By The Bell

BYOD as part of a Desktop-as-a-Service Strategy

BYOD increases productivity. At least that’s a common justification for acquiescing to employee demands that they be allowed to use their personal devices in the workplace. But while working with familiar computing devices may make individuals more productive, the resulting lack of device and data respository standardization can mean productivity reduction on an organizational level. Fortunately, just as server virtualization has helped unify data center computing, so can desktop virtualization – when implemented as a desktop-as-a-service strategy, mitigate the BYOD computing inefficiencies.

BYOD

Bring Your Own Device continues to build momentum. According to a July 2011 Forester Research, Inc. report, a BYOD policy is already in place for nearly 60% of companies. Without a counteracting plan in place, the resulting lack of standardization must equate to increased IT support costs. And issues often arise from a lack of clear delineation of responsibilities between the organization and users.

Does the employer, for example, have the right to remote wipe the device? Does IT provide support for personal, but potentially work-related applications? Who bears the cost for maintenance, connectivity and upgrades? And what obligations do employees have in terms of conforming with organizational security policies and regulatory requirements?

A more insidious byproduct of BYOD is an aggregate decline in productivity as not only the number and variety of devices proliferate, but also the number of applications and associated data respositories. While some organizational information is likely to be stored on the devices themselves, some also ends up in cloud-based services such as Google Docs,  iCloud or DropBox. The ability for employees to work efficiently is consequently limited by lack of easy and secure access to the information they require.

IT-as-a-Service

Disjointed  organizational computing  is, of course, nothing new. The traditional data center is generally composed of a hodgepodge of equipment and applications purchased over the years based upon individual departmental projects and associated budgets. The resulting “technology islands” data center model is both expensive and difficult to operate. It is rather comical to remember that Gartner’s number one energy saving recommendation at its 2007 Data Center Conference, prior to the proliferation of data center virtualization, was to turn off servers that appear idle and see if anyone complains.

Virtual servers on their own engender significant savings and benefits, but the greater promise is to utilize virtualization as a platform for transforming the data center into a unified and dynamic environment with common pools of compute, storage and network. This computing model, known as private cloud or IT-as-a-Service, automatically provisions not only servers, but also the storage, network and security components based upon application requirements. Entirely new product categories have arisen to assist in this transformation including cloud frameworks (VMware vCloud Director, OpenStack), cloud orchestration tools (such as ones from CA Technologies, BNC, Cisco), and integrated computing stacks (VCE Vblocks, NetApp FlexPods, HP CloudSystem Matrix, etc.).

Desktops-as-a-Service

Virtual desktops, like their server counterparts, enable significant organizational benefits. They sit securely in the data center where they are always backed up, managed, and replicated off-site for DR/BC purposes. Users can access their desktop from any device, anywhere at any time – as long as IT gives them permission to do so. Access can immediately be discontinued, for example, for a terminated employee or contractor. The requirement for separate help desk, configuration and support staff is often reduced or even eliminated.

While desktop virtualization is a terrific solution for internally hosted Windows machines (what VMware refers to as “legacy desktops”), it doesn’t address the touch interface capabilities of most smartphones and tablets. To meet user expectations along these lines, the desktop concept increasingly must extend to the cloud with redesigned cloud based applications, SaaS applications, etc.

As with virtual servers, virtual desktops have the greatest potential for transformation when integrated as part of the overall ITaaS architecture. Thinking in terms of desktop-as-a-service helps delineate the new role of desktops as just another set of virtual machines, yet recognize the unique aspects of those VMs as well as of the necessity for incorporating the Web. New products from VMware (Horizon, AppBlast, Octopus) and others provide this capability. IT can consequently allow employee-owned devices while retaining control of environmental variables important to the organization.

Aligning IT with Business

One of the long-standing complaints about Corporate IT has been a lack of adequate customer service – often attributed to a misalignment with the business. But when looking at the hardware and systems mishmash of the traditional data center, it is easy to see why 70% of the typical IT budget goes just to keep the lights on. This hasn’t left much over for innovation or creative customer care.

Fortunately for the status quo, there hasn’t been any competition. Today the cloud offers plenty of alternatives to users frustrated by an IT organization not nimble enough to quickly meet their requirements. I read a statistic a few months ago that claimed over half of the virtual machines hosted on Amazon Web Services, the world’s largest cloud provider, are now purchased via credit card directly by business units – bypassing IT entirely.

