Virtualization 2.0: The Next Generation of Virtualization

Virtualization 2.0: The Next Generation of Virtualization

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  An Executive BriefSponsored byVMware Karyn Price Industry Analyst – Cloud Computing June 2014
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  Virtualization 2.0: DrivingNew IT Benefits with Operations Management © 2014 Frost & Sullivan. All Rights Reserved. The evolution of virtualization can, in many ways, be likened to the evolution of mobility. The earliest mobile phones offered critical functionality not previously available in the market—the ability to make phone calls when away from a landline. But the next generation of mobility, smart phones, added a wide variety of value-added services that changed the way customers use and view their mobile phones. The changes currently occurring in virtualization technologies are similar. By adding new services that have the ability to enhance application and workload performance, providers are changing the way IT views virtualization. This first generation of virtualization has been very beneficial to data center managers, but it only scratches the surface of what the technology can make possible. By extending virtualization’s benefits beyond hardware optimization to performance optimization, IT is able to help the business gain a competitive edge. This is the role of the new generation of virtualization. Next-generation virtualization—also known as virtualization 2.0—adds services such as predictive analytics, data protection, security, and converged storage to the virtualization platform. Doing so improves agility, productivity, and application performance, and drives benefits that are unattainable using earlier virtualization platforms. Virtualization 2.0 also leverages analytics to enable real-time environment changes and further optimization of the data center environment. Choosing the right next-generation virtualization platform supports the deployment of mission-critical workloads in virtualized environments, and optimizes performance and efficiency. In this paper, Frost & Sullivan defines virtualization 2.0. We show the benefits that new virtualization platforms deliver to the business, and what to look for in a next-generation virtualization provider.
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  Frost & Sullivan ©2014 Frost & Sullivan. All Rights Reserved. IT leaders face many challenges in managing their data centers; chief among them are shrinking budgets, aging and inefficient equipment, and poor application performance. Figure 1 shows how IT decision-makers rank the top difficulties, according to a recent Frost & Sullivan survey. Figure 1: Top Challenges in Managing the Data Center Virtualization platforms solve some of these challenges by untethering hardware from the software that controls it, enabling more workloads to operate on a single machine. This decoupling of hardware and software allows IT to use hardware resources more efficiently, thus containing capital expenditures of additional hardware. Virtualization also assists with growing data storage requirements, as more capacity on each existing machine is used, thus slowing the need to grow the data center footprint. In these early phases of virtualization, the focus is primarily on hardware optimization. Containing or reducing both the data center footprint as well as capital expenditures provides IT with tangible benefits. In 2013, at least 51 percent of enterprises surveyed during Frost & Sullivan’s Cloud User Survey1 utilized virtualized servers in their private data centers, with another six percent planning to do so by 2015 (see Figure 2 below). 1 The Frost & Sullivan annual cloud survey was administered to 407 IT decision-makers from U.S. based companies, across a range of industries and sizes. Source: Frost & Sullivan 15% 16% 16% 25% 28% 28% 30% 30% 31% 35% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% Administrative complexity Delivering applications to remote users Managing multiple data center environments Minimizing downtime/increasing availability of apps Aging, inefficient infrastructure High maintenance costs Keeping up with new technology Slow/poor performance of applications Growth of data storage requirements Capital budget constraints N=407
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  Virtualization 2.0: DrivingNew IT Benefits with Operations Management © 2014 Frost & Sullivan. All Rights Reserved. Figure 2: Percent of U.S. businesses that utilize virtualized servers As IT works to virtualize the data center, leveraging legacy hardware and maximizing current resources is of critical importance. Frost & Sullivan’s 2013 Cloud User Study found that 58 percent of enterprises either currently use or plan to implement a hybrid cloud configuration, as shown in Figure 2. Today, virtualization can be applied to a wide variety of hardware appliances, but managing them effectively has proven challenging. As business moves into an increasingly competitive global economy, IT departments are under increased pressure to manage resources and workloads on behalf of the business. The IT department is starting to recognize the critical need to become a partner and provider of beneficial services to its fellow business units. Making such a shift requires a new focus. Hardware optimization, while a strong first move in optimizing the data center, should not be the only move IT makes to improve the data center. Once server optimization is achieved, moving forward to next generation virtualization is a strong next step. Next-Generation Virtualization Next generation virtualization—also known as Virtualization 2.0—is the next step in the virtualization journey. It layers operations management services on top of the virtualization platform to provide new benefits that are unattainable in a traditional virtualized data center. Operations services typically included in a robust virtualization 2.0 platform can include: ▪ Capacity management – gives visibility into virtual machine (VM) status, including which ones are idle and which are over-provisioned; and allows the reclaiming of excess capacity, and the increase of VM density proactively, before application performance is impacted. ▪ Predictive analytics – proactively gathers and analyzes performance data, correlates abnormalities, and identifies root causes of developing performance issues within the virtualized data center, to improve application and overall IT performance. Source: Frost & Sullivan Currently use server virtualization 52% Do not currently use, but plan to implement 6% Do not use server virtualization, and do not plan to implement 17% Don't Know 25% N=407
