, and simplified pricing have

all made virtualization much more popular with IT managers.

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tives to make managing multiple VM vendors morepalatable. Novell's ZenWorks VM Manager andOrchestrator products are just from one of many prod-ucts that will offer a way to manage more than onevendor's hypervisor. Microsoft's SystemCenter, CAand others have announced plans to support bothMicrosoft's and VMware hypervisors, and Novell willalso support Citrix's solution too. VMware announcedseveral management tools that enable automation ofthe entire lifecycle of a VM, including staging themigration from a development/test environment intoproduction, according to Bogomil Balkansky, theSenior Director of Product Marketing for the company."Our customers tend to want to do more with virtualservers once they get it into their shops."

Another dimension to the interoperability story is astandards effort called the open VM format that is firstexpected to be finishedsometime early summer."With this format, organi-zations can use a stan-dard set of VM manage-ment metadata to man-age VMs running on dif-ferent hypervisors. Thisarchitecture is fully exten-sible, allowing VMs to advertise custom configurationinformation, such as a virtual barcode, securityrequirements, or service level requirements," saysChris Wolf, a senior analyst with the Burton Group.

"While work remains, the eventual goal of these stan-dards is to provide hypervisor interoperability, such asby taking a VM image built on the Microsoft Hyper-Vhypervisor and running it on a Citrix XenServer hypervi-sor without having to modify the VM's configuration."

And as another example of increased manageability,inventory and asset management vendors such asBDNA have tools that can account for individual VMsthat are hosted on virtual servers when they discoverserver resources across an enterprise. "This is a strongsign that the market is maturing and that customershave a choice," says Simon Crosby, the co-founder ofXenSource and now the CTO of the division for Citrix.

3) Falling Prices and Improved Functionality: Pricesare coming down and functionality for even the free

versions is improving. The free products – and indeed,all of Microsoft's virtual server line – continue to be agreat way for enterprises to become familiar with VMtechnology and to do any evaluations before deploy-ing them into production. Most noticeably Microsofthas announced they will expand their product line withHyper-V, which will be included in all 64-bit versions ofits Windows Server 2008, expected in August. Hyper-Vups the ante considerably, with support for symmetri-cal multi-processors and larger memory support.

On the paid products, XenServer continues to be thelower-priced spread, offering single-CPU versions andbetter value when compared to VMware. The latter'sprices are now almost comprehendible, an improve-ment from their obscure complexity of last year.VMware also introduced support for 10 gigabitEthernet networks and larger memory and disk sup-

port with its latest ver-sion, and now has morethan 700 pre-built virtual"appliances" or virtualdisk images that are avail-able as well.

Citrix hasn't stood stilleither, and boosted the

performance of XenServer since acquiring the compa-ny last year, especially when it comes to XenServerworking with the company's flagship PresentationServer product line. "We recognize that our customerswant to run both products to solve dynamic data cen-ter problems," says Crosby.

4) Widening Channels: The virtual server channel con-tinues to widen, with more partnerships, agreements,and expertise than ever before. As smaller, specialtycompanies enter this market, they are looking tocement relationships, expand distribution, and makejust about every component in the data center virtual-ized. "All of the services that do hardware and applica-tions failover, disaster recovery, chargeback, and securitywill be built into hypervisors and run on VMs," saysSusan Davis, the VP of marketing for Egenera, one ofthe newer specialty virtual software vendors.

"This year is shaping up to be one of the most inter-esting years ever in enterprise IT infrastructure," saysCrosby.



The virtual server channel continuesto widen, with more partnerships,agreements, and expertise than

ever before.

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Virtual Server Product Comparison

VMware Microsoft Xen

Product URL Vmware.com Microsoft.com/ Xensource.comvirtual server

Free server product VMware Server Virtual Server 2005 XenServer Express,R2, HyperV Win (Enterprise 30 day eval.)Server 2008 64 bit

Paid server products Infrastructure v3.5 None XenServer(Starter, Standard, Standard, Enterprise, andand Enterprise) Platinum Editions

Pricing range paid $1,640 for two CPUs, Free or included in $600 - $5,000 plusproduct includes 1 yr. support Windows Server 2008 support contract

contract (64 bit)

Host OS (if any) Server: Windows, Windows Server 2003 Bare metalServer 2003, R2, 2008; XP Pro SP2various Linux Infra or Vista for testingv3: bare metal purposes only

