Virtualization - Business Strategy for B2B Market

8/6/2019 Virtualization - Business Strategy for B2B Market

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VirtualizationBusiness Strategy for B2B Market

1/6/2011IBS Hyderabad Exec MBANilay Majmudar 10ESPHH010022

Abstract:

Todays business climate is more challenging than ever and businesses areunder constant pressure to lower costs while improving overall operationalefficiency. In short, businesses are being asked to do more, for less.Virtual Machine technology is one of the most exciting and transformativetechnologies to change the cost of IT infrastructure since the arrival of enterprise ready X86 hardware. This paper provides an overview of thebenefits of virtualization solution and the future of where virtualizationtechnology and management capability are headed. With virtualizationorganizations can achieve significant operational efficiencies in their ITinfrastructure through product integration and a comprehensive serverconsolidation plan.


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Table of Content: Page No.

Introduction: 3

Virtualization Evolution: 4

Virtualization Concept: 5

Why Virtualization? 6

- A List of Reasons: 6

How doest it work? 9

- Virtual Infrastructure: 9- Virtual Machine: 11

Types of Virtualization: 12

- Hardware Virtualization: 12- D esktop Virtualization: 12- Storage Virtualization: 13

Managing IT at Lowest TCO using Virtualization: 14

- Reducing Cost with Virtual Infrastructure: 14- Virtualization delivers Costs Savings: 15- Virtualization delivers better Business Continuity & D R: 15

Advantages of Virtualization: 16

Issues to watch out for: 16

Major Players: 17

Conclusion: 17

References: 18


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I ntroduction:

The trend is clear, IT and business professionals will continue to face more devices,services, changes and demands in the business not less. The challenge is to managethis complexity to achieve agility while keeping costs under control. D ynamic systemstechnologies help IT and business professionals meet this challenge. And in order tocreate a dynamic system, companies need a virtualization strategy to mobilize the

resources of the infrastructure to meet dynamic business demands.

The resulting benefits to IT and business professionals include faster levels of service,freeing up critical resources to take on bigger business challenges, reducing costs andultimately achieving competitive advantage through business agility.

For businesses to thrive they must adapt to meet the changing needs of their customers.They must also be well-matched to overcome the challenges they face, delivering theright solutions at the right time, offering something that is more attractive to theircustomers than a competing solution. One word describes the nature of this kind of business environment: dynamic . The ability of your business and the people in it not

just to survive, but thrive in the face of these dynamic demands, is a function of thecapability and fitness of the infrastructure of business systems that underpin andsupport their work.

Dynamic demands are those that are increasingly immediate, varied, and continuouslychanging. We call systems designed to enable businesses and the people in them tomeet dynamic demands with a quick and effective response dynamic systems. And wecall technologies that include such capabilities dynamic systems technologies.

One of the key elements of the dynamic systems technology strategy is virtualizedinfrastructure. Virtualization mobilizes the resources of the infrastructure and benefitsbusinesses.

Virtualization is a key enabling technology that can be leveraged to achieve businessbenefits. Virtualization technology enables customers to run multiple operating systemsconcurrently on a single physical server, where each of the operating systems runs as aself-contained computer.

As companies grow, their IT infrastructures grow along with them. But more often thatnot, the pace of that growth is uneven, driven as much by the conditions under whichthey operate as the model they aspire to. IT is being increasingly viewed as a key valuegenerator for most organizations and the focus in shifting from merely keeping thebusiness up and running to an engine to drive responsiveness and agility across theorganization.


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D riving agility across IT, reducing costs and management complexity all need to happenin an integrated fashion. Virtualization leverages as a key pillar to address thesebusiness concerns and closely ties with adding intelligence into the applications and atthe management layer to enable the vision for self-managing dynamic systems acrossthe application lifecycle and across all roles within the organization. Virtualization as atechnology has the capability to address some of these business concerns and needs tobe part of the overall IT strategy.

Virtualization Evolution:

Virtualization on the x86 platforms has been around for the last 2 decades. The initialphase of virtualization has been focused in creating greater efficiency in allowing morevirtual machines to function in a single server. In the early days tools were focused inhelping end users understand workloads in terms of memory and CPU utilization. Todaythis is still the primary fundamental approach to virtualization where system integratorsor vendors help their client understand their system workloads and recommend thecorrect consolidation ratio to the D ata Centre environment.

