Managing Virtualisation Is Complex

Server virtualisation techniques are coming of age. With industry heavyweights like VMware, XenSource leading the way and biggies like HP, IBM, Microsoft trying to get in on the action, the technologies that facilitate server level virtualisation are gaining increased acceptance among enterprise customers.

It is not all that difficult for vendors and proponents to sell the idea these days. The several benefits that an enterprise stands to gain by virtualising its data centre are more than enough to make the data centre manager go the virtual way. However, despite the progress made on the technologies front, there still remain some concerns among the enterprise users about its applicability in real time, production environments.

Ready for production environments

Are today’s server virtualisation techniques data centre ready and is it safe to run mission critical workloads on virtual machines are concerns that keep cropping up from time to time. Advocates of the technology however tend to dismiss these concerns as mere myths.

More from Biztech

Future Group - Reliance Retail Deal approved by CCI RBI ban on cryptocurrencies takes effect; prohibition could force investors to tap the black market

According to Phil Dawson, research VP, Gartner, “Virtualisation technologies on offer today are absolutely ready to be used in production environments. Server virtualisation is no longer just limited to the testing and development scenario where companies saved money by running multiple operating systems and applications on a single physical server. The technology is mature enough to be deployed in data centres and run mission-critical applications on a virtualised platform.”

Managing virtual environment is not easy

While Yankee Group’s George Hamilton concurs with Dawson’s argument, he thinks that data centre managers need to take a balanced approach to virtualisation because as easy it is to set up virtual servers and run new applications, inefficient management could lead to serious trouble.

“Setting up virtual servers and adding to the number of virtual machines is easy; however one shouldn’t forget that just like physical servers, virtual machines need to be configured, upgrades need to be managed, and security and performance metrics have to defined. Virtual machines just like physical machines need to be monitored. You have to remember that even though you’re not increasing the number of physical servers, you are increasing your total server count and as the number increases so does the complexity of management,” said Hamilton.

Speaking further Hamilton said, “A virtualised infrastructure adds to the complexity because there are several additional layers of abstraction that can obscure the underlying systems. Such a scenario can make it extremely difficult for managers to know how the environment is configured. You need to document and monitor virtual machines better. Unfortunately, the management tools haven’t matured at the same rate at which the virtualisation techniques have.”

Not everything should be virtualised

For those who aren’t sure about which servers and applications are best suited for virtualisation machines, there are some basic guidelines that they can follow. First and foremost, one has to consider the hardware requirements because virtual machines consume pretty much the same sort of resources as their physical counterparts. You have to take factors such as RAM, CPU, disk and network into account.

On the software side, one of the most critical factors to be considered is whether or not the virtualisation platform supports the operating system (OS) you want to run.

Though virtualisation techniques today make it possible for all types of workloads to be virtualised, experts think that it’s better not to virtualise some workloads.

“Even though it’s possible, data centre managers should refrain from virtualising some workloads because the ones that require high scaling of I/O are the applications that are not good candidates for virtualisation,” said Dawson. “Anything that requires a lot of network and storage should be kept on a dedicated physical server. As far as the most suitable candidates are concerned, these could be applications that range in the 10-20% utilisation category."