A CIO's View of Server Virtualization - AUTHOR: November 1, 2007
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A CIO’s View of Server Virtualization November 1, 2007 AUTHOR: Jack Santos (jsantos@burtongroup.com) TECHNOLOGY THREAD: Management
Synopsis
My Users Think All This
Server virtualization is a technology that has taken
hold with amazing speed and is now firmly Stuff is Hidden in a Missile
entrenched with overwhelming success in many data Silo in North Dakota. Why
centers. This perspective document recaps why you
should be moving ahead quickly with virtualization (if
Should They Care?
you haven’t already done so), what the implications are
Virtualization is on your bosses and your business peer’s
for IT and the business, and what the future holds as
radar (e.g., The Wall Street Journal made 13 references
the ramifications of virtualization become apparent. It
to it in August and September 2007 alone1). It has all
is important that CIOs understand the technical,
the fingerprints of topics near and dear to a CxO’s
political, and organizational effects of this new
heart: expense savings, increased flexibility, and new
technology so that they are better prepared to discuss
technological innovation that everyone else is using.
virtualization plans with their technical staff.
The argument can be made that virtualization is an
Analysis internal IT decision based on efficiency and
effectiveness. For IT to deliver the service “cheaper,
faster, better,” you must understand both the
Consider the following:
implications of virtualization to the cost structure, and
your ability to deliver better service with increased
If you don’t have a set of production class
flexibility. Burton Group calls this the “dynamic data
applications running on virtual servers, your firm
center” in Andrew Kutz’s report “Improving Data
is now officially an organizational “laggard”;
Center Energy Efficiency: A Holistic Approach.”
certainly not an “early adopter” or even a “fast
follower.” “Laggard” may be too kind an epithet.
Business management sees virtualization as an
How about “Last Follower”?
opportunity to improve its IT cost structure, get more
accurate billing, or consolidate their own business
For the overwhelming majority of Fortune 500
unit’s computing resource as a dedicated utility
companies, this means using VMware’s products to get
(whether hosted internally or externally).
into virtualization orbit. To a much smaller extent, it
may mean using Microsoft Virtual Server, Virtual
Iron software, or Xen Open Source solutions, which Riding the Virtualization
are sold commercially as XenSource (recently Rocket: Getting On and
purchased by Citrix).
Staying On
Server virtualization has been the single most
successful technological development in the data Occasionally, a disruptive technology event causes IT
center realm over the past year to 18 months. For those leaders to reevaluate an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”
CIOs who saw the trend and are well down the approach, and make a recommendation that could
virtualization vapor trail: Congratulations! Now come have significant implications for IT operations and
the hard questions. What are the implications of a strategy. Virtualization is an example of this type of
virtualized server infrastructure? What unintended technology for the following reasons:
consequences have IT departments encountered, and
where does Burton Group see this new model for • It achieves savings in data center cooling and
computing delivery headed? power costs
• It can postpone or be an adjunct to a data
center expansion• It generates maintenance savings in hardware your help-desk and engineering staff. Putting the right
costs, especially if it is time to refresh servers training program in place is paramount. As these tools
• It reduces staffing needs for server support mature, keep three long term considerations in mind:
and simplifies systems management for tool integration, interoperability, and staffing impacts.
system administrators, which reduces
weekend and overtime needs At Burton Group, we see a long-term trend toward
• It increases flexibility for hardware consolidation of tools, so that (holistically) a data
provisioning processes center management console can impact the range of
• It enables new software development technologies – hypervisor, operating systems, network,
processes that can speed development and storage, and (ultimately) application. For granular
improve quality maintenance and troubleshooting, detailed, point-level
• It reduces time invested in disaster recovery tools will still need to be available. As tool sets mature,
tests from days to hours the level of abstraction will also be enhanced so that
systems management will be using business-based
What Needs to be on the language and non-technical metrics. Achieving this
CIO’s Radar will lead to what Burton Group calls service-based
autonomic, policy-driven IT, but only if customers
demand interoperable, standard tools from vendors.
