1. Executive Summary
Cloud under construction. The virtualization journey starts in consolidation and ends in the creation and management of a flexible, scalable, efficient, and reliable core server infrastructure. This infrastructure has been called an agile infrastructure, a utility infrastructure, and now increasingly an internal cloud.
Consolidation – the gift that keeps on giving. The efficiencies gained through virtualization and workload consolidation (as much as 70% less capital cost than non-virtualized infrastructure) will continue to fuel the business case for the internal cloud. However, at this strategic level, critical business value is also gained from high availability, agile provisioning, and process automation.
The hardware matters. Clouds are about abstraction, but optimizing the services of the internal cloud requires a robust, scalable, consolidated infrastructure. This internal cloud requires shared storage, powerful servers, and adequate networking. Virtualization software pulls it all together.
Virtualize the hard stuff for the right reasons. Moving beyond the low-hanging fruit of early consolidation to full virtualization will require hosting higher utilization production servers – such as servers and database servers. This can be done; however, make sure that the business case for doing so rests on the strategic benefits of the more agile infrastructure.
A gas gauge, not a speedometer. Enterprises building internal clouds are often challenged to show the cost/benefit of the infrastructure when moving away from accounting for individual hardware server acquisition and implementation. Focus on the total cost of the infrastructure and on building a reserve capacity model.
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2. Internal cloud: a new buzz word for abstracted utility infrastructure
An infrastructure-as-a-service compute cloud is abstracted compute capacity that is shared by multiple application workloads.
In utility infrastructure, applications are dynamically provisioned with compute resources abstracted from underlying processors, memory, storage, and networks.
With recent hype over the Cloud, third-party vendors (e.g. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) have sought to leverage some of the buzz by calling internal utility infrastructure internal, or private, clouds.
Compute clouds like Amazon EC2 are essentially consolidated virtualized compute infrastructures where access to capacity is rented out to third parties.
If the enterprise is caught up in the cloud computing hype, calling the internal utility infrastructure a cloud service may aid acceptance. But beware. Fads can quickly reverse.
Info-Tech Recommends:
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3. Case Example: Organic Valley Family of Farms
Server virtualization enables more efficient & effective management of available compute capacity
Efficiency is in the consolidation benefits that continue to accrue as more servers are virtualized. Effectiveness comes in the form of more agile and resilient capacity.
Case Example: Organic Valley Family of Farms
Organic Valley has virtualized 95% of its infrastructure, has 120 virtualized workloads running on 10 server blades and shared NetApp SAN storage in their main datacenter. Workloads include SQL, Exchange, and Oracle.
Reduced capital and operating costs from consolidation and better utilization of capacity.
Info-Tech has seen up to 70% savings in capital expenses and 30% to 50% savings in ongoing operational costs.
Efficiency is measured by . . .
Improved service through faster responsiveness and greatly reduced wait time.
Improved availability of the infrastructure (downtime elimination) and faster recovery from failures (business continuity).
Rapid provisioning of server workloads.
Effectiveness is measured by . . .
Efficiency (Datacenter Savings vs. Traditional):
Servers and Labor ($750,000)
Storage (40% through virtualization and higher disk utilization with de-duplication)
Power & Cooling (90% from smaller footprint)
Effectiveness (Benefits of Virtual Infrastructure):
Manageability (Power, Performance, Visibility)
Productivity (15 minute server deployment)
Flexibility (Multiple OS/File systems)
Agility (VM Snapshots, Clones, Virtual Appliances)
Recoverability (Replication, Hardware Independence)
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4. Internal Cloud Computing Opportunities
Build an agile, scalable, utility infrastructure to take virtualization from tactical to strategic benefit
Internal Cloud Computing Opportunities
Streamline application development and deployment.
Dynamically allocate infrastructure resources.
Delivery of scalable computing, networking, and storage capacity to the business.
Performance monitoring, change automation, and resource metering for chargeback (or “showback” cost accounting).
Server virtualization journey that began as a way to get more out of server hardware purchases can become central in realizing an internal compute cloud strategy.
Info-Tech Insight:
Exploiting cloud computing infrastructures – both internal virtualized infrastructures and external cloud hosting services - is a top area of investigation by enterprise IT in 2010/11.
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5. Internal cloud makes software hardware agnostic & exploits failover & DR features
Production implementation of enterprise applications (e.g. ERP or enterprise ) was done on physical servers.
Virtual servers were used in a secondary test/dev capacity for testing changes pre-production.
Virtual servers might also be used for a backup environment for DR purposes as well as to host secondary (non-critical) server workloads.
Where it was…
Virtualized x86/x64 environments are more efficient, effective, and resilient than non-virtual production environments.
Meanwhile virtual infrastructure software and underlying hardware are becoming more capable of hosting higher capacity workloads.
Vendors (in some cases) may have also adjusted support requirements to include virtual infrastructures.
Where it is now…
Looking forward to the next major upgrade of enterprise software, the aim will be to migrate the application from a virtual test/dev environment to a virtual production environment.
The application will never need to be configured for physical hardware as it will live its entire lifecycle in a virtual environment (unless vendor support requires an install on “bare metal”).
Failover and DR will likewise be migrated to a virtual environment.
Where it is going…
The vast majority of current ERP production implementations are not virtualized; however, Info-Tech has spoken to many IT decision makers who are looking to move to a fully virtual environment over the next two years.
