Last Wednesday QLogic announced what appeared to be a very impressive benchmark - QLogic Achieves Near-Native Fibre Channel I/O Performance On Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. By near native performance, QLogic highlighted throughput of nearly 200,000 IOPs. Naturally such a high throughput in a virtualized environment caught my attention. The announcement was timed to go along with the Hyper-V RTM announcement and immediately validate storage I/O performance of Hyper-V connected to SAN storage using QLogic 8Gb fibre channel host bus adapters (HBAs). I’ve always liked benchmarks if they can set relative expectations for how a particular configuration will perform in a typical environment. When the environment is far from typical, I consider the benchmark either an academic exercise (let’s see how far we can push this thing, regardless of how unrealistic the configuration may be) or a crafty attempt at product marketing. If I was to place this particular benchmark into one of Nik Simpson’s benchmarking categories, I’d have to say it falls into the benchmarketing category.
The QLogic press release included the following quote from Microsoft’s Mike Schultz:
QLogic’s benchmark result surpasses the existing benchmark results in the market, and demonstrates that Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V customers can achieve higher server utilization rates and consolidate servers with great technical performance.
The statement “surpasses the existing benchmark results in the market” implies that the Hyper-V/QLogic benchmark has outperformed a comparable VMware benchmark. The press release was careful to state the hypervisor and fibre channel HBA (QLogic 2500 Series 8Gb adapter), but failed to mention the back end storage configuration. I consider this to be an important omission. After some digging around, I was able to find the benchmark results here. If I was watching an Olympic event, this would be the moment where after thinking I witnessed an incredible athletic event, I learned that the athlete tested positive for steroids. Microsoft and QLogic didn’t take a fibre channel disk array and inject it with Stanzanol or rub it with “the clear,” but they did use solid state storage. The storage array used was a Texas Memory RamSan 325 FC storage array. The benchmark that resulted in nearly 200,000 IOPS, as you’ll see from the diagram, ran within 90% of native performance (180,000 IOPS). However, this benchmark used a completely unrealistic block size of 512 bytes (a block size of 8K or 16K would have been more realistic). The benchmark that resulted in close to native throughput (3% performance delta) yielded performance of 120,426 IOPS with an 8KB block size. No other virtualization vendors have published benchmarks using solid state storage, so the QLogic/Hyper-V benchmark, to me, really hasn’t proven anything. Furthermore, the published benchmark fails to reveal latency numbers, which has been the most useful value of storage performance in virtualized environments. Applications can be very sensitive to I/O latency, and it’s import to disclose latency numbers in any storage benchmark.
For further clarity, I ran these results by a colleague well-versed in performance testing and this was his response:
In a storage stack, the number of concurrent I/Os is typically a limit at certain choke points, i.e., the virtual device, the queue between the guest and the parent OS, and the drivers in the parent. The recent Microsoft benchmark used an I/O depth of just 64, but with an SSD the latency is very small, so at 0.3ms per I/O with an SSD, it’s possible to generate 210,000 IOPS in theory at 0.3ms with 64 outstanding I/Os.
However, to properly demonstrate 180,000 real IOPS would require 1,200 concurrent I/Os, rather than the 64 used.
With real disks, the same 64 concurrent I/Os at 7ms each would limit throughput to 64 * 1/.007 = 9,142 IOPS!
To me, these exercises in smoke and mirrors trickery (i.e. solid state storage in a hypervisor storage performance “benchmark”) yield more questions than answers. In addition, I’m left questioning future benchmarks produced by vendors that use such tactics. Vendors - if you are going to go as far as issuing a press release based on a “benchmark,” please give us an honest assessment of a real world environment. Anything else simply casts doubt on your future performance numbers and adds to the already prolific cynicism surrounding vendor benchmarks.
The second day of virtualization coverage at Catalyst focused on virtualization as an enabler to workload mobility and orchestration, as well as standards-based management for the virtual data center.
