Virtually there: The state of datacenter virtualization

What began as an effort to run multiple operating systems on a workstation has evolved into the core technology that will define IT for the foreseeable future. Not only will virtualization never go away, it’s going to completely take over every level of IT infrastructure. But if that’s the goal, where are we on the timeline? Further along than you might otherwise think, depending on the virtualization platform you’re running.

The world of x86 server virtualization breaks down fairly cleanly along vendor lines: those that are running VMware and those that aren’t. If you’re running VMware ESX 3.5 or vSphere, you’re well ahead of the general curve. You enjoy critical functions like vMotion, Storage vMotion, DRS (Dynamic Resource Scheduling), HA (High Availability), physical page sharing to reduce overall RAM requirements, and a plethora of other enterprise features that define VMware as far and away the leading virtualization platform available today.

[ For a thorough evaluation of VMware’s latest offering, read Paul Venezia’s detailed review: “VMware vSphere 4: The once and future virtualization king.” ]

If you’re not running VMware, you’re running Microsoft’s Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, or one of a handful of smaller hypervisors. You may be running production systems on these tools, but they each lack critical components present in VMware’s offerings. Citrix XenServer is further along and more mature than Hyper-V, but it still cannot compare directly with vSphere or even its predecessor, VI3. In fact, both companies essentially refuse to compare their products directly, opting to compare their offerings with VMware’s free ESXi embedded hypervisor. These are disingenuous comparisons, but it’s all they have. Microsoft is making strides with the pending release of Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, which will support Live Migration and a smattering of other features, but that still brings them up to par with where VMware was four years ago.

This isn’t necessarily a good thing for IT in general — stiff competition generally leads to better, cheaper solutions all around — and Microsoft and Citrix are certainly working hard to catch up. But they can’t avoid the hard reality that they’re several years behind on the development curve. They’ll get there eventually, but how far ahead will VMware be at that point? Let’s hope, at least, that Microsoft and Citrix will advance far enough to force VMware to lower prices.

So if we use VMware’s vSphere as the barometer, x86-based virtualization is now not only capable of running every aspect of a normal IT server infrastructure, the features and tools provided are far and away better than any fixed-hardware solution. It’s becoming more and more common that companies that have been dipping a toe in the virtualization waters are now jumping in with both feet and dragging their friends along. It’s not a question of if, but when. The tipping point has been reached.

In fact, there’s not a whole lot left to do on core virtualization — all the major components are there. For most infrastructures, the current limits of VMware vSphere are far higher than what’s required to run their entire server infrastructure. Most shops don’t need support for more than eight vCPUs and 64GB of RAM per VM. Most shops barely require support for 4 vCPUs and 32GB of RAM per VM. As these numbers increase, it will allow for larger workloads to move to the same virtualized platform as their smaller brethren, but at this point, the vast majority of normal workloads are perfectly suited to virtualization.

So as development on the core slows, development on the surrounding features expands. Patch management, backups, host update tools, better load balancing, long-distance vMotion to truly enable cross-datacenter high-availability, global management tools, and that pesky buzzword “cloud computing” are where the focus is now. VMware’s VMworld trade show was all aflutter with talk of cloud computing, with VMware rolling out the “VMware Virtualized” initiative, which allows service providers to tell the world that they run on VMware. VMware claims 1,119 current partners fit this particular bill, and many are busy building “private clouds” based on VMware products to support their large-scale internal infrastructures.

VMware also announced VMware vCloud Express, a cloud of its own. Still in beta, this is essentially a hosted VMware solution that lets you sign up with a credit card and deploy VMware virtual servers on a whim. No worries about maintaining your own infrastructure, just deploy and go. VMware touts this as a solution for development, staging, and production services.

These focal points show that VMware agrees that their core virtualization services are mature and that they need to branch out to other areas in order to keep moving the ball. That’s not to say that everything is peachy. Technologies like VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) are still in limbo, and may be for some time. There are still problems with initiation and training, and the cost of entry — especially for VMware — is still too high unless you’re willing to sacrifice significant management features and reliability. But these aren’t deal breakers, they’re bumps in the proverbial road.

So, quite simply, the state of virtualization is strong.