As with most endeavors, the key to successful Drue Reeves addresses this in detail in Burton Group’s
implementation of virtualized servers is to “walk report “Data Center Systems Management: A Layered
before you run.” Many IT shops have started with Approach.”
non-mission-critical services and moved up from
there. A few shops have even taken virtualization to The impact of systems management tool integration and
core services, such as e-mail, to improve continuous consolidation on staffing is still unresolved. One thing is
availability and failover capabilities. clear: Less hardware, more consolidation, more
integration, and higher tool abstraction can only mean
Important aspects of virtualization that a CIO needs to less staff to manage the environment. A leaner staff will
be tuned into are: have a wider scope and understanding of the
environment, which will make skills training extremely
• Management tools and staffing important. Alternatively, because of the flexibility that
• Independent software vendor (ISV) support virtualization brings to the data center, the increase in
and contracts logical objects will accelerate. This will result in an
• Server Provisioning, backup, and overall increase and unanticipated growth in virtual
development servers, which will offset some staff savings. Nonetheless,
hardware maintenance staff will likely be reduced.
Management Tools and Staffing
ISV Support and Contracts
Managing a virtual environment and the software
necessary to do so could have the biggest long-term Having yet another software vendor that sells you the
impact on data center operations. The software tools Uber-OS (i.e., hypervisor) can complicate the
that enable migration and day-to-day operation are licensing, vendor, and contract landscape.
rapidly developing, due in large part to a strong third- Nonetheless, opportunities for enterprise licensing
party software industry forming around virtualization (such as Microsoft’s Datacenter Licensing program)
migration tools. Take advantage of those. (For in- could result in cost savings to the company. Licensing
depth research about migration tools, see Burton opportunities may come to the forefront if your team
Group’s report “P2V: Migrate or Migraine.”) Doing so identifies the opportunity to reduce the number of
will not only impact your operations center, but also system images and to consolidate license use.Virtualization vendor support of legacy systems could A hidden “gotcha” is charge back; this can go one of
also mean upgrading hardware without having to two ways. Users can see decreased chargeback bills
upgrade software, which would finally put the IT because they are now being appropriately billed for
department in charge of upgrade and maintenance their use of a smaller piece of a larger, shared resource.
schedules and costs. This would position the CIO to A one-CPU server utilized at 10% is very costly when
avoid getting “upgrade cycle trapped”: a game of the user department has to pay for the whole box. The
recurrent revenue for hardware and software vendors, flip side is that departments may want to see logical
with little added value for the customer. business partitioning of virtual servers. In other words,
all finance apps can now be consolidated onto one
Server Provisioning, Backup, and virtual server that is utilized and managed more
effectively. Rather than a user department expecting
Application Development ownership of many small boxes, they may now expect
ownership of one large virtual server. This is an area
Server provisioning promises to be a universe of that is fraught with technical — and political — peril;
unexplored opportunity. Provisioning flexibility will your answer will depend not only on technical
result in provisioning-on-demand capability, which constraints through planning and modeling, but also
will cut down the time for the installation of server on organizational culture.
images from hours or days—to minutes. Conversely,
ease of provisioning could lead to what Burton Group Finally, consolidation has led to increased
has termed operating system sprawl2 and the resultant backup/recovery complexity. With more heavily
increased complexity. loaded servers, you could end up with no good time to
do a backup. Careful up-front planning on load issues
The implications to this for backup, disaster will avoid bottlenecks. Burton Group’s Chris Wolf has
recovery/business continuity (DR/BC), and systems an excellent research report on just that topic: “VM
development processes are astounding. Snapshot Backup Bliss? The State of VM Data Protection in the
images, clustering technology, and high availability Enterprise.”