The current phase of virtualization technology is focused on how to achieve reliabilityand flexibility expected in an enterprise D ata Centre. Shared storage was the primaryrequirement in facilitating scheduled movement of virtual machines over physical serverhardware. Shared storage also play a critical role in enabling high availability wherebyworkloads on a physical server can be failed over to another physical server.

The current phase of virtualization takes an infrastructure view of the D ata Centre.Compute, memory, network, security are resource pool. This is critical to allow the clientwho adopts virtualization to maximize the true value of virtualization where the physicalresource takes on the role as a central resource pool and workloads depending on theD ata Centre operation calls upon the resource dynamically to complete its task.

The future of virtualization looks at how this virtual infrastructure can be plugged intothe virtual compute cloud where by the workloads can be shared by two or more D ataCentre resource. Network, security and availability services are integrated into the

D atacenter OS such that workloads can call upon resource on demand.


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Virtualization Concept:

Virtualization is a broad topic, as Bob Muglia, Senior vice president for server and toolsbusiness at Microsoft Corporation, says Virtualization is an approach to deployingcomputer resource that isolate different layers hardware, software, data, network,storage from each other.

So simply we can define virtualization as A framework or methodology of dividing theresources of computer hardware into multiple execution environments, by applying oneor more concepts or technologies such as hardware and software partitioning, timesharing, partial or complete machine simulation, emulation, quality of service, and manyothers. Typically today, operating system is installed directly onto computershardware. Applications are installed directly onto the operating system. The interface ispresented through a display connected directly to the local machine. Altering one layeroften affects the others, making changes difficult to implement. By using software toisolate these layers from each other, virtualization makes it easier to implementchanges. The result is simplified management, more efficient use of it resources, and theflexibility to provide the right computing resources, when and where they are needed.

Todays x86 computer hardware was designed to run a single operating system and asingle application, leaving most machines vastly underutilized. Virtualization lets you runmultiple virtual machines on a single physical machine, with each virtual machinesharing the resources of that one physical computer across multiple environments.D ifferent virtual machines can run different operating systems and multiple applicationson the same physical computer.

The term virtualization broadly describes the separation of are source or request for aservice from the underlying physical delivery of that service. With virtual memory, forexample, computer software gains access to more memory than is physically installed,via the background swapping of data to disk storage. Similarly, virtualization techniquescan be applied to other IT infrastructure layers - including networks, storage, laptop orserver hardware, operating systems and applications. This blend of virtualizationtechnologies - or virtual infrastructure - provides a layer of abstraction betweencomputing, storage and networking hardware, and the applications running on it. Thedeployment of virtual infrastructures non-disruptive, since the user experiences arelargely unchanged. However, virtual infrastructure gives administrators the advantage of managing pooled resources across the enterprise, allowing IT managers to be moreresponsive to dynamic organizational needs and to better leverage infrastructure

investments.


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Wh y Virtualization?

Todays Dilemma: I T I nefficiency Reigns Supreme

Most companies dedicate the majority of their IT budgets to what is called MOOSEspending: Maintenance and Ongoing Operations of Systems and Equipment.Following kind of IT spending is included in MOOSE.

D epreciation of previously purchased computers and network equipment and forsoftware licenses or development costs if these is treated as capital investments.

Maintenance fees for purchased software. Salaries and benefits for IT staff who maintain and operate existing IT systems,

but not staff dedicated to managing new projects. Existing outsourcing agreements. Ongoing IT consulting and integration payments for IT projects carried over from

the prior year. CIO and core IT senior staff, as well as security, enterprise architecture, vendor

management positions that would continue even if there were no new projects. Any other expenses that would be ongoing even if there were no new IT projects.

