"Big T" Technologies
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
I figured I would start this article off with something grandiose - I thought I would coin my own terminology!
The little hamster in my brain started to run on the treadmill and out popped the idea of Big T Technology. Unfortunately, a Google search showed me that the hamsters in other people's brains already came up with this terminology. The article "Big T" Technology vs. technology" is a prime example of other hamster activity.
After this deflation of my ego, I gave my hamster some cheese and sent him back on the treadmill to come up with the content for this article.
I sat back to reflect on what technologies have had the largest impact on the organizations I have been with in the last ~5 years. A couple of technologies came to mind:
- Server Virtualization
- Blade Servers
Both of these technologies have much of the same brass rings we can grab as we go around the technology Merry-Go-Round. Or, better yet, the Techno-Go-Round. For this discussion, I am just focusing on Virtualization.
Virtualization, in the context of this article, is a method of taking a physical server and creating multiple virtual servers on it. Each virtual server acts and behaves just as a physical server would. It has its own memory space, disk space, IPs, etc.
The three main commercial players in the Virtualization world are:
VMWare ESX. I am surprised Microsoft did not gobble this company up in earlier days. I see them as the commercial market leader to which everyone is trying to catch up.
Citrix XenServer. Citrix has been around for many years and has had solid solutions. Much like Red Hat did with Linux [remember that crazy IPO?!?!), Citrix has based their solution on an open source solution called Xen hypervisor.
Microsoft Virtual Server . Microsoft is a new entry into this field. My experience with past Microsoft software is they often come into a market segment with a subpar solution but with the resources at their disposal they eventually create a solid product.
One of the key driving forces behind Virtualization is that system administrators have traditionally been annoyed because, as they examined all the servers in their infrastructure, administrators found a great deal of underutilization, especially in the area of RAM and CPU.
Virtualization strives to maximize the use of all available CPU and RAM.
By reducing the number of physical machines needed, a great deal of benefits arise.
Deployment Time
This is a huge benefit to us here at Medusa. By creating template virtual machines, you can quickly grab a base configuration and have it live in under a minute. Then it can be modified to meet your current needs.
Power Reduction
If you are able to place six virtual servers on one physical server you are roughly saving the power consumption of five servers. For those of us who use external data centers, power consumption is one of the primary cost drivers.
Cooling Reduction
The same logic applies to cooling that applies to power consumption.
Physical Space Reduction
Another monthly charge by data centers is rack space. With virtualization you get more virtual servers in the same amount of rack space.
Downtime/Maintenance
One of the most annoying tasks from my system admin days was having to move applications from one server to another so I could bring down and do maintenance on a server, and then have to move them all back. With Virtualization you can move an entire virtual machine from one physical server to another with the click of a button.
Multiple Operating Systems
You can easily have various operating systems at various version/patch levels with very little headache compared to the physical server model. Segmenting Applications. If it fits into your strategy, you can effectively create a separate virtual server for each application you run in your infrastructure. This helps prevent one rogue application from bringing down other applications by segmenting the memory/CPU between them. This isn't cost effective using physical servers, as applications won't often make full use of RAM/CPU in the physical server. With virtualization, not only do you have better results, you can squeeze every last 0 and 1 out of your hardware.
Simplify Disaster Recovery
If you had any amount of time to respond to a disaster as it was happening, you could quickly move your virtual machines (depending on network speed) to another data center (assuming you had virtualization in standby mode at another data center).
One of the things you need to ask yourself is "do I need these technologies to add value or am I doing this just because everyone else is?"
I can't answer that question for you; however, I believe the answer for the majority of organizations is that this technology should be pursued, even if in a pilot fashion.
You may want to call me up and ask "Dan, are you comfortable using all this in production?"
I am not quite comfortable using virtualization in production yet, but there are some great case studies you can review. Like any software and hardware, you can hit some big issues that can bite you in the posterior. For example, VMWare recently experienced a defect that stopped it from working around the world and VMWare's CEO recently posted a letter in response. Judging by the discussions posted on the VM newsgroups, it just shows us how well-used and valuable this solution is in the industry.
At Medusa, we are highly reliant on VMWare for our testing efforts. Before using VMWare, we could spend two weeks getting a testing environment ready to test a new software release. We now complete this in hours today. The business case for Medusa was a no-brainer.
There is a good list of case studies on organizations using VMWare in production. You can review them here.
There are some case studies for XenServer on their website.
Here is another case study for a Healthcare organization using MS Virtual Server in production. Another one exists for using Virtual Server in testing/lab environments.
Here is a good Webinar on the thought process that should go into virtualization of your production environment. Virtualized Production Servers with Microsoft Virtual Server
In closing, I refuse to give up on coining my own term for this article. I promised my hamster a week off in the Bahamas if he would come through for me.
Drum roll please:
"Big T" Terminology -> No hits on Google!
And what do you mean by that Dan?
"Big T" Terminology is basically those all so pervasive buzz words that seem to drive our IT vision into bizarre directions when the people using them (hamster challenged Execs like myself) don't even know what they are or know how to apply them in a way that makes sense. Nevertheless, we make decisions to go down that path because we read it in Wired or Business2.0.
Dan
VP, Product Development