August 7th, 2009
Virtual Machine Software Blinders
Is it me, or is it true that suppliers and organizations have become infatuated with the concept that virtualization is solely and only equal to the use of virtual machine software to create virtual servers or virtual desktops/clients/users?
It seems that almost every time I speak with a supplier, that’s the implied, unspoken definition they’re working with. This, of course, is a very, very narrow view that gets in the way of an organizations ability to create a workable, useful architecture of virtualization deployment.
Virtualization is, of course, a much broader issue than merely the use of virtual machine software. (see Sorting out the different layers of virtualization for more information on the model I use to look at virtualization technology.) Virtualization is a broad approach designed to trade excess processing, memory, network, storage or some other capacity for a logical or virtual view of those resources.
The goal, of course is creating an “ideal” environment for a system, a workload, or some resource that enhances our abilities to make the best use of our IT infrastructure, our staff and, it is hoped, our time and money. Depending upon an organization’s requirements, one or more of the following may be the driver that gets virtualization technology in the door of the datacenter.
Here, once again, is a list of things organizations really need from the deployment of virtualization technology:
- Being able to access applications and data from just about anywhere using just about any networkable device (access virtualization)
- Being able to run applications or, in fact, full workloads without being concered about potential incompatibilities steming from different versions of operating systems, development tools or application frameworks (application virtualization)
- Being able to deliver applications to systems when needed without having to deal with time consuming installation processses every single time (application virtualization)
- Being able to safely and securely access complex organizational networks (access virtualization, network virtualization and security for virtualized environments)
- Being able to access applications and data even if they were stored in a datacenter halfway around the world (storage virtualization)
- Being able to process applications faster or support more people’s work than any single reasonably priced system could manage (processing virtualization)
- Being able to continue operations even if some component failed (processing virtualization)
- Being able to make a single machine look like many to consolidate or optimize the use of workloads (processing virtualization)
- Being able to isolate one workload from another on a single system to worry about incompatibilities or one rogue application breaking into another’s memory or storage space (processing virtualization)
- Being able to manage many workloads as if they were running on a single computing resource even though they may be spread all over the globe (management for virtualized resource.
I could go on an on, but I think you get the picture.
Is your organization one of those that looks at the world through virtual machine software blinders?
Daniel Kusnetzky is a member of the senior management team of The 451 Group. He is responsible for research and publications on a broad array of technology topics. He examines emerging technology trends, vendor strategies, research and development issues, and end-user integration requirements. You can follow Dan on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to Virtually Speaking via Email alerts or RSS.
