VMware unveils several virtualization solutions

Anil Chopra

LOS ANGELES: Virtual infrastructure software firm VMware shared the roadmap for its virtualization technology at the VMworld held here last week.

The event indicated that virtualization is no longer confined to the desktop or even a server alone: It has scaled up to a level where it can help enterprises build and manage their entire data centers, as well as their entire desktop fleet; it can help software development houses debug their software more efficiently and it can even help BPOs bury their key security concerns once and for all.

Virtualization holds a lot of promise for all organizations and the top executives of VMware covered various aspects of this throughout the conference.

Diane Greene, president and co-founder of VMware, opened the proceedings by introducing the new concept of virtual appliances. This is a combination of an application and the Operating System.

Contrary to the traditional concept of first installing the OS on the hardware and then the application, a virtual appliance frees both from the underlying hardware. The hardware would instead be running a virtual layer that would be able to accept any virtual appliance.

Greene said that in most x86 systems, the OS controls interfaces to the hardware as well as the software. When the hardware moves forward, the software has to be ported to move forward and the customer has to upgrade and move to new hardware, new OS, as well as a new application. Hence, when one buys the new OS, the applications are actually tied to the processor.

“How archaic is that,” Greene asked.

With a virtualization layer coming in between, the OS becomes an extension of the application stack. Greene further mentioned a few companies that are coming out with such appliances: Microsoft, Oracle and BEA are some of the big names.

This is a profound change in how ISVs build, test, seal, and distribute software, Greene said. If this opportunity is pushed out to a standards body, then customers can buy their software based on its functionality, performance, reliability, and price. Whether this concept succeeds remains to be seen. Meanwhile, one can download 300+ such appliances available on the VMware website.

Virtual Infrastructure

Greene further moved on to the concept of server consolidation. While virtualization is one way of performing server consolidation, VMware has taken it further by introducing their Virtual Infrastructure solution recently. This treats all servers as one large pool of hardware resources, e.g. one has so many GHz of CPU power and so many GBs of memory.

The shared storage is already present in a data center. Now one can simply drop his/her virtual appliances on top of this hardware pool and it will automatically get the resources it needs. The Virtual Infrastructure will handle their grouping, hardware assignment, workload balancing, etc.

If there is a CPU failure, then the Virtual Infrastructure will automatically assign another one to it. This improves application reliability. The virtual infrastructure further lets one migrate virtual machines around, from one hardware to another, even while they’re running.

Virtual desktop infrastructure

Another significant trend VMware talked about was that of a virtual desktop infrastructure. In this, one can place his/her desktop virtual machines into data center on top of the Virtual Infrastructure itself. With the entire desktop fleet sitting within the data center, it not only improves security, but also helps save power and manage desktops better. These desktops could be turned off too, if needed.

There is yet another interesting aspect of virtual desktops that can help companies outsourcing their work to third parties. Instead of handing out the data, they can give access to VMs within their data centers. This gives the organization better control over the desktop infrastructure as well as the data. It allows better manageability as well as security.

Moreover, one can guarantee a minimum amount of RAM and CPU power per desktop to ensure that the performance is not hit.

VMware ACE

Another concept that was talked about was VMware ACE. This can be useful for organizations giving out work to contractors and third parties. An organization can wrap its security policies around a virtual machine and give it to them. So the security policies could restrict the machine from accessing any devices, put in a firewall that allows it to access only a particular IP address, install the applications one wants the user to use, etc. Users accessing ones corporate network from outside will access it from their secure virtual machines.

There is a lot of action planned around virtualization. The conference had hands-on labs, demos and breakout sessions for the audience to help them grasp the concept thoroughly. Additionally, 79 vendors, who were the sponsors, also showcased their virtualization solutions.

(VMware hosted the author in Los Angeles)

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