BYOD is another threat to traditional IT. But rather than fight the inevitable, IT should embrace BYOD by incorporating a DTaaS strategy. Instead of spending their time on hardware-based tasks such as upgrades, patching and troubleshooting, the IT staff can  take a step back and approach desktops strategically. They can define what the nature of the organizational desktop should be in terms of local and cloud-based applications, storage, backup, collaboration capabilities, etc. They can enable solutions that make sense not just for individual productivity, but for overall organizational efficiency, security and compliance.

 

See Also:

BYOD: You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet. 12/29/2011. Galen Gruman. – CIO

Consumer Devices are Coming: People, Get Ready. 12/15/2011. Matthew Stibbe. – BCW

BYOD: Bring Your Own Disaster. 12/14/2011. Joe Onisick. – Network Computing

Developing a BYOD and Mobile IT Strategy. 12/13/2011. Jim Lynch. – Techsoup.org

BYOD and IT: The Tail Wagging the Dog? 12/09/11. Chris Hopen . – TechNewsWorld

Why BYOD Isn’t a Trend. 12/05/11. David Strom. ReadWrite Enterprise 

After BYOD, What's Next? It's the Apps, Stupid. 10/30/2011. Eric Lai. – Forbes.com

Go Ahead, Bring Your Own Device to Work. 10/10/2011. – AT&T Web Site

Cisco Connected World Technology Report. 2011. – Cisco Web Site.

 

 

When it comes to virtualization, do organizations really care about “green”?

The annual Educause conference is the “must attend” event for higher education IT. Link Alander, Associate Vice Chancellor Technology Services for Lone Star College System, presented an Educause conference session in Philadelphia last month titled, “The Lean and Green by Design”.  Despite Lone Star’s widespread reputation for IT innovation and despite Link’s celebrity (he filled a huge lecture hall to standing room only the previous month at VMworld), the session was lightly attended. This didn’t surprise me. After years of pushing the green benefits of virtualization, I long ago realized that it’s not much of a driver for IT decision-makers.

Virtualization and Global Warming

My efforts to promote virtualization as a “green” enabler shifted into high gear after hearing Al Gore speak at the first annual Climate Protection Summit in San Francisco. The self-proclaimed “former next president of the United States” made a strong case for the danger that global warming represented to the planet. Since data centers are the number one consumers of electricity in the country, I sniffed an opportunity to help shed awareness on the issue while boosting virtualization sales at the same time.

I wrote an article for SearchServer Virtualization titled, “A Convenient Truth: Virtualization’s eco-advantages”.  I followed this up with a comic book titled, “VirtualMan Powers Down” (1.87 MB).

We held a series of “green” seminars in conjunction with PG&E. We even came up with T-shirts encouraging clients to “Join the Fight against Global Warming”. But we consistently had trouble getting many IT personnel to show up at our events…the “green” that they care about saving is a very different shade from the environmentalist version.

 

PG&E Virtualization Rebates

In 2005, I approached PG&E about giving rebates to organizations that virtualized their servers. I worked with the utility to set up a program that eventually included desktops as well and which later was adopted in various forms by other utilities across the country. Ironically, the first organization to actually receive a utility check for virtualization was our client, 1*800*Radiator. As the CIO said when he spoke at one of our seminars, “Steve gave me a global warming T-shirt and I was thinking, what the heck is this for?  We’re a radiator company. We like global warming!”

A footnote on the PG&E rebate initiative: I’ve made it a policy during my entire career to freely share my knowledge with others – both inside and outside of the organization. When I wrote my first book on Citrix MetaFrame in 1999, I took some heat from our staff who felt that I was giving away our secrets to our competitors. But I believe that sharing knowledge is good for the industry, good for the organization and good for the individual. It raises the bar and challenges us to come up with more innovative ideas.

My one glaring exception to this policy, though, came about with the virtualization rebates. I felt that this program represented a true competitive advantage and other than discussing with a couple of our VMware reps who were sworn to secrecy, I tried to keep it quiet. But PG&E called VMware directly and at VMworld 2006, VMware CEO Diane Green brought the PG&E CEO on stage to announce the rebate program to the world. I realized that I had missed a potential opportunity for publicity and fanfare by trying to be petty with information sharing.

The Real Power of Power Savings

While I’m convinced that green initiatives and even the modest utility incentives are negligible drivers when it comes to virtualization, power savings in general can absolutely make a difference.