Management tools Lifecycle Manager, System Center XenCenterVMotion, Storage VM Manager Management ConsoleVmotion

Embedded hypervisor ESXi supports both None* Yesproduct AMD and Intel chipsets

Advantages • Over 700 pre-built • Can run on any IE • Open source solutionappliances browser with Internet that doesn't require any• Widest selection of access host OSguest OS support • Less expensive • Lower cost• Wizards galore for optioninstall aids • Easy cloning of

VM images• Familiar UI

Disadvantages Confusing array of pricing Limited pre-built VHD Limited Windowsand configuration options appliances and just of guest OS support(2 CPU minimum pricing) MS server products

*While Microsoft's offering doesn't have an embedded hypervisor, it does recognize and take advantage ofcomputers with either the AMD or Intel virtualization chipsets.



Virtualization is the latest buzzword steamrolling acrossthe IT landscape, influencing every computer room inits path. Everyone is doing it, according to analysts.

Everybody needs it, say the vendors. But does it really addany value to the small business? As usual the answer variesfrom company to company.

If you own or manage a small shop with a handful ofservers and a bookkeeper that doubles as your IT guytwo hours per day, don't evenbother reading the rest of this arti-cle. For those of you with moresubstantial computing needs, whoseem to have way too manyservers or skyrocketing IT costs,virtualization may offer somerelief.

"Companies with IT teams of oneto four people or firms with 60 orfewer employees often don't havethe level of sophistication requiredto make virtualization pay," saidChip Nickolett, president ofComprehensive ConsultingSolutions that has helped several small businesses taketheir first steps into the virtual world. "In these environ-ments, the benefit of virtualization would be marginalat best."

These are not hard-and-fast numbers, of course. Tiny

firms in financial services, law and other sectors some-times have both significant IT requirements, the budgetand the staff required to make virtualization pay bigdividends.

Understanding the V WordBut let's start with a statement to clarify what virtualiza-tion is in simple terms — not as easy a task as it

sounds. You have to speak to thegeeks in order to get a definitionand it's not in their DNA to uselaymen's terms. So what doesthe V word mean?

"Virtualization enables one serv-er or computer to act as many,"said Dan Chu, vice president ofemerging products and marketsat VMware. "Instead of keepingyour important programs on sep-arate servers so that if one appli-cation or server fails, the otherapplications aren't affected, virtu-alization software lets you run

many applications on the same server."

In such a scenario, you actually have one server sittingon the floor, but it acts as though it were severalservers. Virtualization software enables that server to besplit up into different partitions.



Virtualization Enters the SMB WorldBy Drew Robb

Everyone is doing it, according to analysts. Everybody needs it, say thevendors. But does it really add any value to the small business?

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Jupiterimages

For example, one server could act as three virtualservers with each virtual server running an application(e.g., file server, Web server, and e-mail server). Eachvirtual server acts completely independently from oneanother, so if one crashes, the others are not affected.The net result is that you have to buy only one serverand pay for its power consumption. You get the benefitof three servers for the cost of one.

"The way that I explain it to people is that virtualizationis a way to make an environment portable," saidNickolett.

This means software can be easily relocated to a largeror smaller machine or even moved from one operatingsystem to another. This is accomplished by splittingone physical server into numerous virtual servers or vir-tual machines (VM). Each VM hosts a specific applica-tion or set of software. As everything is virtual, it is easyto move the VMs around and make changes in the ITenvironment.

Some small businesses embark on the virtualizationjourney as a way to simplify disaster recovery. Typically,they just went through their first disaster and recover-ing their systems was a nightmare. Finding the rightback up tapes, hooking them up to new hardware, andfinding all sorts problems — like not having a record oftheir software licenses and not being able to find theoriginal CDs for their operating systems and programs.They have to go through the laborious task of re-installing and re-configuring everything and making itwork on the new hardware and then figuring out howto get the data from the tapes back into the systems.This process can take many days if you're not familiarwith it.

Virtualization, on the other hand, makes it relativelyeasy to capture everything onto a single system image,which makes recovery a snap. "A virtual image makesrecovery or failover faster, easier and more foolproof,"said Nickolett. "Like anything, it requires planning andtesting, but it can be an attractive alternative for somebusinesses."

Blossoming TrendThere is no doubt that virtualization is catching on likewildfire. Just about every large and midsize firm isalready doing it extensively, and now it is percolating

down into the small business strata.