On average, the cost of MOOSE consumes about 65% to 70% of firms IT budgets,leaving just 30% to 35% for new investments.1 By controlling MOOSE spending, youcan significantly reduce your overall IT budget or free up funds for more innovativeuses, such as supporting new business initiatives or projects. But its not so simple,since inefficient and inflexible technologies leave you few opportunities to remove costfrom the system everything seems to be inextricably linked to some must-have service. To make progress, there are three key culprits that you must address:

Bad utilization: Most firms struggle to consolidate systems. You cant seem to findany servers to pull the plug on, and yet overall utilization hangs around 10%.

Massive cost of management: Every new application you bring in the door demandsa unique system configuration, and you now have hundreds of slightly different variants.

I nflexible application design: If only all your applications were built with the latestcomponentized technologies and had fault-tolerance designed into them. Instead, mostapplications are difficult to scale up and down and dont have resiliency built in.

A List of Reasons

Virtual machines can be used to consolidate the workloads of several under-

utilized servers to fewer machines, perhaps a single machine (serverconsolidation). Related benefits (perceived or real, but often cited by vendors) aresavings on hardware, environmental costs, management, and administration of the server infrastructure.

The need to run legacy applications is served well by virtual machines. A legacyapplication might simply not run on newer hardware and/or operating systems.Even if it does, if may under-utilize the server, so as above, it makes sense toconsolidate several applications. This may be difficult without virtualization as suchapplications are usually not written to co-exist within a single execution


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environment (consider applications with hard-coded System V IPC keys, as atrivial example).

Virtual machines can be used to provide secure, isolated sandboxes for runninguntrusted applications. You could even create such an execution environmentdynamically - on the fly - as you download something from the Internet and run it.You can think of creative schemes, such as those involving address obfuscationVirtualization is an important concept in building secure computing platforms.

Virtual machines can be used to create operating systems, or executionenvironments with resource limits, and given the right schedulers, resourceguarantees. Partitioning usually goes hand-in-hand with quality of service in thecreation of QoS-enabled operating systems.

Virtual machines can provide the illusion of hardware, or hardware configurationthat you do not have (such as SCSI devices, multiple processors,) Virtualizationcan also be used to simulate networks of independent computers.

Virtual machines can be used to run multiple operating systems simultaneously:different versions, or even entirely different systems, which can be on hotstandby. Some such systems may be hard or impossible to run on newer realhardware.

Virtual machines allow for powerful debugging and performance monitoring. Youcan put such tools in the virtual machine monitor, for example. Operating systemscan be debugged without losing productivity, or setting up more complicateddebugging scenarios.

Virtual machines can isolate what they run, so they provide fault and errorcontainment. You can inject faults proactively into software to study itssubsequent behavior.

Virtual machines make software easier to migrate, thus aiding application andsystem mobility.

You can treat application suites as appliances by "packaging" and running each ina virtual machine.

Virtual machines are great tools for research and academic experiments. Sincethey provide isolation, they are safer to work with. They encapsulate the entirestate of a running system: you can save the state, examine it, modify it, reload it,and so on. The state also provides an abstraction of the workload being run.

Virtualization can enable existing operating systems to run on shared memorymultiprocessors.

Virtual machines can be used to create arbitrary test scenarios, and can lead tosome very imaginative, effective quality assurance.


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Virtualization can be used to retrofit new features in existing operating systems

without "too much" work.

Virtualization can make tasks such as system migration, backup, and recoveryeasier and more manageable.

Virtualization can be an effective means of providing binary compatibility.

Virtualization on commodity hardware has been popular in co-located hosting.Many of the above benefits make such hosting secure, cost-effective, andappealing in general.

G et more out of your existing resources: Pool common infrastructure resourcesand break the legacy one application to one server model with serverconsolidation.

Reduce datacenter costs by reducing your physical infrastructure and improvingyour server to admin ratio: Fewer servers and related IT hardware means reducedreal estate and reduced power and cooling requirements. Better managementtools let you improve your server to admin ratio so personnel requirements arereduced as well.

Increase availability of hardware and applications for improved businesscontinuity: Securely backup and migrate entire virtual environments with nointerruption in service. Eliminate planned downtime and recover immediately fromunplanned issues.

G ain operational flexibility: Respond to market changes with dynamic resourcemanagement, faster server provisioning and improved desktop and applicationdeployment.

