- An Analysis by Jim Metzler
- Ashton, Metzler & Associates
Virtualization is currently one of the hottest topics in the information technology (IT) field and it is likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future. While virtualization is important to virtually all IT organizations, it certainly isn't new. IT organizations have been implementing virtualized technologies such as Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) and virtual private networks (VPNs) for at least twenty years. In recent years, many network hardware vendors have virtualized technologies that had previously been deployed as dedicated hardware devices and placed the virtualized instances of these technologies into routers and switches.
In the context of virtualization, almost every component of IT systems can be virtualized. This includes:
- Servers
- Desktops
- Applications
- Wide Area Networks
- Local Area Networks
- Storage
- Appliances such as WAN optimization controllers, application delivery controllers and firewalls
Virtualization enables IT organizations to get better control over IT resources, reduce the cost of network equipment and also reduce the organization's power and space requirements. In addition to the many benefits provided by virtualization itself, virtualization is often associated with cloud computing. There is no universal definition that identifies the characteristics of a cloud computing solution. Virtualization, however, is closely linked with cloud computing because most cloud computing solutions involve one or more forms of virtualization, with server virtualization being the most common form.
As will be discussed in this paper, in a virtual data center environment there is still a physical IT infrastructure that is comprised of devices such as servers, LAN switches and firewalls. As such, IT organizations still have the same traditional management challenges with these devices that they have always had; e.g., application discovery, baselining, application profiling and response time analysis, troubleshooting, etc. IT organizations also have the same traditional management challenges inside of a virtualized server, as they now have the requirement to manage virtual machines (VMs), virtual switches and virtual appliances such as firewalls. In addition, IT organizations have some new management challenges such as those that are created by the ability to dynamically move a virtual machine from one physical server to another.
This paper will explore the application and service delivery management challenges created by server virtualization. It will also describe how the IT organization must deploy management functionality inside of a virtualized server in order to regain the visibility that was lost due to virtualization.
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This is a superb analysis by a member of our Webtorials Analyst Division, Jim Metzler. With the rapid proliferation of visualization in general and virtualized servers in particular, there are myriad accompanying management challenges.
Jim addresses these management challenges by first explaining virtualized server architectures. He then examines both the traditional management issues in a virtualized environment and the new challenges introduced by virtualization.