techniques all can be greatly impacted by virtualization
technology. Virtualization results in more options for Long-term planning to avoid performance bottlenecks
routine backup and DR/BC planning. is also necessary. Your consolidation will need to
account for cyclical department busy periods. Don’t
IT departments are already seeing significant changes put all your systems that have significant year-end
in application development practices because activity on the same virtual server. You’ll run out of
programmers can so easily snapshot entire system resources. Should that happen, the provisioning
images at key development points and take advantage flexibility of virtualization could significantly cut
of that to improve integration testing. Just like any down reaction time, but not before the pain of a
new tool that increases flexibility, the potential for resource shortfall is felt.
creating your own out-of-control system development
process is real—so plan carefully. Burton Group’s Once you land on the Moon?
Next stop: Mars
research on “Agile Software Development: Not for
Lightweights,” by Joe Niski, is an excellent resource
for exploring development strategies.
What’s next for virtualization? What can you expect
Rocket ships explode. This can too. as the technology continues to develop and have an
impact?
What are the things to watch out for? At the detail
Although Microsoft has been in the virtualization
level, driver incompatibilities and vendor support have
space for some time, they have clearly been snookered
derailed some virtualization efforts.
by VMware. But don’t expect Microsoft to sit on itshaunches. Even though Microsoft is behind in market Just as significant for the CIO is that virtualized
share, they are viewed as a significant factor. servers become ubiquitous, and the various
Virtualization literally has the potential to redefine the virtualization approaches become a common and
term “operating system” and to remove Windows one standard data center tactic. That gives the CIO a host
step away from the hardware. This is not trivial for of strategies to pick from. Data centers can be
Microsoft. massively centralized, and virtualization is an effective
strategy to stall line-of-business decentralized data
With Windows Server 2008 and beyond, expect centers based on cost factors. For that same reason,
Microsoft to try to match VMware technically, but third-party hosting data centers can latch onto the
outshine them with integrated management tools. trend and compete even more effectively against in-
Microsoft has the inside track on Windows Operating house-supplied IT services. On the other hand,
System functionality and management; integrated companies that value flexibility and local control have
systems management tools could be the edge as this a more effective platform with which to deploy and
market develops. Launch date is set for February 2008, manage local, line-of-business data centers, whether
with the virtualization service scheduled for release in they are outsourced or managed in-house. Time will
Q3 2008. tell what the predominant choice will be.
Over the coming months, expect to hear worries about Conclusion
security holes and the potential for breaches across
virtualized operating systems. This is something to be Virtualization is here to stay. As a competent CIO,
aware of, but it won’t be a significant barrier to your department has experimented with virtualization
adoption or market growth. and most likely has migrated critical applications to a
virtual server. It is a technology whose consequences
Longer term, as virtualization takes hold, we are in impact cross systems management tools, staffing plans,
the very early stages of software developers’ taking negotiations with independent software vendors (ISV),
advantage of virtualization options for web services hardware/software support, contracts, systems
and other advanced development techniques. Burton provisioning, backup, and application development.
Group explores that trend in Anne Thomas Manes’ As the virtualization trend continues to gain
report “Enterprise Service Bus: A Definition.” momentum, those CIOs who stay informed will be not
only competent, but also effective.Related Burton Group Research
Application Platform Strategies
• Enterprise Service Bus: A Definition
Data Center Strategies
• Let’s Get Virtual: A Look at Today’s Server Virtualization Architectures
• VM Backup Bliss? The State of VM Data Protection in the Enterprise
• P2V: Migrate or Migraine?
• Virtualization Platforms
• Improving Data Center Energy Efficiency: A Holistic Approach
• Data Center Systems Management: A Layered Approach
• Survival of the Fittest: Disaster Recovery Design for the Data Center
• Host, Co-Lo, or Do-It-Yourself?
Notes
1
For an example of the type of Wall Street Journal reporting done during this period, see:
http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2007/09/10/virtualization-gets-six-big-backers/
2
Defined in Drue Reeve’s research report “Data Center Systems Management: A Layered Approach”
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