For example, one of INX’s clients, Concentra, spoke at this year’s VMworld about the challenging situation they faced. The organization had 40 VMs with which they were thrilled, but still had around 350 physical servers remaining. The physical machines were consuming so much power that a data center upgrade would soon have been required. Concentra was renting a back-up generator for $6,700 per month, and they’d already had an A/C unit fail. Yet the most monies the IT staff could typically get from Finance were $10,000 or $20,000 at a time for more memory, licensing, storage or maybe a new ESX host.

We assisted Concentra with an ROI analysis, but since the firm rarely upgraded servers, the normal dominant hardware refresh savings were not available to help IT make their case. The CIO realized, however, that the cost reduction resulting from slashing power usage alone would justify the virtualization initiative. This economic advantage was further augmented by selecting Cisco UCS as the virtualization platform which not only minimized power consumption, but which also provided a higher density of virtual machines.

IT put together a presentation for senior management and, after years of struggling to obtain monies for virtualization, received a quick go-ahead for a 7-figure project to virtualize the entire data center and begin moving to a private cloud.

The Why of VDI - use cases

My recent post, The Why of VDI, discusses the importance of taking a why-how-what hierarchical approach to enabling a successful virtual desktop initiative. But what are the use cases where an organization should even consider virtual desktops at all?

Legacy Desktops

Managing, securing and maintaining legacy desktops is frequently, well, a pain in the butt. Updates, patches and malware scans all take time and can be tedious even when utilizing sophisticated desktop management products. PCs and laptops may also require CPU and memory upgrades in order to run new versions of Windows or applications and to accommodate ever growing resource demands. Eventually, Windows Rot tends to become an issue where desktops start slowing down as toolbars and other miscellaneous software items are installed. Other pain points include users inadvertently deleting files or corrupting data.  The list goes on.

 

                      Traditional (Physical) End-User Computing

 

VDI

VDI decouples the desktop experience from the physical hardware.  It can be deployed either as a 1 to 1 persistant virtual desktop or, much more commonly, as a non-persistent virtual machine. Non-persistent VMs include the individual constructs of stateful persona and application layered on top of a stateless desktop operating system. In other words persona (profile, application settings, and personalization) and applications (virtualized streaming, virtualized presentation based, and fat) are held in database-driven systems to be layered upon a desktop and is generated upon log in. The desktop returns to the original vanilla configuration after logoff, wiping out any malware or undesired user changes.  

A virtual desktop architecture is an administrator’s dream – providing increased  control, dependability, and security when compared to traditional desktops. Now the entire company can be updated, for example, from Office 2003 to Office 2010 without upgrading or even touching any individual desktops. Indeed, both Office application versions can be accessed simultaneously for a period of time if desired. Entire remote offices can be set up in an hour with just some zero client devices and an Internet connection. If running non-persistent VMs, users can get a pristine desktop every time they log on, with a number of options for preserving their persona between sessions.

 
                                               Virtual End-User Computing

 

VDI Use Cases

My Why of VDI white paper discusses the importance of defining the objectives for a virtual desktop initiative as well as drilling down a bit into the technology and architecture. The following list provides some of the more common use cases driving VDI deployments:

