A case for virtualisation

CIOs need to take a business-centric view of how resources are managed and have clarity on the objective of virtualization, opines Basant Rajan, Chief Technology Officer – India, Symantec Corporation in a discussion on how virtualisation technologies can impact an organization and how CIOs can justify an investment in this area.

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

Basant Rajan: Information and applications must be protected and available at all times, with no window for downtime. The rising volume of data is driving complexity and it is further driven by multiple server platforms, storage devices, virtual machines, databases, and applications – all with their own proprietary tools. Alongside dealing with these challenges CIOs have to address the most immediate pain points, and have to build a more solid path for a sustainable future.

Given this scenario CIOs need to take a business-centric view of how resources are managed and have clarity on the objective of virtualization. Virtualization techniques can be applied to various IT infrastructure layers - including operating systems, end points, networks, storage, servers and applications. Anything (hardware or software) can be virtualized and the abstraction allows the layers to be isolated, which then

- Increases flexibility

- Can be manipulated and used independently

- Can be duplicated and reused in different context

- Can be seamlessly moved as easily as data can be moved

Virtualizing an enterprise IT environment depends on factors such as desired ROI and the type of business the enterprise is in. For instance, a call center with 10,000 employees would prefer virtualizing its applications and desktops, given it is an opportunity to optimally utilize resources. Unlike call centers, a bank might opt for data centre virtualization; ensuring data protection and minimal impact on customer facing operations.

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

BR: Enterprises are challenged with shrinking budgets, increasing demand for storage and more stringent availability requirements for mission critical applications. As much as 70 percent of IT budgets are spent simply to keep the existing environment up and running. Hence, every new investment has to be made considering its cost effectiveness in the short and medium term as well. A virtualized infrastructure enables IT Administrators to bridge the gap between being a cost center to becoming the drivers of competitive advantage.

The ROI from virtualization is so compelling that it will reinvent storage networking. Having discrete, individual storage systems to manage and support will one day be viewed as archaic and impractical. The customers that have implemented storage virtualization are seeing real value, reducing both cost and complexity in their environments. The main reason that people are implementing storage virtualization is to simplify management and increase utilization levels that reduce capital expenditure.

According to the Enterprise Strategy Group, the early adopters of storage virtualization on average saved 24% on hardware costs, 16% on software and 19% on SAN administration annually. For example: If a customer had a budget of $1million, spending $500,000 on hardware, $200,000 on software and $300,000 on administration, the cost savings would be $209,000 per year.

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

BR: Systems and storage virtualization leads directly to increased utilization levels and coupled with a unified management framework that can provision systems or storage on demand, we can infuse agility into an existing data center.

As a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management, we are committed to infusing virtualization platforms with the core functionality for which we are known: storage and server management, high availability and security. As a result, we ensure that interoperability of platforms is maintained, and robustness of legacy systems is retained. 

CIOL: What are Symantec's latest virtualization products? 

BR: Symantec is addressing the growing challenges of managing today’s complex data centers by providing a single platform that can reduce downtime and improve manageability across heterogeneous physical and virtual environments. A single platform to secure, manage and provide business continuity - regardless of architecture - makes it easier for enterprises to select and change hardware and platform vendors.

The recently announced Veritas Virtual Infrastructure offers advanced storage capabilities for virtual server environments that effectively manage storage in large scale, x86 production environments. Veritas Virtual Infrastructure allows users to fully benefit from server virtualization while preserving current best practices in storage management from the physical environment and leveraging new opportunities provided by virtualized environments.

Server virtualization is transforming IT operations by reducing costs through higher resource utilization and reducing risk through increased operational flexibility. However, server virtualization makes storage management more complex and in many cases does not support capabilities available today in physical environments. Veritas Virtual Infrastructure solves this challenge by preserving all of the key storage management benefits enterprise customers rely on in their physical environments, but are not available in current file-system based virtualization approaches. Moreover, Veritas Virtual Infrastructure leverages the flexible, open architecture of Citrix XenServer to deliver new capabilities.