Improve desktop manageability and security: D eploy, manage and monitor securedesktop environments that users can access locally or remotely, with or without anetwork connection, on almost any standard desktop, laptop or tablet PC.


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H ow does it work?The VMware virtualization platform is built on a business-ready architecture. Usesoftware such as VMware vSphere to transform or virtualize the hardware resources of an x86-based computerincluding the CPU, RAM, hard disk and network controllertocreate a fully functional virtual machine that can run its own operating system andapplications just like a real computer. Each virtual machine contains a completesystem, eliminating potential conflicts.

VMware virtualization works by inserting a thin layer of software directly on thecomputer hardware or on a host operating system. This contains a virtual machinemonitor or hypervisor that allocates hardware resources dynamically andtransparently. Multiple operating systems run concurrently on a single physical computerand share hardware resources with each other.

By encapsulating an entire machine, including CPU, memory, operating system, andnetwork devices, a virtual machine is completely compatible with all standard x86operating systems, applications, and device drivers. You can safely run several operating

systems and applications at the same time on a single computer, with each havingaccess to the resources it needs when it needs them.

G enerally, server virtualization solutions work by introducing a thin layer over thephysical server. This layer partitions the physical server into separate areas that thevirtual servers then run on. Computing resources from the underlying server are viewedas a pool of resources which can then be shared among the virtual machines sitting ontop.

With the exception of that sharing of computing resources, each virtual server acts as its

own entity; problems with an application on one server do not affect other virtualmachines on that same physical server.

Virtual Infrastructure:

A virtual infrastructure lets you share your physical resources of multiple machinesacross your entire infrastructure. A virtual machine lets you share the resources of asingle physical computer across multiple virtual machines for maximum efficiency.Resources are shared across multiple virtual machines and applications. Your businessneeds are the driving force behind dynamically mapping the physical resources of yourinfrastructure to applicationseven as those needs evolve and change. Aggregate yourx86 servers along with network and storage into a unified pool of IT resources that canbe utilized by the applications when and where theyre needed. This resourceoptimization drives greater flexibility in the organization and results in lower capital andoperational costs.


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Virtual I nfrastructure Diagram

A virtual infrastructure consists of the following components:

y Bare-metal hypervisors to enable full virtualization of each x86 computer.

y Virtual infrastructure services such as resource management and consolidatedbackup to optimize available resources among virtual machines

y Automation solutions that provide special capabilities to optimize a particular ITprocess such as provisioning or disaster recovery.

D ecouple your software environment from its underlying hardware infrastructure so youcan aggregate multiple servers, storage infrastructure and networks into shared pools of resources. Then dynamically deliver those resources, securely and reliably, toapplications as needed. This pioneering approach lets our customers use building blocksof inexpensive industry-standard servers to build a self-optimizing datacenter anddeliver high levels of utilization, availability, automation and flexibility.


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Virtual Mac h ine:

A virtual machine is a tightly isolated software container that can run its own operatingsystems and applications as if it were a physical computer. A virtual machine behavesexactly like a physical computer and contains it own virtual (i.e., software-based) CPU,RAM hard disk and network interface card (NIC).

An operating system cant tell the difference between a virtual machine and a physicalmachine, nor can applications or other computers on a network. Even the virtualmachine thinks it is a real computer. Nevertheless, a virtual machine is composedentirely of software and contains no hardware components whatsoever. As a result,virtual machines offer a number of distinct advantages over physical hardware.


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Types of Virtualization:

1) H ardware Virtualization :

This is the most common and is used in IT departments in a company as well as in thedata centers. The servers hardware is virtualized thus allowing us to be able to rundifferent OS and different applications simultaneously on the same hardware. Thisallows us to do server consolidation. And the benefits are obvious (only listing thecritical ones hereand less cost is a major advantage across all of these):

a) Less number of servers required for the same number of applications.b) Less power consumption.c) Less maintenance overhead for the IT staff.d) More resource utilization.e) Easier (and faster) to add more capacity.f) Patch management and upgrades become easier.

g) D RP ( D isaster Recovery Planning) becomes easier. Without any interruption to theservice, one can backup and even migrate entire virtual environments.

