Customers will be able to bring a server online: EMC

The biggest impact enterprises have experienced from virtualisation technologies is in the server and storage networks.  Talking about the trends in adoption of virtualisation in India Ajaz Munsiff, Product Solutions Director – APJ, EMC, says, “though the market acceptance of storage virtualization solutions has been slow in the beginning, now the adaptability and implementations rates have increased magnanimously.”

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

Ajaz Munsiff: Virtualization will be very helpful for enterprises to consolidate their IT environments, thus conserving and provisioning energy. Enterprise-class infrastructures typically include multi-vendor server environments; virtualization assures right performance level and the right functionality to the business at the lowest total cost of ownership.

In essence, virtualization enables the creation of logical (virtual) representations of physical IT resources such as memory, networks, servers, and storage -- that perform as if they were actual resources. In virtualized environments, applications can see and interact with these logical components, which are independent from but able to interact with their physical counterparts including SANs, disk arrays, tape components, and other media. By cutting down physical IT resources, Virtualization can save floor space, prevent emissions as well as reduce energy expenditures. 

Virtualization also promises to enhance overall platform independence, along with system flexibility and utilization and thus in turn cutting overhead costs and reducing emissions. Maximizing system flexibility and utilization are critical to ensuring that an investment is delivering the benefits and dividends its owners planned on.

Keeping the above advantages in mind, we can safely conclude by saying that virtualization is going to be a very apt solution in the green computing space.

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

AM: Virtualization can be implemented at all stages of information lifecycle management (ILM). EMC & VMware have major play in server and storage virtualization space. Virtualization can happen at several infrastructure layers like desktop, systems, storage, server among others. EMC defines virtualization as a “technology that enables logical representations of physical resources (while preserving the user interfaces for those resources) to provide an abstraction layer that optimizes resources and improves flexibility.” While doing so, Virtualization removes resource limits and improves utilization.

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

AM: First of all, enterprises need to recognize that virtualization is not a point product—it is a critical part of their long-term infrastructure. So even though there are many significant tactical deployments that will drive significant short-term benefits, they need to understand how virtualization fits into and enables their long-term strategy.

Enterprises should consider the following while evaluating different storage virtualization technologies:

Scalability— Storage virtualization’s value comes from its ability to scale – maximum value is achieved when the whole target environment can be aggregated into a single logical view or “virtual pool”, enterprises need to make sure that the virtualization solution that can do it without getting in the way.

Functionality—Enterprises should make sure that they use their existing investments in processes, skills, training the people who use these tools. Aside from cost, the “replacement” functionality must be benchmarked against the existing solutions

Management—Virtualization devices disrupt existing storage-resource management. If you have an environment with an end-to-end view of management, any virtualization device will have to be re-integrated into it. The re-integration of the management view is essential to achieve the manageability benefits of a virtualized environment.

Support—Virtualization devices add another layer of complexity—the virtualization solution provider must now take responsibility for ensuring interoperability with everything behind the device.

In EMC, we have a comprehensive set of services around virtualization to ensure an effective and efficient virtualization deployment. It encompasses the assessment, design, and implementation of virtualization solutions.

CIOL: Where will the virtualization roadmap lead?

AM: Enterprise-class infrastructures typically include multi-vendor server environments, diverse connectivity technologies, and multi-vendor tiered storage environments. Organizations require the ability to allocate any storage to any application based on the needs of the business, and to do so non-disruptively. Networked storage virtualization enables organizations to deliver the right information at the right performance level and the right functionality to the business at the lowest total cost.

Companies that have large, diverse and complex environments who are looking to simplify the management of these environments are all good candidates for implementing virtualization.  Some of the verticals where we have seen early interest have been in the Telecommunications, Financial Services and Retail industries.  But it’s certainly not confined to these verticals.

The market for virtualization worldwide is huge ($15 billion by 2009 according to IDC) and IDC recently reported that widespread adoption of virtualization technology will take place over the next one to two years and 45% of new servers purchased this year will be virtualized.

In fact virtualization is also perfectly suited for an offshoring model. It can enable transparent data/application accessibility and availability. Once, you have a virtualization solution; it does not matter where the data/application resides. Though the market acceptance of storage virtualization solutions has been slow in the beginning, now the adaptability and implementations rates have increased magnanimously. New implementations will be developed with an open approach that is highly compatible with industry efforts to develop a standard API for SAN-based applications.

CIOL: Virtualization trends in India.

AM: Some of the key technology trends in virtualization that will mark the Indian landscape going forward are:

· Virtualization is expected to speed up the wider movement toward business process automation and remote collaboration. The market in general is expecting a major investment in this area within the next two to three years

· Virtualization is also expected to boost the move toward network delivered computing and Network delivered IT infrastructure

· Virtualization speeds up Applications development and maintenance or AMD, vendors have a real opportunity to grow into a new market defined as optimizing legacy applications for virtualization.

· The biggest long term opportunity for virtualization vendors lies in the SMB space, specifically end-to-end solutions that allow SMBs to outsource and virtualize their entire IT infrastructure

· As the market for server and storage virtualization heats up, finding people with the right skills is set to get harder. There will be increased opportunities for IT services companies as well as for IT staffing solutions providers

· Storage virtualisation is now firmly in the technology mainstream and no longer viewed as a niche solution.

· Flexibility is now seen as a key factor driving storage virtualization projects and viewed as just as important as both scalability and heterogeneity.

· Virtualization will be seen as a one stop solution for making IT infrastructures energy efficient and Green

· The explosion of digital content will drive the need for file virtualization and management tools that will give better views of files and directories. Many of these tools assist in the consolidation of multiple NAS platforms, and are increasingly used to assist with compliance/data retention requirements.

· Grid storage is another trend- Grid storage weaves together modular storage systems, which share common virtualization (either volume or file management), management software, and availability/redundancy for data. More vendor initiatives will come which will take a wide range of angles on deploying storage in a Lego-like deployment model.

· Storage virtualization has become an integrated component of data management tools. It also will increasingly be connected to server virtualization tools that manage server hardware and lifecycle management.

· As more server and storage management tools start to blend and manage infrastructure jointly, customers will increasingly be able to bring a server online, provision new storage volumes and manage the server and storage collectively from a single set of products. This is starting to happen, but will take another 12 to 24 months to materialize with a large number of available products.

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

AM: A phased approach is better to ensure the maximum ROI and a lower TCO.