As leaders in providing infrastructure software solutions, Symantec is continuously researching on virtualization and related technologies. The research is aimed at reducing storage requirements by several orders of magnitude in large VM deployments. Potential future solutions in this space could help improve the efficiency of all aspects of storage management (patching, cloning, backup, etc.) in virtual datacenters.

CIOL: What are the Virtualization trends in India?

BR: As virtualization continues to mature, customers are moving deployments from test and development environments to more mission-critical applications in production environments. As that trend continues, the need for solutions such as high availability and disaster recovery, backup, and scalable storage management become increasingly important.

-         Virtualization also changes the way customers approach everyday infrastructure tasks such as recovery, clustering, failover, storage provisioning, and so on. Symantec has moved quickly to update our products to support VMware and other virtual environments.

-         Increasingly pressure on companies to cut costs and meet business requirements will drive IT teams to adopt virtualization at various levels.

-         Virtualization improves server utilization, and it can provide increased flexibility by allowing under-utilized computing capacity to be redirected where it is needed, without the time and expense of reconfiguring physical servers. As a result, customers look at virtualization as a strategic enabling technology to help them reduce costs, improve flexibility, and tackle initiatives like data center consolidation and green IT.

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

BR: Deploying virtualization for IT operations is a critical decision and requires a step-by-step approach. Enterprises must take into account how the dynamic nature of virtualization may actually impact their IT environment. The process involves swapping out the architecture that underlies applications and operating systems and converting them to run in a different environment, whether that means a totally different physical environment or a different virtual environment.

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

BR: Going ‘green’ is a function of optimization of resources. Virtualization software can help IT consolidate many applications onto fewer physical servers, which requires less energy to power the boxes and cool them. Virtualization improves server utilization, reduces server count, and reduces the need for additional purchases. Infact it is one of reasons for increased adoption of virtualization.

According to Symantec’s worldwide Green Data Center Report issued in Nov. 2007:

·        Data center managers indicate that software designed for server consolidation and server virtualization are the most popular solutions in creating energy efficiencies, with 51 and 47 percent indicating plans to consolidate and virtualize servers respectively

·        68 percent of respondents indicate that reducing energy played a role in their decision to implement virtualization and server consolidation

CIOL: What are the benefits of creating “virtual” business operating environment for organizations?

BR: New technologies, business models and extended global enterprises render significant impact on how businesses and consumers protect their infrastructure, information and interactions. Today, while employees work from anywhere and information is needed everywhere; businesses too are trying to extend their networks and be more globally oriented.

Given this scenario IT departments are struggling to manage the endpoint and costs are escalating. The workforce includes users ranging from those who require basic functionality to “power users”. This translates into vast amounts of redundant software residing on endpoint devices, adding to the cost of licencing and threat to information and infrastructure. A well managed and secure “virtual” business operating environment allows enterprises to have a

- More cost-effective application provisioning and management

- Easier IT support - remedial actions no longer device-specific

- Easier deployment of data back-up, recovery, deduplication and archiving

- Easily-applied user and device access control policies   

 

CIOL: What does it take to create a virtual business environment? How does it impact user policy and software licensing costs?

BR:End Point Virtualization enables the separation of key desktop elements for better manageability and instant configuration that is based on the user who logs in and their role in the enterprise. By leveraging three distinct technologies the best on-demand environment can be created:

Virtual distribution—Streaming allows the user to acquire applications from any endpoint, according to his productivity needs, while minimizing bandwidth requirements and optimizing license consumption.

Virtual execution—Layering applications on disk ensures that each application includes all of its appropriate resources, eliminates conflicts with other applications and the base operating system, and enables instant repair.

Rule-based management—Proactive license compliance and optimization is achieved by applying a set of rules to govern the consumption and use of applications by the right people, and automatically recovering unused licenses.

An on-demand environment enables enterprises to optimally utilize their resources like software licenses.