For me, the highlight of the day was the DMTF unveiling the public release of the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard as a work in progress. In addition to the OVF announcement, DMTF president Winston Bumpus also announced the launch of the Virtualization Management subcommittee. Winston also announced that live demos of vendor OVF integration would be shown at Catalyst for the first time publicly. In terms of the best integration that you can use right now, Novell and VMware are at the top of the list. Novell is currently leveraging OVF in their ZENworks Orchestrator management suite, and VMware has supported using OVF to import VM appliances into Virtual Center since the end of last year. OVF is an XML-based virtualization metadata format and is fully extensible. All vendors that are contributing to OVF have very large long term plans for the spec. Look for OVF to start its transition from a standardized metadata format for importing VM appliances to the industry standard format for VM runtime metadata. There’s no technical reason why this cannot happen, so to me runtime metadata seems like OVF’s next step in its logical evolution. So it’s foreseeable that proprietary VM metadata file formats such as .vmc (Microsoft) and .vmx (VMware) could be replaced with a .ovf file. The fact that OVF is extensible means that vendors can leverage OVF to define custom components of their virtualization stack. So even as virtualization architectures evolve, OVF has been designed to evolve with them.
Neither Citrix nor Microsoft had an OVF implementation at the show that is usable today. Instead, Citrix had developed a tool solely for the purpose of providing a demo, and expects its OVF implementation to be shipping early next year. While I would have liked to have seen more from Microsoft and Citrix, final work on the OVF standard is just wrapping up. So once the standard is ratified I expect all vendors to step up efforts to further support OVF. While there wasn’t a shipping OVF solution for Citrix XenServer or Microsoft Hyper-V at the show, Citrix previewed an internal tool that facilitates Hyper-V to XenServer migrations, and vice-versa. With the tool, I could create a VM on Citrix XenServer, migrate it to Hyper-V and boot it up (the reverse process works too). All that’s required is that you preload the paravirtualized device drivers for each hypervisor in the VM’s guest OS once it’s created. When the VM boots, Windows plug-and-play would load the appropriate drivers for the underlying hypervisor and the VM would be good-to-go. To Microsoft and Citrix’s credit, they were the only vendors that were showing how to use OVF to facilitate hypervisor interoperability at the live demo. Still, with the spec nearly complete, it’s time to see real implementations and not just a demo specifically prepared for Catalyst. Microsoft missed an opportunity to support OVF in System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (it’s still beta, but it’s too far down the development path to add new features).
VMware CTO Steve Herrod offered an insightful glimpse of OVF’s evolution and its future role in virtualization management. Key points highlighted in Herrod’s session included:
- OVF’s initial implementation is as a distribution format for virtual machines
- Packaging and deploying VMs via OVF includes several advantages:
- Validation
- Verify licensing, security, integrity
- Resource requirements and placement
- Application Properties (IP addresses and passwords)
- Conversion
- Convert virtual disks to run-time format
- Installation
- Provide runtime environment for application (customization and localization)
- Provide installation feedback to user
- Several VMs that are part of an OVF package can be instantiated as a single service object in the virtual infrastructure inventory
- OVF helps the industry deliver vendor-independent VMs that are easier to deliver and deploy
I presented a session on VM Mobility and Orchestration, with much of the focus on today’s barriers to mobility. Those include:
- Live migration remains unavailable on several platforms (e.g., Hyper-V, Solaris Containers)
- Outside of VMware’s DRS, dynamic VM load balancing technology is still maturing. Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Performance Resource Optimization (PRO) and Platform Computing’s VM Orchestrator (VMO) are examples of further innovation in this space. Orchestration products from vendors such as Computer Associates and Novell are also providing innovative methods for automating VM relocation in response to changes in workload demands.
- Dynamic VM load balancing is going to transition from a reactive technology to a proactive technology, with vendors such as CiRBA providing intelligence to top level orchestrators to migrate VMs in anticipation of expected workload peaks based on historical workload performance patterns
- There’s no technical reason why vendors cannot agree on a standardized virtual hard disk format. Such a format, in my opinion, would ease third party vendor integration and deployment of virtual appliances. Also, this standard format could include embedded checksums and tokening information that cause the disk to be authorized before it is mounted. This would provide a safeguard against theft of a virtual disk file.
- Differences in hardware-assisted virtualization remain a mobility barrier, forcing organizations to standardize physical clusters on AMD or Intel hardware.
- Several management issues, such as SLA assurance and compliance are difficult to effectively audit in virtualized environments.