2) Desktop Virtualization :

What this means is that your end users computers data their OS, their applications,their downloads, their preferences etc. are all stored in a VM in a hosted environmentwhich could be hosted either by the companys IT in-house or hosted in a data center.Some of the VMs are then managed in one single place for all the users in a

department/company and the computing environment is delivered remotely to the endusers. The one reason why the adoption has been a bit slow on this front is becauseunlike server consolidation (hardware virtualization), desktop virtualization requiresworking across a lot of different organizations within the company and it impacts the endusers a lot more during the stages of putting the plan in place and executing it. Benefitsare obvious:

1) Easier upgrades and patch management.2) IT D esktop support process becomes much easier.3) You can easily add more users as your organization grows and provisioning of newapplications and VMs takes minutes and not days/weeks.4) Better resource utilization and less power consumption.5) Easier recovery management.


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3 ) Storage Virtualization :

So, consolidating servers as well as the desktops is all great but what happens to thestorage requirements then? Wont the storage requirements also grow by leaps andbounds? This is the next question that you are going to get from your clients internalor external. This also means that since everything is in one place, one also needs tohave a proper plan for disaster recovery and business continuity. So what does storagevirtualization mean then? It means we would then need to make multiple storagedevices appear as a common shared media. A proper back-up and restore strategyneeds to be formed as well then and a proper D RP needs to be done both local andsite failures need to be accounted for. We will present a more detailed D RP analysis inone of our whitepapers that we are working on.


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Managing I T at Lowest Total Cost of Owners h ip (TCO)

Upfront costs Recurring CostsHardware acquisition ManagementSoftware licenses OperationsTraining Maintenance

SupportSome costs are easier to measure:Examples:Hardware and software costs

D atacenter power and cooling costs Often referred to as hard costs Some costs are important but harder to quantify:Examples:Productivity gains

D owntime savingsCost of managing infrastructure Often referred to as soft costs Reducing Costs wit h Virtual I nfrastructure:

Lower hardware costs

Fewer servers needed for production, development, testing, and staging.Economical disaster recoveryRetire out-of-warranty hardwareLower operational costsLower system administration costsReduced datacenter infrastructure costsReduced downtime costsLess maintenance downtimeCost-effective high availability and D R


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Virtualization Delivers Cost Savings:

y I ncreased administrator productivity . Applications running in VMs have readyaccess to additional processing resources when spikes occur, and can beautomatically restarted on new hardware if a failure occurs. The net result is feweremergencies that send administrators on wild goose chase looking for that elusiveperformance problem. In addition, VMs are very easy to build and launch fromtemplates, reducing the amount of administrator time it takes to build or upgradea server from days to under an hour.

y Reclaimed network ports. Most servers use at least two high-speed Ethernetports, as well as two Fibre Channel SAN ports. Like the servers themselves, theseports can be under utilized. The VMs on your virtualization hosts will share asmaller number of network ports, allowing you to reuse thousands of dollars worthof network connectivity for every physical server you unplug.

y Reclaimed data center capacity. By consolidating servers, you will clearly be

able to reclaim space in your data center. Youll also reduce your electrical bill perhaps more than you thought. Every watt used to run a server gets turned intoheat that must be removed from the data center at about the same cost so aserver using 400 watts is effectively using 800 watts.

Virtualization Delivers Better Business Continuity and DisasterRecovery:

I mproved service levels for more systems: Your most critical applications areprotected by expensive BC/ D R solutions that work quite well, but the majority of yoursystems have little more than tape backup. Virtualization provides a much better level of service by allowing failed systems to automatically restart on new systems.

Virtual mac h ines can run almost anyw h ere: Because of their portability, VMs can beeasily copied to another location for D R purposes. Unlike backups or snapshots thatwont reliably run on dissimilar systems, VMs can be started on any server that has yourVirtualization software running on it.

Virtual infrastructure can protect p h ysical systems, too: Many IT organizations areusing virtual infrastructure as a backup to their physical servers. By converting backupimages of their primary systems into VMs, these firms have the option of restarting theirapplications on virtual infrastructure.