Info-Tech Insight:
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6. Storage is expensive. Justify the storage investment against improved service & risk mitigation for total infrastructure
For every dollar vendors make from virtualization software, as much as three dollars is made from storage. Such a significant investment cannot be justified against server consolidation ratios alone.
Shared storage is the critical foundation for an efficient, effective, and resilient server infrastructure. These strategic goals need to be front and center in considering storage investment.
Consider iSCSI for cost savings. Implementers tell Info-Tech that clustered iSCSI is good enough though vendors will push for more expensive Fibre Channel solutions.
Leverage advanced features for efficiency. Features such as thin provisioning and data de-duplication provide more storage for less disk.
Warning!
Virtualization implementers that did not take storage into account up front, and focused solely on server acquisition capital savings, have seen those Capex savings eaten by SAN costs.
Example:
Consolidation Savings for 25 VMs on three physical servers – $60,000
Cost of a Fibre Channel SAN to make it all work – $100,000
Availability
Reliability
Scalability X
Redundancy + =
Cost Justification
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7. For scalable processing capacity, physical servers need modular building blocks optimized for virtual workloads
Think of the server as a unit of processing capacity in the total internal cloud infrastructure. Increasing processing capacity for the cloud is achieved by adding more units of capacity (physical servers).
The Xeon 5500 Boost
Blade Servers are the go-to “capacity units” for building out an internal virtualized cloud service because they are modular and have smaller form factors (for space/power savings).
But blades are not for everyone. For more modest infrastructure consolidating down to 2 to 5 physical servers, rack mounted servers have better cost benefit ratio.
New generation servers, such as those based on Intel 5500 chip sets, are helping to mitigate memory and I/O limitations on what kind of server workloads can be virtualized (see right).
The 5500 enables virtualization of applications that previously were not considered viable virtualization candidates. There will no longer be a hardware limitation on what can be virtualized.
When combined with a new Intel Gigabit Ethernet Controller, Intel says servers based on the 5500 have 250% the I/O throughput of previous processors.
Integrated on-board memory management and an additional memory channel (three channels where previously there were two) greatly increase the size and efficiency of memory addressed.
With virtualization technology for directed I/O (VT-d) a VM is assigned a direct path to a networked device rather than having to contend with I/O traffic through the hypervisor.
Backward compatibility with older hardware has been a strength of VMware, however next generation virtual infrastructure will require next generation server hardware.
Info-Tech Note:
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8. The Virtual “Operating System” will need to provide visibility into the whole “cake” for optimal cloud service.
Virtualization providers such as VMware will be focusing more on virtual resource management including such areas as storage and backup management, tiered application performance management, application lifecycle management, and chargeback. Below is a diagram of 3 of VMware’s recent resource management editions to vCenter.
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9. Info-Tech Solution Set:
Business needs to inform application requirements which drive current & future capacity requirements
As noted earlier, server virtualization does not create capacity. Virtualization enables more efficient and effective management of capacity.
Capacity management initiatives, such as server virtualization, optimizes the utilization and effectiveness of the underlying infrastructure resources. Capacity Planning is a strategic activity that focuses on the future.
Unlike the external rented access compute clouds, the Internal cloud is enabled by on-premise, enterprise-owned IT infrastructure. Facilities planning, therefore, is a critical component of building the internal cloud.
Facilities requirements will be driven by analysis of business needs and application requirements.
Info-Tech Solution Set:
For detailed advice and tools on facilities planning and capacity planning, see the Info-Tech Solution Set “Build a Data Center.”
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10. Measurement in a reserve capacity model is a gas gauge rather than a speedometer
A key part of taking an holistic approach to infrastructure planning – the software mainframe – will be a keener understanding of total cost of capacity. Application workloads, virtualized and otherwise, consume units of capacity. Capital purchases are driven not by individual workload projects but by needs to maintain reserve capacity.
Start with a total cost model for total capacity against which units of capacity are measured (know the cost of the cake before charging for a piece).
Each time a unit of capacity is devoted to an application it is removed from available capacity.
Remaining capacity as ‘gas gauge’ or planning point for reordering necessary units.
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11. Engineering Consulting Firm
Case Examples
Engineering Consulting Firm
Healthcare Facility
Infrastructure:
HP Blades
LeftHand iSCSI SAN – Vendors told them that they would need Fibre Channel, but they are using iSCSI and so far haven’t been able to throw enough work at it to make it hum a little. Cost for performance has been amazing.
Surprise Challenge:
They run a lot of software that uses licensers – mostly engineering software – and some are software based, some of them use a USB, which means they can’t do high availability or failover, so there’s no point in virtualizing them.
Main Drivers:
Data center was running out of room.
Power and cooling needs were starting to exceed the capacity of the server room.
Their backup and recovery is hit and miss, and they want to have more robust disaster recovery and business continuity.
Unexpected Driver:
In Ontario there is currently an initiative underway to consolidate all of the hospital data centers into one. They would like to complete their virtualization initiative before this happens in order to make the move easier and faster.
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12. Appendix
For more information on advanced virtualization, see these associated research notes:
Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure is a Piece of Cake
Xeon Takes Lid Off Virtualization
VMware Does Virtualization Resource Management for Internal Clouds
Virtualize Exchange 2007: Yes You Can! But Why?
Video: Understanding Cloud Infrastructure: Servers
Video: Understanding Cloud Infrastructure: Virtualization
Video: Understanding Cloud Infrastructure: Networks and Storage
Webinar: Strategies to Optimize the Cloud
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