- Improvements need to be made in physical server power management before running servers in a suspend state or at a reduced power mode will be an option. Ideally, organizations would like to run servers at a reduced power state as workload needs dictate in order to save on power and cooling costs.
That’s it for Catalyst North America 2008’s virtualization highlights. I hope to see some of you at Catalyst Europe in the October.
Posted by: Chris Wolf
To Microsoft’s competitors, the impending release of Hyper-V has been like waiting for the slow arrival of a comet from space. Today, the comet has arrived, and it will undoubtedly have a deep impact. This doesn’t mean that Microsoft’s competitors need to go and hide in a cave. Instead, they have known about the comet’s arrival for some time and have had plenty of time to prepare. So I expect Microsoft’s virtualization competitors to begin to show their competitive hands in the coming weeks.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on Hyper-V’s features since I recently wrote a review of Hyper-V for Virtualization Review Magazine. Hyper-V’s core technology is good. It’s a stable hypervisor and it’s been hosting Microsoft’s MSDN and TechNet sites for months. Feature-for-feature, Hyper-V still has a ways to go to be on par with VMware. Live migration and memory over-commit are two features at the top of my list. Sure, in some instances we can get by without live migration, but I’m even sure Microsoft would admit that it cannot achieve it’s own dynamic data center vision without live migration as a core component. Quick migration is close, but migrating a VM to another server will result in the migrated VM being unavailable anywhere from several seconds to several minutes. Live migration, on the other hand, doesn’t induce any downtime. There’s a lot of debate out there regarding memory over-commit, but from my experience I’ve seen it make a substantial difference with regard to consolidation densities, with typical improvements in the 40% range. Those that don’t have it will say that at peak load it doesn’t make much of a difference because VMs will need full access to physical memory. This is true if all VMs on a physical host realize a sustained peak at the same time, but that’s rarely the case. Instead, peak workloads are often sporadic, so the VMs that need the physical memory will use it and those that don’t will have a portion of their physical memory swapped to the hard disk. From a consolidation density perspective, memory over-commit will continue to be important.
Hyper-V is missing a couple of key features, but that’s to be expected in a 1.0 product. Microsoft needed to get Hyper-V out, and they’ve done it. Clustering VMs is extremely easy with Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (currently in Beta), and since the hypervisor comes with the OS, there’s no added cost. What does all this mean for VMware? VMware is now up against the “good enough” factor. Sure, organizations aren’t lining up to run all of their production workloads on Hyper-V, but they are considering it for some use cases: development and test, training, and virtualizing the branch office. These cases often come up due to cost. Hyper-V is free with the OS, and a Windows Server 2008 license includes “downgrade rights.” So for a typical Hyper-V deployment I may buy or upgrade to two Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition licenses, which will allow me to run Hyper-V on two servers in a cluster and run an unlimited number of Windows 2003 VMs on the cluster. What’s the prevailing reason for considering a 1.0 hypervisor. Most of the client’s I’ve talked to have indicated cost as the primary motivating factor. Also, many have liked what they’ve seen with the System Center suite of management tools.
I’d be surprised if VMware is going to let Microsoft win the cost war, and as painful as it may be, I would be shocked if VMware didn’t drop the price of it’s ESX hypervisor in an attempt to take cost out of the equation.
While the first wave of the Microsoft virtualization comet is impacting the hypervisor community, the second wave may have an even larger impact. System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is currently in beta, and I’d bet that we will see it released to manufacturing in the near future. After all, much of the really good management functionality for Hyper-V is in System Center Virtual Machine Manager. System Center is where it really gets interesting. This is because Microsoft’s management suite is now reaching a point where it could take market share from the predominant enterprise management software vendors. To me, this has to be VMware’s play. I don’t see VMware as trying to directly compete with HP, IBM, CA, or BMC, for example. Instead, they have to work to build stronger partnerships. Such an approach would give them leverage in what looks to be a long and drawn out fight with Microsoft for virtualization supremacy.
What are your thoughts on Hyper-V’s impact? I would love to hear them.
Note: Originally posted to Burton Group’s Data Center Strategies blog.