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Advantages of Virtualization:

Todays IT intensive enterprise must always be on the lookout for the latest technologiesthat allow businesses to run with fewer resources while providing the infrastructure tomeet today and future customer needs. Virtualization Technology is the cutting edge of enterprise information technology with various benefits as mentioned below.

Server Consolidation

Testing and development D ynamic Load Balancing and D isaster Recovery Virtual D esktops Improved System Reliability and Security Maximize computer resources usage Simplify management of IT resources Reduce complexity and costs with innovation Server unification and infrastructure maximization Reduction in cost of infrastructure Enhances flexible functionality of management High accessibility of applications and data Improves system compliance Flexibility and agility

I ssues to watc h out for: y Software costs/Licensing : One of the largest issues to be aware of. Virtualization

makes it easy to create new servers, but, each of those server environments requiresseparate software licenses. If you are using open source, that server sprawl is merelysomething to be aware of; however, if you run proprietary server environments, that

sprawl can quickly translate into high license fees.y Capacity planning : In order to realize the full benefits of virtualization, it is

important to match hardware capabilities with server requirements. In practice, thiscomes down to fitting the greatest number of virtual servers onto a physical serverwithout reducing the performance of those servers.

y Training : Like any change or new product, introducing virtualization into the ITenvironment will require training. Businesses should factor that cost (both time andcapital) into any virtualization plan.

y Management : Though virtualizing servers does reduce the number of physical boxes,

virtual machines still require management. To their own detriment, businesses havemade the mistake of thinking "because I've reduced the number of physical boxes byhalf, I can cut my IT staff in half."

y H ig h Consolidation Expectations : The consolidation ratio depends on two things:the power of your current physical boxes, and the resource demand of your existingapplications. If your existing servers are high end and your applications under utilizethem, it is reasonable to expect a high consolidation ratio. Conversely, if your boxesare not as powerful and your applications already consume a large percentage of theirresources, expect lower consolidation ratios.


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y Upfront h ardware investment : This is a potential issue. To realize the full benefitsof virtualization, virtual machines should be located on powerful processors. Lesspowerful hardware decreases the benefits of virtualization. For most companies, therewill be a trade-off between the cost of acquiring new hardware and the decrease inbenefits that using less powerful computers entails.

y Legacy support systems : Especially in areas like security, many legacy supportsystems are still adapting to the realities that virtualization presents. Many firewalls,

for example, still operate under the assumption that a single IP address corresponds toa specific piece of equipment.

Major players:

All virtual server vendors have seen tremendous year-over-year growth, but, accordingto an I D C survey, the market is dominated by VMware, which had revenues of $410million and controlled 55 percent of the virtual server market in 2009. Microsoft ($89million in revenue) and SWsoft ($77 million in revenue) ranked next, with 8.7 percentand 8 percent of the market respectively. Xen rounded out the top four with $25.6million in revenue, or roughly 3 percent of the market.

There are other players as well who have entered the market Red Hat, HP, IBM, Oracleand Virtual Iron Software Jaluna, Parallels, tenAsys, VirtualIron, Novell and other VMMdevelopers are some of the other names. For end consumers more the competition inthe virtualization industry, the more affordable it is going to be for them.

Conclusion:

As virtualization moves into the mainstream and virtual machines get deployed in largernumbers, focus will be on helping customers create dynamic infrastructures. VirtualMachine technology is one of the most exciting and transformative technologies tochange the cost of IT infrastructure since the arrival of enterprise ready X86 hardware.With virtualization strategy is to create a robust set of virtualization solutions at everylevel. As longs as it provides an integrated, comprehensive and cost-effectivevirtualization solution for customers Virtualization technology is here to stay.Furthermore, virtualization is a key deliverable on roadmap and a continued investmentin delivering technology that help IT organizations manage complexity and achieveagility.


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References:

http://www.vmware.com http://virtualization.info

http://vmware.sharedvue.net http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualization

http://www.ibm.com/in http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization http://www.2dix.com http://ebookbrowse.com http://www.intel.com/itcenter/topics/virtualization/index.htm

http://www.br-consultancy.com http://webobjects.cdw.com

http://www.kernelthread.com/publications/virtualization/ http://www.forrester.com/rb/research

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Virtualization - Business Strategy for B2B Market