From Humble Beginnings In Mainframe Computers, Virtualization Is Now A Force To Be Reckoned With

Key Points

• Computing has come full circle, from centralized mainframes to decentralized client-server computing back to a centralized computing model enabled by virtualization.

• As virtualization evolves to embrace other hardware elements, new challenges in terms of policies, security, and management will inevitably arise.

• The evolution of cloud computing and virtualization go hand in hand; virtualization is the engine that drives cloud computing.

Today, virtualization is helping companies realize capital and operational expense savings by enabling the most efficient use of current data center hardware. The technology is also having a tremendous influence on all meaningful areas of IT, namely servers, storage, and networking.

Virtualization’s influence will only grow as more and more companies embrace the technology’s promise to enhance the efficiency of their IT operations. Read on to learn more about virtualization’s evolution, its status today, and where experts expect it to go in the future.

Virtualization Yesterday

Most experts agree virtualization had its genesis during the mainframe era; back in the 1960s, IBM successfully applied virtualization technology to split centralized mainframe computers into separate virtual machines, says Julian Box, CTO at Virtustream (www.virtustream.com). But, adds Box, the technology lost steam during the ’80s and ’90s as client-server technologies flowered and gained traction with the advent of inexpensive servers and desktop computing.

Virtualization started to re-emerge as a viable technology in 1998, when VMware patented its virtualization technology for IA-32/x86 systems and then launched its Virtual Platform product in 1999, says Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. At first, virtualization began its comeback in the province of software developers, who needed the capability to code software for multiple operating systems without having to invest in separate hardware platforms for each OS, King explains. Virtualization delivered the ability to host multiple OSes in a single hardware platform, thus delivering significant savings for software developers.

In 2003, EMC’s acquisition of VMware, along with the launch of the open-source Xen hypervisor and Microsoft’s purchase of virtualization assets from Connectrix, launched virtualization into its next phase: maximizing x86 server utilization by consolidating multiple OSes, applications, and workloads onto fewer machines, King says. This issue has become increasingly critical as skyrocketing hardware capabilities have resulted in vast underutilization of servers hosting typical business applications.

Virtualization Today

Today, virtualization continues to gain traction in a growing number of enterprises. In recent years, IT has undergone a behavioral shift as administrators get away from having to know the specific servers and resources used by specific applications and embrace a more flexible model where “hard” configurations are not required and virtualized servers can be created, moved, and decommissioned with ease, says Ken Oestreich, vice president of marketing at Egenera (www.egenera.com). As IT becomes more at ease with this computing model, he adds, uses for virtualization continue to grow.

The operational benefits of virtualization are beginning to take center stage, says Renata Budko, co-founder and marketing vice president at HyTrust (www.hytrust.com). New tools are enabling organizations to reduce server provisioning time, simplify business continuity strategy, dynamically optimize resource allocation, and automate many of the operations that previously required a physical presence, adds Budko. In short, organizations are using virtualization to implement agile, dynamic information systems.

In terms of network virtualization, the latest advances involve the virtualization of networking components, such as switches, routers, or firewalls, says Michael Hamelin, chief security architect for Tufin Technologies (www.tufin.com). Hamelin says some vendors are implementing multiple virtual firewalls within a single chassis, allowing customers to consolidate their physical environment and reduce both administrative overhead and physical cabling. Another trend, he adds, is the complete virtualization of the network or security device by running it on a hypervisor.

Pund-IT’s King says even though broad adoption of virtualization by SMEs lagged behind enterprises due to the technical skills required to implement and support it, the situation has changed over the past couple of years due to increasingly simplified and automated management solutions. Companies such as VMware and Microsoft have been instrumental in pushing significantly broader adoption of virtualization among SMEs. Given virtualization’s essential role in cloud environments, SMEs using SaaS and other cloud-based services are probably reaping the benefits of virtualization whether they’re aware of it or not, King says.

Virtualization Tomorrow

There is no doubt virtualization has a bright future as the technology continues to evolve. But how will this evolution take place? In terms of storage virtualization, the future means the complete removal of provisioning, says Dr. Geoff Barrall, CTO and vice president of engineering at Overland Storage (www.overlandstorage.com). The next wave of storage systems will remove the current state of “array-level dependency” and facilitate the creation of systems that closely resemble VMware virtualized server environments, Barrall says. In other words, virtual disks will be able to be migrated in real time between storage systems without interruption in service, making it possible to create any number of virtual disks or file servers, not bound by the underlying physical hardware.

Jason Dea, product marketing manager at Novell (www.novell.com), says now that the cost savings of virtualization have been realized and acknowledged, the focus is shifting to the promise of cloud computing, enabled by virtualization, as a better way for administrators to run workloads and potentially run new workloads that were not possible with yesterday’s technology platforms.

Egenera’s Oestreich foresees a continuation of the OS virtualization evolution as more functions are virtualized and more operations are automated. In fact, Oestreich believes today’s virtualization management products may eventually evolve into tomorrow’s data center management products. A new phase of virtualization, he adds, involves the virtualization of the “other half” of the data center. In other words, virtualization technology will move beyond virtualizing the OS and into I/O virtualization, network convergence, and virtual switching and storage addressing. Combined with OS virtualization, infrastructure virtualization (i.e., converged infrastructure/unified computing) will help virtualize the entire data center, not just the software, Oestreich says.

“This is the nirvana many IT people have been waiting for—the ability to logically compose an application, from the software down to the network and out to the storage,” Oestreich says.

Article by Sixto Ortiz Jr. for .