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  Frost & Sullivan ©2014 Frost & Sullivan. All Rights Reserved. ▪ Data protection – offers cost-effective backup and recovery for virtual machines by providing agentless backups with built-in deduplication. ▪ Availability – via thin provisioning and live migration, enables dynamic allocation of shared storage and movement of virtual machines between servers without loss of service, eliminating the need for downtime for planned maintenance. High availability functions also enable automatic restart of all applications, should a particular server or OS fail. ▪ Application tuning for low latency – enables automated distribution of power and memory based on pre- set clusters, which allows the platform to be better configured to meet the needs of specific, low-latency applications. Most operations management platforms that power virtualization 2.0 platforms are automated— meaning that they have pre-set settings like fault tolerance, power management, or availability for standard configurations; so that companies can take advantage of rule-based automation immediately on deployment, leaving less upfront configuration work in-house before results are realized. These policies help improve operations and application performance by making adjustments, such as launching additional capacity, based on dynamic conditions within the IT environment. The best operations management tools also leverage built-in intelligence, making the system self-learning, and providing IT with real-time data and analytics that help inform adjustments that make the virtualization infrastructure run more efficiently, with better performance and availability. Security, replication and storage all assist in ensuring business continuity, and that critical application data remains safe and accessible nearly all of the time. Hypervisor-converged storage can provide a high performance storage tier that is simple, resilient, as well as being cost-effective and optimized for virtual environments. Ultimately, these services provide better workload performance and agility than traditional virtualization can within the data center. Next-generation virtualization platforms can also support physical, virtual, and cloud environments. Hybrid cloud configurations are popular within businesses; and virtualization platforms that can manage heterogeneous environments, comprised of components from any major provider, will deliver the greatest benefits, both today and in the future. Several companies offer virtualization platforms; however, not all of them support virtualization 2.0 capabilities. As businesses evaluate potential virtualization platforms, there are three key components to consider. The provider should have: ▪ A solid “original” virtualization platform ▪ A robust operations management platform ▪ An integrated backup and storage solution to optimize the performance, availability and efficiency of the system Let’s look at each component in greater depth.
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  Virtualization 2.0: DrivingNew IT Benefits with Operations Management © 2014 Frost & Sullivan. All Rights Reserved. Strong Proven Virtualization Software Strong virtualization 1.0 providers are the most well-positioned to extend traditional virtualization to include the benefits that operations management services can provide. A virtualization leader—such as VMware—offers a virtualization standard that more than 500,000 businesses have adopted. A provider with a successful history of providing early virtualization platforms can add new operations management services to its existing platform in order to optimize workload performance—which means the business can gain application delivery and performance improvements without a forklift upgrade, and while maximizing existing data center assets. Robust Management Platform There are many solid management platforms available in the market today, but virtualization 2.0 requires additional services. A strong operations management platform layered onto a solid server virtualization platform can yield significant application performance improvements with less manual intervention for the business. But, what should organizations look for in an industry-leading operations management platform? Integrated management functionality in a single solution, heterogeneous management capabilities, and intelligent analytics are prime components. The latest offering from VMware—vSphere with Operations Management—offers the sort of robust operations management that can help businesses be successful with next-generation virtualization. On top of its solid server optimization capabilities, the integrated operations management enables administration of IT’s complete virtual environment through one comprehensive platform. It eases common management hassles, such as multiple sign- ons for differing instances or layers of the platform. This allows IT to get a single pane of glass view into the health, risk, and capacity of the virtualized environment. The platform also includes predictive analytics tools. -Smarter system alerts and advanced analytics alert IT when there are insufficient resources assigned to a VM to handle current traffic levels, and even provide a signal proactively before the capacity shortfall creates an application performance issue. Conversely, the system can also identify VMs with excess server resources assigned. This is of major importance to businesses, which frequently overprovision their virtual machines. With the new capacity management capabilities that virtualization 2.0 offers, businesses can “right-size” their environment, and increase both consolidation ratios and the ROI of their hardware investment. Operations Management also offers intuitive dashboards of operations metrics that IT can use to make adjustments to the environment to help to drive improved application delivery, and, as a result, better overall productivity throughout the business. So, the benefit of vSphere with Operations Management transcends IT, creating a direct, positive impact on the business as well. Integrated Backup and Storage Integrating virtualized storage directly into the virtualization 2.0 platform enhances data protection and storage capabilities while creating a stronger, more resilient and highly available environment. Layering virtualization platform features with APIs provides an abstraction layer that allows both physical and VM storage needs to be addressed, managed, and optimized within a virtualized environment. For example, VMware can now automate backups and failover triggers, create virtualized storage-area networks (SANs), and monitor the health and operations of the recovery environment, all within the same virtualization 2.0 platform.