Greetings from Catalyst 2008 in San Diego. For those of you not in attendance, I wanted to take a moment to summarize the virtualization track’s highlights. My summary follows the Catalyst format of rapid fire content, so if you have follow-up questions, please post them as a comment to this post.
Morning Keynote - Server Virtualization: What a Difference a Year Makes
In the morning keynote, I summarized Burton Group’s thoughts on the direction of virtualization. I applauded the progress made in the industry, but spent the majority of the presentation highlighting the work that still remains. This includes:
- Software licensing and support clarity and feasibility for the virtualized dynamic data center. The pressure you’re putting on vendors by leveraging RFPs to compel them to support virtualization is making a huge difference. Keep it up!
- Virtualization allows high availability (HA) to be extended to all applications, not just those that are cluster-aware. While this is great, we can do better. It’s time to rethink traditional HA architectures to include policy-driven application response. I’d like to see VM tool integration to include application monitoring components that can be passed down to the hypervisor’s native HA or to a third party orchestration tool.
- Today’s existing security models are not practical nor are they scalable for virtual environments. VMware’s VMsafe is a good start, but I’d like to see a industry standard driven by the DMTF that would ease the burden of security ISVs having to develop products to support a myriad of different hypervisors.
- There’s no reason to have multiple virtual hard disk formats. Vendors have collaborated on CIM standards for virtualization, and open virtualization format (OVF) is on the cusp on mainstream adoption by many virtualization vendors. It’s now time to settle on a single virtual disk format. This would remove the vendor lock-in concerns of many organizations as well as simplify the distribution of virtual machine appliances.
- All vendors in the desktop space have to be thinking about virtual desktops. Microsoft already won the traditional desktop game and is running out the clock. We’re on the cusp of a new generation of desktop delivery and opportunities exist for assertive, innovative vendors to leave their mark.
- Raw storage (connecting VMs directly to LUNs) improves VM performance, provides better integration with storage and data management solutions, and prevents vendor lock-in. If you’re not using raw storage in any capacity for your virtual environments, you should be asking yourself “Why not?” Sure, virtual hard disk files are nice, but even in VMware environments I can create a snapshot of a LUN presented as a raw device map in virtual compatibility mode and write the snapshot as a new .vmdk virtual disk file. So it’s possible to have the best of both worlds.
Software Licensing for Virtual Environments: Vendor Roundtable
This vendor panel included the following representatives:
- CiRBA: Andrew Hillier - CTO
- Computer Associates: Edward Marootian, Jr. - VP, Product Management and Strategy Platform Services
- Microsoft: Edwin Yuen - Senior Product Manager
- VMware: Parag Patel - VP of Alliances, ISVs and Storage Ecosystem
As fate would have it, the setup crew placed one extra chair on stage. I couldn’t resist the opportunity, so I stated that the chair belonged to a man named Mr. O’Racle who was invited to participate in the discussion but declined. The conversation was quite productive, with all vendors agreeing that organizations needed choices of licensing, with models that are applicable to virtual instances. Also, all vendors agreed that clarity in support agreements was needed. It’s not enough to say “we support virtualization.” Support incidents that require a V2P migration should be clearly defined. Also, to my delight Microsoft’s Edwin Yuen noted that Microsoft has listened to feedback from the user community and is actively working toward clarifying product licensing so that issues such as VM mobility restrictions no longer remain. I understand that changes to licensing policy are very complex, and the fact that Microsoft is responding to feedback regarding problems with product licensing is very encouraging. My hope is that within a few months we’ll no longer even need to have this discussion.
New Trends in High Availability for Virtual Environments (Richard Jones)
Richard added further clarity to my keynote message of solving IT problems in different ways, including high availability. We don’t need to continue to use legacy HA architectures when we can improve high availability by leveraging orchestration tools to monitor application state and automate the response (e.g., restart application, restart VM on the same host, restart the VM on a different host) to application failures. This is far superior to treating a VM and its installed applications as a “black box.” Highlights:
- Don’t take HA at face value. Under the hood, virtualization vendor HA architectures are vastly different. Those that offer a fan-out failover cluster architecture have a significant edge up over vendors without such solutions. To validate fan-out failover, you should evaluate virtualization HA solutions using at least 3 physical nodes. If you unplug node 1 and all VMs first try and start on node 2, then you don’t have a solution that incorporates fan-out failover. In a fan-out failover solution, node 1’s VMs would fail over and restart on the remaining nodes (2 and 3, for example).