• VDI is hot: This may be the #1 driver. Organizations are looking into virtual desktops because everyone else seems to be doing it.
• Security: Just having all the organization’s data secure in the data center will make ISOs sleep better at night. But virtual desktop security can provide many other advantages as well – if the environment is architected properly. Examples include data security – including IT theft and information privacy issues, malware prevention, and even discontinuing IT system access by ex-employees.
• Scalability: Virtual desktops are vastly easier & faster to scale up or down as required.
• Better Service Delivery Model: Rather than managing and deploying myriad desktop images onto disparate hardware, VDI lets administrators focus on application delivery, user experience and productivity. Upgrading to Windows 7, for example, can rapidly be accomplished organization-wide even on very old PCs. Virtual desktops eliminate the requirement to deal with myriad desktop images as well as with the unique and co-dependent nature of every application and profile to each image.
• Centralized Management: Even the best physical desktop push-down management solutions are more difficult to administer than a properly designed and deployed VDI environment. Virtual desktops enable end-user self provisioning and expendable operating systems which typically reduces calls to the help desk. Similarly, reduced configuration complexity allows help desk to assist with user productivity. 
• Facilitating IT Governance: Centralized control makes it much easier for management to set and enforce organizational standards and to align desktop computing with overall business objectives.
• Regulatory Compliance: Innovative VDI solutions such as location-aware desktops can help achieve HIPAA and other regulatory compliance.
• Software  License Management & Compliance: The benefits of centralized management as well as VDI ecosystem players such as AppSense can not only help organizations comply with software licensing, but in some cases lower the cost while also providing a secure application environment.
• Fits Better with Cloud Objectives: The on-demand provisioning nature of VDI is already cloud-like. Increasing integration of virtual desktops into cloud platforms (i.e. VMware View into vCloud Director) further enhances their appeal.
• Disaster Recovery: Organizations ignore the desktop component of DR/BC plans at their peril; physical desktops configured with the client-server software required to access failed-over data centers may themselves be unaccessible in the event of a disaster. VDI enables virtual desktop replication to DR facilities along with virtual servers. As long as users can get to a browser, they can access their desktops, applications and data. Architected correctly, VDI only necessitates replicating the application delivery, user persona and Golden Image which can then spawn new desktops.
• Workforce Mobility: Capabilities include remote access, follow-me desktops, location-aware virtual desktops, etc. Even traveling employees without Internet access can continue working utilizing capabilities such as VMware View Client with Local Mode which streams the encrypted virtual desktop down to a laptop, synchronizing back to the data center VM upon log-in.
• User Productivity / Employee Empowerment: Among other advantages, employees obtain ubiquitous access, workspace flexibility and decreased downtime.
• BYOD: VDI helps facilitate the exploding trend of consumerization by abstracting the corporate desktop from the user-owned device. Employees and contractors gain secure access to their applications and data without concern for the underlying OS. PCs, Macs, iPads, Android devices all can access the organization desktop.
• Remote Office Computing: It is often possible to run virtual desktops at smaller remote offices, consolidating their network infrastructures back to running as virtual machines in the data center – thereby enabling cost savings, high availability, disaster recovery and an increased level of user support. Bringing user sessions close to the server data can also enhance performance in some situations. Connectivity redundancy can be inexpensively achieved in many cases by utilizing an MPLS network as the primary WAN with inexpensive Internet connectivity as a back-up.
• Green Initiatives: Replacing PCs with thin-clients or zero-clients and eliminating network infrastructure at remote offices can significantly reduce power consumption.
• Acquisition Assimilation: Acquired organizations can quickly plug into the new parent’s information system simply by accessing the corporate virtual desktop.
• Converged Desktop Facilitation: Cisco, for example, produces zero-client devices including asics that will enable voice flow optimization. Users can attach the devices to their phones and plug in their monitors, keyboards and mousepads thereby utilizing one device as the virtual desktop, phone, video and eventually telepresence terminal all running as a VM  in the data center.
• Reduced Cost: This includes desktop support, management costs, endpoint hardware, software licensing (in some cases), remote office infrastructures and energy costs.

Employee Empowerment

One of the overarching benefits of a virtual desktop environment is the ability for employees to feel more empowered in their jobs. Users have less downtime, no longer need be concerned with aging desktops and can get their work done anywhere from any device. Remote office workers no longer feel like second class citizens receiving hand-me down servers and having less access to the organization’s IT staff. The desktop teams are freed up to engage in more advanced and beneficial organizational projects, thereby elevating overall job satisfaction while potentially enabling technological and process innovation.

 

Author Note

Morgan Hamilton of INX was a major contributor to this article. Mark Vaughn and David Jolley of INX both contributed/reviewed.

See also:

The Client Virtualization Imperative. 09/11. Forrester white paper.

 

 

The Continuing Evolution of Man

Thanks to Matthew Riley of INX for the idea

The Why of VDI

If you don't know where you're going, you will wind up somewhere else."
      - Yogi Berra

Despite the huge industry fervor around VDI, virtualizing desktops is much more challenging than virtualizing data centers and encompasses both technical hurdles and a less apparent ROI. Also factoring in are hundreds or thousands of users with differing expectations and perceptions. Yet, the most common question I get from organizations considering a virtual desktop deployment is whether to use VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop. Some even kick off their VDI efforts with a Proof-of-Concept comparing the two connection brokers side by side. Taking a product-centric approach to VDI, however, is likely to create unnecessary difficulties and can potentially result in project stall or outright failure.