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  Frost & Sullivan ©2014 Frost & Sullivan. All Rights Reserved. Karyn Price Industry Analyst – Cloud Computing Frost & Sullivan [email protected] Virtualizing storage provides a more efficient way to manage storage resources for a virtual infrastructure, giving organizations the ability to: ▪ Improve storage resource utilization and flexibility ▪ Simplify operating system patching and driver requirements, regardless of storage topology ▪ Increase application uptime ▪ Simplify day-to-day operations ▪ Leverage and complement existing storage infrastructure Global business demands heightened performance and ROI from its IT partners. Optimization of servers and the data center will no longer be satisfactory outcomes—IT must seek solutions that move beyond the data center, and that drive tangible business benefits. Whether companies have already virtualized their data centers or are just starting their journey, it’s clear that the “next generation” of virtualization requires application or workload performance optimization through the use of operations management solutions. Layering operations management onto legacy virtualization platforms helps IT improve agility, productivity, and application performance; and drives benefits that were previously unattainable using earlier versions of virtualization platforms. Integrating backup and storage into the same system allows the same management tools to administer the storage environment as well, automating failovers and recovery, and improving the overall storage-area network usage, for a more resilient IT ecosystem. Virtualization 2.0 uses intelligence and analytics that are built into the platform to enable efficient workload performance that server optimization alone could not provide. It also eases manual, routine IT management through use of pre-set, standard configurations, which enables rules-based automation of daily management tasks. Taken as a whole, virtualization with operations management eases IT’s daily management burden, and enables greater IT innovation without sacrificing standardization, security, or compliance concerns that could put a business at risk. Choosing the right next-generation virtualization provider is important for the future success of the data center. Providers—like VMware—that can offer a solid server virtualization solution that extends to encompass automated operations management and integrated storage will be well-positioned to help businesses thrive in a fast-paced, global economy. For more information about VMware’s vSphere with Operations Management solution, visit http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-operations-management/.
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  877.GoFrost • [email protected] http://www.frost.com ABOUTFROST & SULLIVAN Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today’s market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the Global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies? Contact Us: Start the Discussion For information regarding permission, write: Frost & Sullivan 331 E. Evelyn Ave. Suite 100 Mountain View, CA 94041 Silicon Valley 331 E. Evelyn Ave., Suite 100 Mountain View, CA 94041 Tel 650.475.4500 Fax 650.475.1570 London 4, Grosvenor Gardens, London SWIW ODH,UK Tel 44(0)20 7730 3438 Fax 44(0)20 7730 3343 San Antonio 7550 West Interstate 10, Suite 400 San Antonio, Texas 78229-5616 Tel 210.348.1000 Fax 210.348.1003 Auckland Bahrain Bangkok Beijing Bengaluru Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Colombo Delhi / NCR Detroit Dubai Frankfurt Iskander Malaysia/Johor Bahru Istanbul Jakarta Kolkata Kuala Lumpur London Manhattan Miami Milan Moscow Mumbai Oxford Paris Rockville Centre San Antonio São Paulo Sarasota Seoul Shanghai Shenzhen Silicon Valley Singapore Sophia Antipolis Sydney Taipei Tel Aviv Tokyo Toronto Warsaw Washington, DC