Virtualisation impacting data center economics

All data centers tend to be very complex, with servers running at very low utilization rates. That is where virtualisation makes a  difference by increasing server capacity . According to Rajesh Saha, VP - Enterprise Systems, Systems & Technology Group, IBM India/SA, virtualization is key to improving data center economics.  It enables the reduction of server sprawl and complexity, while improving processor utilization and helping business streamline IT staff resources, he states in an interview with CIOL. 

CIOL: What are the infrastructure layers that can be virtualised? And where should the virtualisation process begin?

Rajesh Saha : Today, virtualization can enhance nearly every aspect of the IT infrastructure: servers, operating systems, applications, storage, data and networks. IBM offers the industry’s broadest set of virtualization capabilities and helps companies simply and dynamically access and manage resources for better asset utilization and reduced operating costs with cross-platform virtualization, automation and systems management solutions.

Although traditional resource virtualization continues to be a major component in IBM’s on demand strategy, for IBM to continue its thrust toward "Innovation through Virtualization", more virtualization capability is required for creating virtual systems from multiple smaller systems, and for managing these systems across platform and vendor boundaries in a simplified, cohesive way.

A successful approach towards implementing Virtualization lies in proper planning.  There are tools available from different vendors which can help streamline the planning and deployment of virtual computing environment.  

Once the business case for virtualization has been established, a detailed solution should be developed which takes the applications and resource requirements into consideration.  Solution planning can help ensure that all the equipment meets or exceeds the operational requirements of the solution.  Apart from physical planning a proper layout of workload deployment needs to be developed.  This Workload planning exercise should take into considerations application-wise capacity, performance, and availability requirements for the its logical partitions.  Once all these details are available, implementation will just be a matter of sequencing the application roll out based on criticality defined by the company.

CIOL: Calculating ROI for virtualisation is a challenging task --how can CIO's justify an investment in this area?

RS: Virtualization is key to improving data center economics.  It enables the reduction of server sprawl and complexity, while improving processor utilization and helping business streamline IT staff resources.  That said; it is no wonder that 74 percent of CIOs say they are moving toward bigger “scale up” machines to support virtualization technologies, according to a recent Merrill Lynch CIO Survey, “Virtualization and IT Hardware Trends.”  This is because data centers are often too complex, with servers running at utilization rates that are far too low.

 A recent study by Info-Tech shows that businesses adopting virtualisation realise a 40 - 75% reduction in hardware acquisition costs and monthly recurring savings in hardware maintenance costs of 25 - 50%. The virtualisation solutions enable companies to manage cross-system workloads using common systems management tools and CIO’s need to reiterate  that such efficiency means higher power to performance ratios and less money spent on cooling more servers in the long run.

CIOL:  How to go about getting legacy systems more agile by using virtualisation technologies?

RS: Virtualization protects the investment of companies by enabling them to extend the lives of both their custom-written and their legacy applications. Without virtualization, organizations couldn’t justify the added support and maintenance costs for the legacy hardware and operating systems, to keep these applications intact. But virtualization eliminates the need to migrate existing custom applications to the latest hardware and operating systems. Companies can simply create a dedicated virtual machine for each custom or legacy application, and run it alongside other virtual machines running mainstream applications—all on the latest industry-standard server hardware.

Through virtualization, one can restore a backup copy of any virtual environment in a discrete and fast manner. Even a system that has been corrupted through different interactions within a test phase can be easily restored. Separating hardware and software management also enables enterprises to manage and maintain discrete systems far more effectively.

CIOL: What are the latest virtualisation trends  in India.

RS: PC Desktop virtualization—often dubbed thin-client computing—is not a new concept. Commercial desktop virtualization goes back some 15 years to the Microsoft® Terminal Server Edition of Windows NT 4.0. IBM® Virtual Client Solution it is a radically different solution to an old problem: How to cut computing costs with centralized management and not infringe on the user’s personal control of the computing environment.

Server virtualization   - The biggest trend we’ve seen in the server market recently is the growing need for energy efficient data centers and virtualisation. Managing energy in the data center is a growing concern across companies of all sizes throughout India. With the increasing number of servers comes an incremental rise in heat generated, thereby raising the cost of energy.

Storage virtualization - Efficient management of storage infrastructure means ensuring that both from a capacity management and performance management perspective, there is sufficient monitoring tools that help collect relevant data from the storage devices.  It is based on these data informed decisions can be taken which can affect the storage environment, capacity provisioning as well as better governance of data.  Storage solutions that take into consideration the entire IT infrastructure along with the application space will have a better propensity to scale well.

An efficient ways of managing this would be storage virtualization, which brings forth unique advantages of realizing better asset utilization along with better availability and infrastructure.

CIOL: How should enterprises approach virtualisation -- the big bang approach or phased?

RS: Virtualization can be a critical first step to managing the infrastructure:

-       Lowering the cost of existing infrastructure

-       Reducing the complexity of adding resources to that infrastructure

-       Building heterogeneous infrastructure across multiple data centers, making those centers more responsive to business needs

-       Providing an environment for rapid disaster recovery

The approach should be a phased approach to virtualization.

CIOL:  How much does virtualisation support an organization’s efforts of going 'green' and ubiquitous computing?

RS: If you look at the reasons why organisations are going green, you will find out that it varies on organisations goals like financial gains, operational enhancements or environmental issues. The latest IDC's Green Poll conducted in Asia pacific stated that 81% of organizations thought that the ‘Greenness’ of their IT suppliers would become ‘much more important’ over the next few years. Today, 18% of the organizations surveyed considered the greenness of the IT suppliers before making a selection and another 30% expected to do so in the near future. Many clients tells us that going green is simply good business. By going green and conserving energy, businesses can improve their operational efficiencies, themselves, striking a more optimal balance between what technologies can do and what people can do. This often results in greater productivity internally, and enhanced business services for customers.

In the past year or so, as the topics of global warming, ozone deficiencies, renewable resources, and the data center’s carbon footprint have made headlines, the concept of extreme power at any expense has come into question and the focus has shifted to efficient datacenters and especially virtualisation.