The Why of VDI: Objectives

Approaching VDI on a strategic level is necessary for a successful enterprise deployment. The reasons for virtualizing desktops in the first place need to be identified and, where appropriate, quantified. This includes evaluation of the anticipated impact that virtual desktops will have on both business and IT objectives as well as the part they will play in the overall enterprise desktop strategy and in the data center virtualization/ITaaS plans. The architecture to best enable achievement of the prioritized objectives can then be designed. At this point, individual product choices will often be self-evident. When they are not, product comparisons and TCO studies can be performed, but always within the context of optimizing the desired architecture.

The versatility, agility and scalability of virtual desktops enable use cases that in many cases exceed what is practical in a physical desktop environment. That being said, common reasons for implementing VDI include: management, security, disaster recovery, workforce mobility/user productivity, contractors, BYOPC initiatives, green initiatives, remote office computing, acquisition assimilation, voice and video convergence, and reduced costs.

The How of VDI: Architecture

We ideally want to design a virtual desktop architecture that will optimally support the organization’s objectives for  virtual desktops as well as factor in existing environmental variables, staffing capabilities and budget. Paramount to the type of architecture requried  is the scope of the initiative along with requirements around availability, redundancy, security and performance. And rather than limiting preparations to a virtual desktop, embracing the concept of an “enterprise desktop” can incorporate physical or hybrid situations as appropriate.

A detailed assessment of the existing desktop and data center environments should include not only tools that identify desktops, applications, resource utilization and usage patterns, but also interviews with different user groups and IT personnel. Among other components, the information collected should encompass applications, user categories, use cases, data center environment, PC/Laptop environment, remote office components and management structure.

After gathering the infrastructure and user information, the environment can then be designed including elements such as scope, management/security, storage, network, compute, persistent vs. nonpersistent desktops, application delivery, availability, scalability, client devices, etc.

The What of VDI: Products

 

Comparing and contrasting product attributes, features and costs in isolation can lead to conclusions unsupportive of the ultimate architecture and organizational objectives. Products need to be mapped to their ability to support the desired architecture not only in isolation, but with some indication of their interfaces and interactions with each other as well as with appropriate infrastructure functionality outside the scope of the proposed VDI environment. These mappings can include attributes such as staff familiarity, integration with the management platform, compatibility with the planned security construct, etc. The following table shows some of the variables requiring consideration for effective product selection.

 

IOPs & other storage requirements	User acceptance of change	Existing computing devices
Capacity requirements	Unified communications	Tablets, Smart Phones
Management	Data center  integration	User experience
User personalization	Bandwidth	User perceptions
App requirements	Use cases	BYOPC initiative
App categorization	User categorization	Contractor requirements
Graphic load	Security requirements	Acquisition requirements
App virtualization	Compliance requirements	Remote access requirements
App delivery	Disaster recovery requirements	Budget limitations
App performance	Availability /Redundancy	Off-line usage

 

Avoiding VDI Stall

Determining the objectives behind a virtual desktop initiative adds clarity, achieves funding and provides guidelines for architecture design. Requirements or SLAs around performance, security, availability, regulatory compliance, user productivity, etc. will, in many cases, dictate which products best support the optimal architecture for achieving the desired objectives. This enables far better decisions and, ultimately, a much higher probability of project success.

 

Author Note

This post is composed of edited excerpts from my recent white paper, The Why of VDI.

 

See Also:

• The History of VDI. 06/27/2011. Vittorio Viarengo. Virtualization Journey
• Adopting IT-as-a-Service Mindset to Overcome Virtual Stall. June 2011. INX white paper.
• Brian Madden’s State of the Desktop Virtualization Industry. 05/27/2011. BrianMadden.com
• Top 5 Obstacles to Wider VDI Adoption. 05/04/2011. David Marshall. InfoWorld
• Five Nines Availability for VDI: No Way. 04/09/2010. Steve Chambers. ViewYonder.
• The Desktops May be Virtual, but the ROI is Real. 06/27/2009. Steve Kaplan. By The Bell

 

 

 

Desktop-as-a-Service as a Subset of IT-as-a-Service

IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) as a concept is well defined with many players and products in the space such as VMware vCloud Director, Cisco Intelligent Automation, CA AppLogic, VCE Vblock, etc. Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS), on the other hand, tends to invoke thoughts of a cloud provider offering hosted Windows desktops. But when approached as a subset of ITaaS, DaaS enables greater synergy, efficiency and agility.

