With VMware and other server virtualization technologies rapidly gaining in acceptance they are creating a need for the next level of virtualization…virtualization of the infrastructure.

The difference?

Infrastructure virtualization is not a competitor to server virtualization; quite to the contrary it is a compliment to it. A product like VMware or other server virtualization applications, aren’t really server virtualization at all, they are really OS virtualization. These applications allow a single server to run multiple OS’s or OS instances. Infrastructure virtualization is a piece of software that sits to the "side" of your network, it can power on physical computers, manage the networks between them, handle connections to storage and point them to the right operating system and application. 

For example if you wanted to activate three servers, one running Exchange, two servers to a proprietary Engineering test application and one VMware ESX server. You could have the Infrastructure Virtualization product power on the four physical servers. On the first server you assign it to a primary network on your production SAN that would boot Windows and start Exchange. The second and third servers could be assigned to a private engineering network, and have them assigned to the development SAN and the last server again assigned to the primary network and primary SAN booting VMware ESX and starting multiple server instances.

Continuing this example, assume that one of the virtual machines on the VMWARE is growing too CPU intensive. You could power on a fifth server and provide the runaway application with its own physical server.

Extending Server Virtualization

As stated earlier Infrastructure Virtualization is a complimentary technology to virtual server technology, not a competitor.

Server Virtualization makes you re-think your Data Center Topology and in many cases redesign it. For features like VMotion to work, you need the ESX Servers to share a common pool of storage and those ESX servers need to be on the same subnet. These needs are many times in conflict with the current reality of the topology and in some cases can present security concerns. As a result, deployment of server virtualization is delayed or worse, virtualization islands are created with physical topology limitations between them.

Infrastructure Virtualization allows for virtualization hosts to be on different network subnets, different storage networks or even in different physical locations. This greater flexibility will make it easier to speed the deployment of virtualization and greatly simplify its use in disaster recovery scenarios.

While the High Availability (HA) option of VMware allows for fast recovery of the ESX environment it is totally reliant on another physical machine running ESX server with the right IP networks and storage network connections already lined up in advance. With an Infrastructure Virtualization tool, you can move the downed ESX process to a cold system or even a system that is in use but not critical, a test machine for example. Turn on that cold system, point it to the correct network and storage connectivity, start ESX and load the instances. One cold server could replace many redundant pairs.

This HA capability, also known as Server repurposing is available for non-Virtual Server applications as well, providing for HA capabilities to any application, virtualized or not. Because of the complexity of clustering and the expense involved, only a few servers in the environment are typically clustered. An Infrastructure Virtualization solution can provide you with “HA + boot time” availability. Meaning that the application would only be down for the time required to boot a cold server. So if you have an application that can be down for three to five minutes this could be a very cost effective way to achieve data center wide availability. Also this type of HA does not require the learning curve that Cluster technology requires.

Infrastructure Virtualization is more than just the next step after server virtualization it is its foundation. As described in the example, Infrastructure Virtualization allows for rapid conversions of operating systems instances out of a virtualized system to a physical system or conversely from a physical system to a virtual system. It allows you to more aggressively deploy server virtualization by giving you an “out”. If you find that a particular application does not behave well in a virtualized environment or requires too much CPU or I/O bandwidth to be shared, then moving it out of the virtualized environment is critical. With Infrastructure Virtualization, you can move the Virtual Machine back to a Physical Machine in the time it takes to boot that machine. This also is a common request for those times when during seasonal times or during peak times of the day you have the need to provide an application with dedicated server resources. 

As with the HA capability, this test capability extends beyond the virtualized world. For example if you want to test a new hardware platform or class of CPU. Infrastructure virtualization allows you to quickly insert it into the environment with little to no disruption.

While VMware extends the power of a single machine by enabling you to run multiple servers instances on it, Infrastructure Virtualization extends the power of the Data Center by making any physical machine power on with any connectivity (network and storage) to any OS, including VMware. 

For more information on server virtualization please contact us at georgeacrump@mac.com, we can provide an overview of the players in the market as well a specific recommendations for your environment.

Click here to sign up for our live webinar on Protecting VMware: There is a lot of confusion around VMware and how to protect it. How does VMware protection work? How can you leverage VCB? What are some of the best practices for VMware protection and disaster recovery? Storage Switzerland will present best practices for protecting your VMware installation, as always without Vendor Bias.