- IBM System z10 mainframe
Virtualization is a old concept, introduced in era of mainframe computers. First virtualization solution has been developed in 1960s by IBM, experimental computer IBM M44/44X has supported hardware virtualization. For long time, virtualization has been on a market only to partition mainframe computers. On todays server computers typically using x86/x64 architecture there has been no comprehensive virtualization solution that would introduce real multi-tenancy – but in 1999 VMware, one of industry leading companies in Open System Virtualization have brought to market a product for Open System Virtualization on x86 and x64 platforms. Ever since, Open System Virtualization solutions are evolving and many new players entered this market with different products.
Oracle offers server virtualization product Oracle VM, Citrix have Citrix XenServer virtualization solution. Both Oracle VM and Citrix Xen Server are based on a same hypervisor – Xen. But both companies, Oracle and Citrix have introduced some modification and improvements into their final product. VMware offers their VMware vSphere virtualization product for server environments, and Microsoft is entering this market with their Hyper-V virtualization product. Another strong player in server virtualization is RedHat who is heavily investing in KVM technology – Linux virtualization supported by official linux kernel release from Linus Torvalds – vanilla kernel.
Oracle VM
Oracle VM is a virtualization product based on Xen, same way as Citrix XenServer, however modifications to Xen has been made by Oracle. Oracle VM is fully supported in Oracle application environments and all other Oracle software products are certified to run in Oracle VM environment.
Oracle VM is free virtualization solution – without support, but Oracle offers support for Oracle VM for extra charge. Oracle VM is easy to deploy and manage, it is very scalable and can fit almost any kind of datacenter workload.
Read more about Oracle VM on Oracle site.
Citrix XenServer
Citrix is a world industry leader in application virtualization with their XenApp product, Citrix response to VMware vSphere is Citrix XenServer, also this product is based on Xen technology. Citrix invested a lot of effort in making Xen ready for enterprise environments, and there are four versions of Citrix XenServer available on a market. Free, Advanced, Enterprise and Platinum. Free version is affordable virtualization for environments in small companies. Platinum version targets big enterprises and supports functions like Site Recovery, Self Provisioning Portal for use in development and testing environments,…
Read more about Citrix XenServer on Citrix site.
VMware vSphere
VMware is currently and industry leader in open systems server virtualization, their main product in this field is VMware vSphere. VMware vSphere offers advanced functionalities for Site Recovery, Security Hardening, High Availability or even Fault Tolerance.
Read more about VMware vSphere on VMware site.
Bright and Dark sides of Server Virtualization
Independent of chosen Virtualization technology, Server Virtualization have some bright and a dark sides. Bright sides include increased efficiency through higher consolidation – you can reduce your capital expenditure by buying less servers and operational expenditure through increased energy efficiency and having less servers to manage, support and maintain. Virtualizing certain Tier 1 and Tier 2 applications can also have positive implications on your Business Resilience through simplified implementation of Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.
However there are also dark sides of a virtualizing your environment, there are applications out there, that vendors do not support while running in virtualized environments. If you virtualize these applications, application vendor might ask you to deploy application on physical server and confirm that issues still persist. Virtualization is also not overhead-free, depending on your application workload, this might or might not have a big impact in your environment. Disk and Network I/O is taking performance hit when virtualized, same applies for CPU and memory access speed. This is why it is important to think twice before taking decision to virtualize your Tier 1 applications. It is important to consider virtualization overhead and application vendor policy for running application in virtualized environment.
How can we help?
We can help you with virtualization deployment or while increasing your use of virtualization. We analyze our customers needs, current environment as well as their targets to ensure right approach to server virtualization is taken, and right product is chosen. Our recommendations are based on current and future customer needs from both technical and business perspective, economical efficiency and our experience and insight.
During our analysis we perform analysis of your current applications from points of business importance, resource requirements and actual usage. Based on these metrics we will estimate right consolidation ratio and advice you on a best virtualization product that can satisfy your needs. As with every investment, with virtualization it is also important to assess business benefits through ROI and TCO calculations, cash-flow forecasting,… Our approach to consulting is from both business and technology perspective to ensure you make right decisions on a right time, saving you both time and money.
Contact us to start virtualizing your IT infrastructure, or increase use of virtualization in your environment.