- For cluster sizing, six nodes continues to be the sweet spot, but Richard expects that number to incrementally rise as cluster technology for virtual environments improves.
- For CPU-bound applications running in VMs, limit the number of virtual CPUs (vCPUs) to <= the number of physical CPU (pCPU) cores. This reduces the load on hypervisor CPU scheduling.
- HA architectures for Xen-based platforms continues to lag VMware HA in terms of feature-set
- SteelEye and Veritas Cluster provide good third party alternatives and application awareness for clustering virtual machines
- Forthcoming future trends include:
- Broader failure mode monitoring and response (VM’s will no longer be treated as black boxes)
- Brach office failover solutions that do not require a SAN (e.g., Stratus Avance, Marathon FT, Lefthand VSA)
- Automated business continuity response (vendors with such solutions today include VMware Site Recovery Manager and Symantec Veritas global/wide area cluster)
The Real Security Risks of Virtual Data Centers (Alessandro Perilli)
Alessandro did an excellent job breaking down security myths as well as threats to the virtual data center. Highlights:
- Be wary of the VMware recommendation of the DMZ in a box architecture. If you haven’t seen it, take a look at page 6 of the DMZ Virtualization with VMware Infrastructure white paper. Alessandro noted that software isolation has not reached a point where it can be fully trusted, and thus physical isolation of security zones is required. His points, mirrored Burton Group’s reference architecture virtualization template, so I could not agree more with his assessment.
- Any software can be compromised, including the hypervisor. Alessandro pointed out that VMware has issued over 60 patches this year alone. If you think that number is surprising, go here and take a look. Select your ESX server version from the drop-down menu, click Go, and you’ll see the results. To be fair, many of the ESX patches are for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux-based ESX console. If you do a similar search on ESXi 3.5 (the embedded hypervisor), only five patches have been issued this year.
- Alessandro discussed the threat of VMM guest hopping and pointed to a Google study as a proof of concept.
- Be wary of attack avenues against a hypervisor based on the hypervisor’s APIs (e.g. VMsafe).
- Bottom line - do not blindly trust virtualization and look to port existing security practices to your virtual environment.
Virtual Desktops: Ready for Mainstream Adoption (Simon Crosby)
Simon hammered away on the Citrix message that separation of applications from operating systems, data center workloads from servers, and desktops from PCs was key to virtualized desktop delivery. He also noted that single instance storage was key to virtual desktop scalability and feasibility on an enterprise scale. I agree. Even at a modest 4GB per virtual desktop image, if you consider 2,000 desktops you would need 8TB of storage. Separation and runtime insertion of applications will clearly play a large role in the future virtual desktop, and Crosby was quick to highlight Citrix’s position in this area. When asked about a hypervisor for the physical desktop, Crosby indicated that such a solution was not something Citrix would have in the near future. To me, the desktop hypervisor is important, as it would allow the mobile user to maintain separate and secure work and personal environments. I see the desktop hypervisor as a long term requirement of virtual desktop infrastructures as it will be warranted by some use cases.
Simon naturally was pushing the Xen architecture is his usually subtle ways, but not all Citrix customers have been ready to run Citrix XenDesktop on XenServer. In fact, one of the Citrix XenDesktop customers highlighted at the recent Citrix Synergy conference was running XenDesktop on VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3. Still, there’s no doubt that XenServer development is coming along quickly and I agree with Simon’s assessment that booting thousands of desktop VMs from a single shared VM instance (with a user’s applications and profile injected at runtime) is the right architecture. As XenDesktop matures, VMware is going to need a similar delivery model in order to remain competitive. VMware Server has supported linked cloning for years, which could provide a similar type of service. So it’s not out of the question for us to expect to see a similar architecture in ESX environments at some point. Still, when linking virtual disk images to support a large VDI environment, VMware is going to have to show us some very good scalability numbers for such an architecture to be considered enterprise-ready. On the other hand, leveraging single instance storage features in the array, such as with a Network Appliance filer, is something you can do already for both VMware and Citrix virtual desktop environments today. The simplicity of managing virtual desktops, user profiles, and desktop applications is ultimately going to determine who wins the virtual desktop war. Citrix has shown specific examples of how they make this all possible. It’s time for VMware to do the same. VMware, please don’t just point out the individual components of your VDI architecture. Show us how you can go head-to-head with Citrix with regards to application management and lowering the cost of ownership for managing desktop operating systems. Citrix has shown us an end-to-end solution for desktops, applications, and user profiles. Many Burton Group clients are considering deploying virtual desktops on a large scale and are eager to see how VMware helps them to address “the big picture.” VMware - Simon Crosby just lobbed a heavy virtual desktop volley in your direction. What’s your response?
