Virtualization - The Foedus Interview
by Mark Ontkush, Boston, Massachusetts, USA on 03.20.07
You probably know that most companies use computers to provide a variety of business-centric services that are critical to their success. These machines are known as 'servers'. Each server usually performs a single, specific duty; there's the email server, the accounting server, the print server, etc. Oftentimes each server runs on its own separate hardware, and is controlled and managed as a single unit. IT personnel really like this, as it makes each application far easier to troubleshoot and maintain than if everything was lumped together on one box.
A lot of that is beginning to change with a new technology that allows for several of these machines to be consolidated and run off a single computer. This process, known as virtualization, is still in its infancy, but will have tremendous ramifications for the environment. Foedus, a three year old Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based company, specializes in this process. Mike Reilly, CEO of Foedus, was happy to fill in the details for this exclusive interview.
According to Mr. Reilly, most servers are only run at about 5 to 12 percent utilization; that means that the processor, or CPU, is only doing work for that amount of time. In addition, servers use a large amount of electricity, much more than your typical desktop or home computer. How much? Mr. Reilly estimates that each server uses between $300 and $550 per month in electricity. So the idea here is clear; if there was a way to put a lot of these machines onto one piece of hardware, companies could (a) save a lot of energy, (b) buy a lot less hardware, and (c) throw away a lot fewer machines when they reach their end of life.
The savings are substantial; Reilly estimates that a typical project reduces the numbers of servers by a factor between 10 to 1, and 20 to 1. That turns into, on average, a 40 percent overall cost savings and an 80 percent reduction in hardware purchases. And the good thing is that almost all servers (95 percent) are candidates for virtualization. Only a few, typically running old software or 'legacy' applications, are not.
The downside is fairly minimal; personnel require some additional training in the virtualzation software. It is of course, new, so there may be some reluctance at implementing it corporate wide from the get-go. But, as Reilly says, the good thing is that you can try it out on a few servers and see how you like it. Virtualization is clearly a revolution, probably as big as the invention of networking, and it's sure to be a big hit for companies, and a low hit on the environment.
Actually its only in its infancy from a Microsoft view. Their competition (vmware) has been virtualizing servers since around 2000 and has become a mature and stable product. Microsoft has come late to the game and pushed out an inferior product as normal but it throwing its name around and making up cost of ownership studies claiming its vitrual pc to be a better product.
Virtualization is the next big thing, not only for power savings but for space savings also, there are a fixed number of U spaces in a rack and the cost to build new data centers is going up. The real reason is you have now isolated the OS from the hardware (which is what the kernel of the OS was supposed to do) so you can move virtual servers at will. Vmware has packages which can move virtual machines around based on the load on the hardware to balance it out or automatically start up a new virtual when hardware fails.
Go back a few generations and the Mainframe has been vitualized since the 70's. VMware just created it on PC architecture.
Virtualization is actually very mature technology. The problem was how to get virtual unfriendly PC OS's to perform in such a shared environment and PC hardware
The PC architecture has still lots of design constraints that prevents scaling (I have yet to see a 8-way VMware server with 70 guests smoothly) to maximise the CPU utilization. The hardware vendors are finally coming up with ways of addressing these constraints.
The moral of the story is don't expect Virtualized environment to smoothy replace all those racks of dedicated servers today, but they are working towards it.
Virtualization isn't just for servers either. As a web developer I have to test applications across multiple browsers and operating systems. With virtualization software (I use Parallels since I'm on a Mac), I can run a Windows machine and a Linux machine without having to buy more hardware. And since I'm on a laptop, I can have these systems with me anywhere without having to lug extra hardware around.
For people on Windows I also recommend downloading VMWare (there's a free version) to browse the Internet in. That way you don't have to worry about your main OS getting hosed if you come across some malware. Just be sure to scan everything you plan to transfer to the host OS extremely carefully!
Actually its only in its infancy from a Microsoft view
Go back a few generations and the Mainframe has been vitualized since the 70's. VMware just created it on PC architecture.
>>yes, yes, virtualization has been around for years. but the big revolution now is that everyone is doing it.
Virtualization isn't just for servers either.
>>yes, this was another point not mentioned in the interview but is a big advantage. In fact, Mike mentioned that companies have no problem putting production, development, and testing all on one box, which surprised me.
I'm using the free vmware myself at home too. Consolidated all my lab of old PC's and network gear down to my laptop. Saw a decrease in my own electric bill and was able to clean up a room that was just being used to house "servers"
Microsoft has been buying out Intel virtualilzation packages since the 90's. They are not new to the game of virtualization, they only own all the copyrights and patents on the low end products - Insignia SoftPC and Connectix Virtual PC. Both were run MS on Mac products. I know, I own both.
Although IBM had its problems in the beggining with it's 460 scalable servers most of the bugs have been worked out and I have built several 8 way cpu ESX servers that run very smoothly.