Talha Ghafoor takes a look
The irony of living in a constant state of ‘virtual reality’ doesn’t pass for CIO humor. The benefits of virtualization are numerous and the fact that the lines between real computing and virtual computing are so blurred, it makes you wonder if there isn’t anything that virtualization cannot emulate.
The concept of Desktop Virtualization has been around for a long time, but the real sweet spot for IT managers in medium or large scale organizations, is the landscape of endless opportunities the concept of server virtualization opens up for you.
In computing, platform virtualization is a term that refers to the abstraction of computer resources. Virtualization hides the physical characteristics of computing resources from their users, be they applications, or end users. In layman terms, make a mistake, and your system won’t blow up on you. Use it correctly, and your existing system will only get stronger and more stable.
There are ways to optimize existing resources within your existing setup that will yield in money-saving initiatives without compromising power or security. No wonder more companies are looking towards Virtualization.
For instance, a small/medium business can consolidate their existing infrastructure containing their standard pack of Active Directory, DNS/DHCP, Email and File Servers onto a single physical server using virtualization, but strictly keeping them isolated and allowing to be managed by respective administrators.
While there are still so many technical problems associated with the establishment of data centers in Pakistan, companies still need to ensure that the integrity of their intellectual capital is not compromised.
Unlike Desktop Virtualization products, Server Virtualization products do not require an existing OS on the hardware and installs directly with minimum footprint. The performance of Server Virtualization products is very high and gives almost real hardware level performance to guest machines by using the hardware virtualization extensions present in new Intel and AMD CPUs.
VMWare ESX server allows you to create a very small server footprint that is easier to manage and quicker to handle. What else could you possibly want? The ability to pool in computing power across the network enables a lesser load on hardware resources which ultimately means longer life for your enterprise.
Barring these arguments, it’s still important to take a step back and figure out who would want to engage in virtualization for the purpose of a mid-sized organization functioning out of Pakistan.
While there are multiple reasons for opting to virtualized operations, one of the main reasons to do is to optimize the cost of hardware. Even in a country where you have technicians who will build the most powerful servers from scrap and ousted, the amount of money that can be saved by the optimizing resources by consolidating multiple physical servers is immense in itself.
Reduce your hardware investment and maintenance costs. Server Virtualization allows you to lower your co-location costs, which are usually charged based on the number of physical rack units you hire. Since you can pack more applications on multiple operating systems on a single server hardware requiring as low as 1u or 2u rack space, virtualization can considerably lower your monthly co-location costs.
Another powerful feature of the virtualization is the “High Availability” at machine level that eliminates the complex configuration of OS or Application level redundancy. A hot-standby copy of any active virtualized server can be easily configured on a separate hardware that can activate within seconds of any failure.
Of course, the entire globe is going through an energy crisis! The fact that you can’t really afford to power down a mission-critical server, doesn’t help the argument that we’re spending an increased amount of depleting natural resources. There are many reasons to presume that KESC and WAPDA’s fight over power will not help the situation much, but here’s the question you need to be thinking about: how do you back up your servers so that users on your network don’t know when you’ve switched from real to virtual? Welcome to virtualization all over again.
One of the critical reasons why server virtualization with VMWare is so effective is the fact that the live server migration takes place without any hiccups to the system.
For example, if you have a server running multiple virtualized machines that requires some physical maintenance, you can perform live migrations of these virtual machines to a different physical server without affecting the users.
And then you have the prospect of giving the skilled-yet-unconditioned HR that Universities across Pakistan are mass-producing, something worthwhile to do. Considering the MIS team within an organization first explores virtualization for the purpose of testing applications and optimized network topology, perhaps a safe environment can be created for young programmers to have the experience of working in a challenging, ‘virtually real life’ environment that you can provide to them. Lower risk, simulated training and better returns.
Install another OS or another environment, create as many hypervisers as you need, close up and go away a happy camper. Everybody goes away a winner. No losers. What a wonderful world!
Coming back to the fat bottom line, businesses are rapidly changing organisms. The very nature of business is that it is constantly expanding and constantly changing with the thousands of variables that influence it. Whereas previously perhaps the marketing or finance department may have been at the heart of the organization, today there is no doubt that it is the IT or MIS department that calls the shots.
If you need an infrastructure that will be able to scale itself with the constant growth, then it’s time to start thinking of how better to use the hardware resources that you have available to you.
New applications or upgrades are available on a regular basis. The concept of virtualization helps if you’re looking for a secure and safe way to manage the testing of these upgrades.
But because the concept is so new and, frankly speaking, so intangible, the IT managers are the ones that use it in isolation, and that gives rise to another problem. If the IT department is the only one the benefits from the power of virtualization, then perhaps the impact on your bottom line won’t be a significant one. There are, after all, only so many geeks you want to be running around in the virtual hyperspace. Server Virtualization will help you if you can spread the wealth out to the other departments and make sure the maximum benefit is being churned out to the users in the organization itself.
Payroll perhaps? Pulling data from so many different sources and verifying it with consistently changing variables is an intense task when you hit ‘that time of the month’. Make things slightly easy. Centralize. Delegate. Virtualize.
A good CIO knows the limitations of real computing – a great CIO switches states and finds loopholes through the experimentation in virtualization. It’s all about challenging the physical limitations of a system by emulating all those conditions in the virtual state, and matchmaking the configuration that best suits your purpose.
Caption 1:
In computing, a hypervisor (also: virtual machine monitor) is a virtualization platform that allows multiple operating systems to run on a host computer at the same time.
Caption 2:
Common Uses for Desktop Virtualization
• Running different operating system on top of your host OS
• Instant snapshots and reverting your
• Testing software in exclusive OS environment
• Testing security for un-trusted applications
• Simulation of LAN, WAN and multiple networked computers
Common Desktop Virtualization Products
• VMWare Workstation for Windows and Linux
• VMWare Fusion for Mac OSX
• Microsoft Virtual PC for Windows
• Parallels for Mac OSX
Common Uses for Server Virtualization
• Consolidating multiple physical servers
• To lower energy bills
• To lower hardware investment and maintenance costs
• Lower co-location costs
• Live Server Migrations
• High Availability without complex Clustering
• Ability to upgrade or downgrade hardware resources for machines without physical changes
• Optimization of physical resources between machines
Common Server Virtualization Products
• VMWare ESX Server
• XEN Open Source Server
• Microsoft Virtual Server
Talha Ghafoor is an IT Consultant and is currently working with a global solution provider in the domain of Information Security. His main expertise lies in Encryption and Intrusion Detection and he has been actively working with some largest banking and telecom accounts in Europe, Middle East and the US. He started his career as a Network Consultant in the Middle East and worked with some of the largest clients in Oil, Medical and Banking sector on wide range of communications related technologies in Middle East. You can get in touch with him at: talha@ciopakistan.com