"Virtualization is exploding in popularity," said JimSmith, a performance specialist at TeamQuest Corp."Virtual machine deployments are expected to growfrom 540,000 in 2006 to more than four million 2009."

He cautions, though, that although the benefits arewidely advertised, the complexities have not beencomprehensively discussed. VMs add a whole newlayer of administration to IT. If you're already wellschooled in IT complexity, fine. But for companies stillcoming to terms with internal networking or hookingup servers to storage arrays, virtualization is going tomean the addition of a highly paid specialist into thefold. So it's by no means a must-have technology formany smaller organizations.

Smith makes the point that a good reason to use virtu-alization is to improve the utilization rate of hardware— i.e., how much processing power your server uses torun the application. Many companies, for example, buya server for every application they run. But you can endup with dozens of servers on the floor, most of whichare very poorly utilized.

What this adds up to is that you have a hefty powerand cooling bill but aren't getting much return on themoney. Low utilization means computers aren't beingused to their limits, and that represents an awful lot ofinefficiency.

"When people look, they are often shocked to find thatmany servers are running at utilization levels of lessthan 12 percent," said Smith. "Since 9/11, however,the tide has been turning and the ongoing trend is tomaximize utilization rates. And server virtualization cer-tainly plays a big part in solving this problem."

This brings many other advantages to the IT world.Servers can now be deployed faster. Instead of hours ordays, it can be done with a virtual machine within thehour. Other benefits include a reduction in the amountof space required for computers. That in turn leads tolower costs for ventilation, electricity and cooling.

Each vendor, of course, advocates its own virtualizationschemes, and the various approaches can be quite con-fusing. For the purposes of this article, we will discuss



only the options that small businesses would likelyencounter.

VMwareVMware is the darling of the marketplace. Just aboutevery company of any size engages some form ofVMware deployment. VMware ESX Server is software-based virtualization solution that facilitates hardwaresharing. It makes it possible to have a powerful proces-sor shared by multiple virtual machines behaving asthough they were completely separate servers.

Microsoft Windows Virtual ServerWindows Virtual Server (WVS) is also software-based,and like VMware, it lets you share hardware resourcessuch as memory and CPUs.

Let's move this over into one possible scenario. HPoffers a product for small businesses named the HPc3000 (also known by its nickname, Shorty). This is, inessence, just a chassis or enclosure to hold bladeservers (thin, streamlined servers).

You can buy a c3000 enclosure for with power supplies,fans, and management software for less than $5,000. Itcan hold two-to-eight server blades, which rangebetween $2,100 and $5,000 each, depending onprocessor, memory and configuration. There are someadditional costs for storage and networking.Depending on the mix of devices, a Shorty enclosuremay cost between $7,000 and $45,000.

This hardware from HP supports VMware, WVS andother virtualization solutions. By consolidating all of ITinto a couple of these boxes, it is possible to establisha powerful virtual world composed of scores of virtualservers. Now set up another such box at a remote loca-tion and disaster recovery and you simplify backuptremendously.

"We have customers using the c3000 for virtualizationprojects," said Barry Sinclair, product manager for HPc3000. "One small business customer has four enclo-sures (two in each of two sites in a virtualized environ-ment, and it is handling disaster recovery scenariosbetween sites."

Virtualization in the Real World

Let's end by looking at how one small business benefitsfrom virtualization. The Los Angeles Universal Preschool(LAUP) is non-profit with a goal to make voluntary, high-quality preschool available to every four year old in LosAngeles County. It has several physical servers runningVMware. Each physical server represents 15 to 20 virtu-al machines.

"The cost of purchasing physical servers would haveeasily run over $100,000," said Robert Lazo, director ofsystems and operations at LAUP. "VMware technologyallowed us to avoid that expense."

Other benefits reported by Lazo include being able toset up a new server in less than five minutes. Such atask would have taken many hours previously.

LAUP, however, has a well-established IT staff of sevento service 150 employees. And that's probably themake-break point of virtualization — it's great if youhave clued-in people who are coping with ITheadaches on a daily basis. But if your business is cop-ing fine without high-level computing expertise, it'sprobably safe to give virtualization a pass. �

This content was adapted from Internet.com'sServerWatch, InternetNews and Small BusinessComputingWeb site. Contributors: Drew Robb, PaulRubens, Amy Newman, Larry Barrett, and David Strom.



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