BANGALORE, INDIA: The 'V' word is abuzz among enterprises, who want to manage their data center tasks in a 'simplified way and at an affordable cost. "Virtualization, the killer platform for next generation data center, has been the most transformational technology in the last 10 years," says Aman Dokania, director and general manager, Infrastructure Software, HP Asia Pacific & Japan.

Throwing more light on enterprises going the virtualized way, Aman shared some insights with CIOL. "Virtualization is the most disruptive technology in business computing and it is the next control point," he says.

"Virtualization is making a real impact for customers. A customer, who has never done any virtualization, will obviously start with server consolidation. HP's unique concept is to allow the entire data center virtualize," Aman adds.

In 2007, we saw customers in India starting with consolidation but some with high availability of disaster recovery. "We tell our customers not to look at virtualization as just consolidation, but as a road map," he says.

Today, the computing requirements of enterprises are constantly on the rise and so is the need to simplify and consolidate the IT infrastructure. "In order to create a unified IT environment, we know that virtualization is the answer. As a next step, the 'hypervisor' helps customers adopt virtualization with greater speed and minimum risk. It makes IT more flexible and cost effective," adds Aman.

Hypervisor - a true enabler

A hypervisor, sometimes referred to as a virtualization manager, is a program that allows multiple operating systems, which can include different operating systems or multiple instances of the same operating system, to share a single hardware processor. The hypervisor actually controls the real processor and its resources, allocating what is needed to each operating system in turn.

"If you are in for virtualization," Aman says, "then hypervisor is an enabler." He adds: "It allows you to play multiple operating systems in the server. It eases the management of virtual server deployments. Overall, it becomes a part of the server."

In this regard, HP has started shipping its integrated embedded hypervisor 'Proliant iVirtualization', an out-of-the-box Proliant virtualization system. It provides the customer a choice for hypervisor with a tightly integrated Proliant experience. "We are asking our customers to standardize on the hypervisor, which is simpler and affordable to deploy," says Aman.

Proliant iVirtualization is a built-in virtualization, simple to configure and use. It also allows seamless integration with HP management products, he adds.

Explaining further, Aman says: "Here, the hypervisor gets embedded into the system. The benefit to the customer is that he can virtualize a hardware or a data center which has already been into virtualization."

"The hypervisor is a real time application and an integrated tool for disaster recovery. The logical server concept redefines how you do the virtualization," says Aman.

The hypervisor is ultra thin and light in weight. The new Esx3i from VMware with 32 mb, which integrates with HP's Proliant platforms, is light and easy for customers to embed.

HP's focus on virtualization technology will be more around managing the virtualization environment. "The physical and virtual machines here offer better data protection and disaster recovery. It provides standard applications for templates and operating systems. It offers a great value to the enterprise segment," Aman informs. And, the focus is shifting towards management enabler, he adds.

Manage both physical and virtual environments

For SMB customers going in for virtualization, he suggests that they buy a system, which has the embedded hypervisor. "For any enterprise, the value is more in being able to manage both virtual and physical environments."

HP, which is in partnership with VMware, Citrix and Microsoft for meeting the requirements of virtualized environments through hypervisors, is at designing a product at the hardware level to optimize the virtualization.

"For those going in for hypervisor as an additional attachment, there is no big cost difference as it has to be integrated with the server or it needs to get installed on the hardware," he adds.

"In the last couple of years, we have seen enterprises across verticals and software houses deploying robust solutions and bringing in more hardware to build bigger data centers. They are all looking at virtualization to reduce the operational cost. However, the mid-market customers are testing the viability of virtualization."

With growing capacity requirements and price constraints across all industry verticals, the consolidation of mission critical applications on virtualized, industry-standard servers will be a major trend through out 2008, Aman notes.

Adding his points, Manish Mudgal, product manager - APJ, HP Infrastructure Software, says: "We are driving adoption of virtualization in the mid-market space along with our partners. We are putting a structure in place to initiate and drive virtualization among mid-sized businesses."

"We will create a good baseline for our products by the year end and we hope to see a more aggressive adoption in early 2009," he adds.

"We are also looking at how to integrate the server management technology with hypervisors. The embedded hypervisor is an additional value to the customer who is already using the Proliant system, i.e., embedding the same with the Proliant Management tools. HP is looking at an end-to-end Proliant service for its customers with cost benefits," he adds.