Just another Set of Workloads

Given traditional isolation of physical desktops from the rest of the data center, organizations naturally tend to treat virtual desktops as a silo as well. This tendency is reinforced by the scarcity of current solutions integrating desktops as part of private clouds. Even VMware View is not yet integrated into VMware vCloud Director. But when you think about it, virtual desktops already have some cloud-like properties such as the consolidation of resources into centralized pools and the ability to provision many non-persistent desktops on the fly.

And while virtual desktops certainly have different requirements than virtual servers around performance, security and reliability – at the end of the day, they’re just another set of workloads. It makes economic sense to leverage, where reasonable, the same back-end infrastructure management console, tools, processes and IT staff expertise from the server to the desktop.

The concept of DaaS extends beyond internally hosting Microsoft applications and extends to the cloud. An IT administrator, for example, may decide it makes more sense for the organization to host its Exchange server with a trusted public cloud provider. Or perhaps it is preferable to move away from Microsoft all together and use an Exchange compatible cloud-based solution such as VMware Zimbra, or possibly one offering a different look and feel such as Gmail. A desktop is, after all, just a means for accessing applications.

Poor IT Reputation for Customer Service

IT has generally not had the best reputation for customer service. But to be fair, it has been saddled with the huge inefficiencies, rigidity and high costs of a traditional physical data center. Studies show that 70% of the typical IT budget goes to just keeping the lights on. This doesn’t leave a lot left over for innovation or for creative customer care.

Until fairly recently, IT hasn’t really had any competition. Now, however, there is the cloud. User desires are no longer necessarily stymied by IT constraints. I recently read a statistic claiming that over half of the virtual machines on Amazon Web Services are now purchased via credit card directly by business units – bypassing IT. Of course, IT is still responsible for the security, integrity, and regulatory compliance of the organization’s servers and desktops wherever they are located. The cloud, unmanaged, poses a true threat to that mission.

By embracing both ITaaS and DaaS as a subset, IT introduces extensive automation and efficiencies enabling a much higher level of customer service. An accompanying reduction in cost allows IT to compete more effectively from a pricing standpoint with external public cloud providers. Utilizing a portal to monitor workloads wherever they may be hosted facilitates IT’s ability to embrace the best of private and public cloud platforms while maintaining a large measure of control.

A New Era of IT Productivity

Reducing the need to spend so much time babysitting equipment and performing mundane repetitive tasks enables the IT staff to instead focus their talents on using technology to achieve organizational business objectives such as increasing top-line revenues, acquiring more customers and enabling more customer stickiness. Not only does this benefit the organization, but it also is good for the IT staff. For one thing, the job becomes a lot more fun. The staff also acquires more valuable skills and, in the process, enhances their own career paths.

 

Why VMware Continues to Dominate Despite Hyper-V Advances

    "If I were VMware, I would be looking to lower my prices". 

         Laura DiDio, an analyst with ITIC. (Reuters, July 6, 2009).

Microsoft crushed Novell with Windows NT. It obliterated Netscape with Internet Explorer. With the release of Hyper-V a little over two years ago, financial and industry analysts sounded dire warnings that Microsoft would commoditize the hypervisor and that VMware was in danger.

Hyper-V came out of the gate rather slow, lacking capabilities such as live migration that VMware had long beforehand made standard, but the product has continued to improve. The latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure includes Microsoft in the leader quadrant, albeit well west and south of VMware which moved still further to the upper right, but analysts again are speculating that VMware’s dominance may be vulnerable. Gartner, though, points out that Microsoft’s “success has been primarily occurring among midmarket customers new to virtualization.” And even in that space, “VMware appears to be winning at least 60% of new customers”, twice as many as Microsoft. VMware shows no signs of slowing down – revenues were up 35% to $634 million last quarter alone.

The obvious question is: how does VMware continue to defy the naysayers?

The Answer to How, may be WHY

The answer, somewhat ironically, may be found in the book that Mark Templeton recommended at 2011 Citrix Summit, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Author Simon Sinek makes a compelling case that, “People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it”.

Go to VMware’s Web site, and the “why” is obvious. VMware is focused on Cloud as the virtualization journey endpoint. Every page educates viewers about the latest in cloud and virtualization technologies, resources and events. VMware attracts customers who share its passion for transforming their data centers into agile and efficient computing models.