Note: Originally posted to Burton Group’s Data Center Strategies blog.
As we move toward 2009, the traditional desktop finds itself in an interesting position. Virtualization is fundamentally changing the way desktops are delivered, and in my opinion the debate over who makes the best desktop OS doesn’t even matter. If we use market share as the scoreboard, Microsoft has won that game and is now running out the clock.
The fact that Microsoft is running out the clock is a very big deal. We’re literally counting down to a new era of desktop delivery. This means that a void exists for our next generation desktop, and opportunity exists for competitors to supplant Microsoft in the desktop space. To me, the next generation desktop will be able to be viewed both online (e.g. at home, at work, at a wi-fi hotspot) and offline (e.g. while traveling on an airplane) and accessed from a myriad of devices (e.g. laptops, thin clients, iPhones/smart phones). At the end of the day, we want a simple way to deploy and manage applications, and a secure and reliable infrastructure on which they’ll run. The next generation laptop is going to behave more like a DVR. It will be capable of loading live applications or running locally cached versions of an application when no network connectivity is available. Today’s increasingly mobile workforce will need to access their desktop from a number of locations and clearly there is a huge opportunity for an innovative company to step in and provide that experience.
So in the not too distant future, we’re going to have a simple, yet radically different desktop experience. The fact that the desktop will be so different represents a window of opportunity for Microsoft’s competitors in the desktop space. Could a Linux vendor step in to fill this void? I suppose so, but Linux vendors are still fighting the stigma that their desktop operating systems are difficult to manage, regardless of how much truth there is to such a stigma. Now if you look at Apple, you have a company that ships a desktop OS that has a history of ease-of-use. To me, if anyone can seize the small window of opportunity, it would be Apple. Supplanting Microsoft would be no easy task, as Microsoft is continuing to innovate around its desktop delivery model, and Apple’s opportunity is not just about gaining market share, but also the long term survival of the Mac OS.
We’re in the process of completely redefining what is meant by “desktop” and in this period companies with innovative, game changing technologies have an opportunity to reshape the IT landscape. Technology close to what’s offered by Microsoft and its partners isn’t going to cut it. I think it would take something far superior. I’m not sure I know what that “something” is, but I’m not ready to dismiss the possibility that it cannot be done.
For Apple to seize on the opportunity, they cannot go at it alone. They partnered with AT&T on the iPhone and the results speak for themselves. To redefine the desktop, Apple is going to need another partner that is equally as innovative. To me, that partner would be VMware. Together VMware and Apple could make a run at redefining the desktop (it’s clear that VMware/Microsoft synergy isn’t going to happen). VMware delivers the virtual infrastructure and Apple delivers the OS. Combined, we could have a new generation of desktop delivery that might eventually supplant Microsoft. Naturally, VMware isn’t going to stop supporting Microsoft operating systems, but it could drive technology that brings OS X and Windows together and redefines how both are packaged and delivered. Of course, if Apple decided to go at virtualization and the desktop space alone, then Virtual Iron or Parallels could be potential acquisition targets.