Microsoft, on the other hand, advocates a cautious approach to virtualization, “…rather than undertaking a costly revolution, you should evolve your environment in a way that preserves and extends existing investments.” It has long promoted virtualization as a feature of the operating system.

This difference in philosophy permeates Microsoft’s home page which provides plenty of information on products such as Small Business Server, Windows Intune and Office 365, but nothing on virtualization. Even clicking on the Datacenter or Desktop tabs provides no clues that Microsoft is in the virtualization space. Only the Cloud tab enables an eventual navigation to the tired-looking (it’s hardly changed since inception) virtualization home page. Whereas the messaging two years ago was almost exclusively about how Hyper-V was less expensive than vSphere, the site now challenges readers with, “How far will you take virtual?”  The gist is that one can use Hyper-V to virtualize applications such as Microsoft Exchange and Share Point Server.  Revolutionary?  Not so much.

 

    When to Use Hyper-V Server 2008 R2

    You can use Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 for the following scenarios:

• Test and Development
• Server Consolidation
• Branch Office Consolidation
• Hosted Desktop Virtualization (VDI)

        From Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 Home Page

  
Organizations sharing Microsoft’s perspective may find that Hyper-V is, in many cases, good enough. But when viewed as an enterprise platform, virtualization has the potential for enabling data center transformation. The Gartner magic quadrant report says that “virtualization is an extremely strategic foundation for infrastructure modernization, improving the speed and quality of IT services, and migrating to hybrid and public cloud computing.”

Effecting this transition is not a simple task – the majority of organizations struggle with virtual stall. Most are consequently unwilling to gamble on a solution that lowers the probability of success. When it comes to data center transformation, “good enough” simply isn’t.

Why Licensing Cost is an Irrelevant Metric

VMware’s ability to increase the likelihood of successful completion of the virtualization journey makes any licensing cost delta with Hyper-V irrelevant. This doesn’t stop Microsoft from indulging in a bit of comparison including white papers, brochures, videos, charts, price-oriented case studies, a Microsoft vs. VMware Cost Comparison Calculator and the Microsoft Virtualization ROI Calculator.

These licensing comparisons are made in isolation with no consideration of the many other, and some much larger, costs of implementing virtual infrastructure. Only a small increase in VM hosting density, for example, should much more than compensate for any licensing cost delta by reducing monies required for servers, rack space, power, cooling, guest VM operating system licenses, etc. Hyper-V’s dependence on Windows puts it at a disadvantage by subjecting it to performance and scalability limitations. Its requirement for using segregated physical hosts rather than tying security to logical boundaries also can require additional hardware.

Unlike Hyper-V, vSphere offers data center stability and security that is independent from the bloat, reliability and patching issues of a general-purpose operating system. Even Redmond Magazine, “The Independent Voice of the Microsoft IT Community” gave its 2008 Editors Choice award for the most reliable IT technology to VMware ESX (the IBM mainframe came in #2). This exceptional reliability along with capabilities such as the vDistributed Switch further increase the VMware cost advantage by enabling the virtualization of more tier-1, DMZ and regulated servers.

Enterprise Capabilities, Security and Cloud Advantages

In a recent INX white paper, I discuss the problems that result when approaching virtualization with a physical mindset. These issues become more pronounced in the enterprise space; it is not surprising that VMware particularly dominates this market given its significant lead in enterprise capabilities, management and automation tools.

As organizations increasingly embrace Cloud, security becomes a critical aspect to success. But firewalls, intrusion-detection appliances, load balancers, and VPNs designed for a physical environment don’t work well with virtual machine mobility. VMware is unique in providing virtualization-aware security delivered from the hypervisor layer. Network access to the DMZ and regulated servers is controlled on a virtual machine by virtual machine basis. Security policies can be provisioned very quickly, yet they remain in place as Virtual Machines move across hosts. VMware’s approach also eliminates the the requirement for VLAN and port mapping rules that tend to result in VLAN sprawl.

“One emerging area of success for VMware is the cloud infrastructure service provider market. Thousands of service providers are now using vSphere, and a growing number are involved in the vCloud initiative.”

                        Gartner Magic Quadrant for X86 Server Virtualization

VMware has a huge lead in providing vCloud products that enable multi-tenancy, full virtual layer 2 networking, true support for logical resource pools and much more. VMware vCloud Director is positioned to quickly become a broad-based industry platform for enabling optimized cloud among both private and public service providers.