As virtualization continues to expand to desktop delivery, none of the traditional management practices are going to apply to most virtual desktop architectures. So to me this is why the desktop is at such a vulnerable point. Virtualizing desktops goes way beyond a traditional migration; it’s typically a rebuild/re-architect in order to take advantage of single desktop virtual images, consolidated management, etc.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see Microsoft cutoff backward compatibility in their next desktop OS release and use Kidaro and Virtual PC to present legacy Windows applications to the host OS. If you’re familiar with how Parallels works on a Mac (VM’s presence is hidden, users only see the VM’s applications), Microsoft and VMware are heading down a similar road with their desktop virtualization products. In fact, Microsoft demonstrated such a capability at TechEd a few weeks ago. Most believe that the next generation user system is going to be partitioned, with a user virtual environment and a separate environment for work-related tasks. Again, virtualization software will have the capability to abstract the two yet present them as a single entity. So following the next Windows desktop release, I think that Windows is going to look a lot like OS X, complete with virtualized legacy Windows applications.
For Apple’s sake, they cannot sit on their hands as we transition to a virtualized desktop model. Even personal PCs will have to support virtualization going forward in order to provide remote access to alternate desktops. Apple needs a good virtualization strategy for the long term survival of their OS. Waiting on virtualization, is the wrong move.
Inflection points such as the redefinition of the desktop don’t come around very often. If Apple is serious about contending in the desktop space, the time is now. Let’s start with OS X delivered as a virtual machine appliance and then move on to application insertion, offline caching, and desktop delivery to any device such as an iPhone, thin client at work, or home PC. Waiting on or ignoring the virtual desktop would mean that Apple is trying to continue playing a game that’s already over.
Note: Originally posted to Burton Group’s Data Center Strategies blog.
My recent webcast, “Now What?” Successful Strategies for Optimizing Virtual Infrastructure After Consolidation, is now available as an on-demand download. Here’s a brief description of the topics covered in the webcast:
When couples bring their first child home from the hospital, they often find themselves facing “Now What?” syndrome. The baby is home, but what are they supposed to do next? Ultimately, parental instincts kick in and everyone has a laugh about their “Now what?” moment later in life. Unfortunately, virtualization management isn’t as instinctive. Many organizations spend months planning for the arrival of their data center’s newest baby – virtualization, and following completion of the virtualization migration project find themselves in a “Now what?” moment. In this webcast, Burton Group senior analyst Chris Wolf and CiRBA CTO Andrew Hillier take a deep look at steps organizations should follow after a successful virtualization implementation. Like a newborn baby, virtualization can get into a lot of trouble if the collective virtual infrastructure is not effectively managed and optimized. With the proper approach to virtualization management, you can spot potential performance bottlenecks, governance red flags and continue to optimize utilization despite constant change within the environment.
I recently published an article for SearchDataCenter.com’s Virtual Data Center e-zine on I/O and performance issues in virtual environments. This article was pretty fun to write since they gave me the freedom to write as much as I want (within reason, of course). It’s hard to describe I/O issues in a 2 page article, but much easier to talk about I/O challenges and solutions in 11 pages, which is the case with this article.
You can view the full article here. Note that the article starts on page 4.
I recently provided commentary for SearchServerVirtualization.com on my thoughts on hypervisor price wars. Jan Stafford recorded an impromptu video clip with me on May 22nd, and I also wrote a short article summarizing the issues for SearchServerVirtualization.com. Here are the links to the video and article:
The folks at TechTarget videotaped the San Francisco Advanced Enterprise Virtualization seminar that I co-presented with Richard Jones on May 22nd. On June 25th they will be replaying the following presentations from the seminar:
- Session 1: Re-architecting Your Virtual Environment
- Session 2: Virtual Infrastructure Automation and High Availability Best Practices
- Session 3: Protecting your Virtual Environment: Backup and Storage
You can pre-register for the live virtual seminar here.
Also, we will presenting the full seminar at four additional cities this year:
- Washington, DC (July 31)
- Raleigh, NC (November 6)
- Boston, MA (November 18)
- Dallas, TX (December 9)
If you’re near one of these cities and interested in attending, I encourage you to register soon since these events fill up quickly. Best of all, they’re free to attend.
I often get asked about running hypervisors from portable storage devices and in this column, I talk about a method for installing and running XenServer 4.1 from a portable USB hard drive. This is useful if you are testing multiple hypervisor solutions and do not want to multi-boot the hypervisors on local server storage.
Here’s the link to the full article - Installing and Running XenServer 4.1 on an External USB Drive