Here’s the Beef

    “We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else”

                                Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s

It is difficult, even for an organization with the talent and resources of Microsoft, to be all things to all people. The Redmond giant has a vested interest in maintaining the large Windows-centric architecture common in most data centers. If it were true, as Microsoft insists, that “Virtualization is simply a role within Windows®,” the company would be able to better leverage its strengths as a low cost, high volume software provider.

From the beginning, VMware has bet-the-company that virtualization is not just a Windows feature but is an enterprise platform. It has a laser focus on facilitating transformation of the inefficient physical data centers of the past into more agile and responsive IT-as-a-Service models.  Attendees at Microsoft's own TechEd 2010 voted VMware vSphere as Best of Show - Virtualization. And VMworld next month in Las Vegas is expected to draw 20,000 attendees, making it one of the largest IT conferences on the planet. VMware’s “why” continues to resonate.

 

See also:

Microsoft, Citrix Join VMware at top of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant. 07/05/11. Jon Brodkin, NetworkWorld.

Is Microsoft Hyper-V Keeping VMware Up at Night? 01/21/11. Kevin McLaughlin, CRN.

Virtual Stall? Virtual Schmal… (esp. Andi Mann comment). 01/20/11. Bruce Hoard. Virtualization Review

Hyper-V is Underperforming says Gartner 10/20/10. Virtualization.Info

Hyper-V Security Comes Under Scrutiny. 07/31/09. Todd R. Weiss. SearchServerVirtualization.com

 

Author Disclosure: I work for a professional services company which is also a leading VMware partner.

 

 

Why a physical mindset and virtual infrastructure don’t mix

 

Author Note

This post is composed of edited excerpts from my new white paper, Adoption an IT-as-a-Service Mindset to Overcome Virtual Stall. The term “VMstall” was coined by Andi Mann of CA Technologies.

-----

 

VMware and others talk about the virtualization journey which chronicles the lifecycle of an organization from its first forays into virtualization until it reaches the private cloud end goal where IT is provisioned as a service.  But most organizations encounter a phenomenon known as virtual stall which derails their progress along the virtualization journey – typically south of the 50% virtualization mark.

  

While there are many individual contributors to virtual stall, the Approaching an enterprise virtualization initiative from a physical mentality tends to create problems in the following areas:

Inefficient Processes: Examples include: backing up data only at the application layer, OS imaging rather than VM cloning, etc.

Less Effective Disaster Recovery: Backing up VMs onto tape and transporting to the DR facility rather than replicating them for much faster RTO/RPO.

Insufficient Funding: Departmental driven budgeting resulting in a slow and painful virtualization journey.

Misaligned IT Organizational Structures.  Failure to adjust IT organizational models to reflect the demands of a virtual data center (vDC), i.e. isolated functional specialists.

Server Huggers: Failure to implement the architecture, tools, processes & senior management directives necessary to overcome application and database owner resistance to virtualizing Tier-1 applications.

Isolated Architectural Decisions: Purchasing IT equipment and software without considering the impact upon, or interoperability with, the overall vDC objectives.

Performance: Failure to account for the increased performance demands of resource-intensive Tier-1 and mission critical servers.

Lack of IT Staff Resources: Failure to account for increased complexity and demands on the IT staff resulting from a tactical approach to the virtualization journey.

Costly Licensing: Failure to apply the substantial virtualization licensing benefits to software of manufacturers such as Microsoft and Oracle.

VMsprawl:  Failure to control the additional cost, complexity and security risk resulting from VMsprawl.

Security:  Failure to account for reduced effectiveness of pDC security appliances and policies as virtual machines migrate throughout the environment via vMotion and DRS.

Outdated Application Selection/Deployment: Continuing to develop and purchase applications utilizing legacy application architectures resulting in less effective cloud bursting, horizontal load-balancing, active/active data centers, etc.

Resolution

One easy, yet pragmatic, way to avoid getting stuck along the virtualization journey is to simply start at the endpoint of a private cloud, also known as IT-as-a-Service. An ITaaS mindset doesn’t necessarily mean an organization will go from zero to private cloud in one shot, but rather that it identifies and quantifies the private cloud benefits, and implements a solid road map to achieve them.

An ITaaS mindset forces organizations to look beyond the technology and instead evaluate the business reasons for automating the data center such as reducing time to deploy strategically important applications, increasing top line revenues, facilitating increased customer stickiness, enhancing employee productivity and enabling true business continuity in the event of a disaster. These business drivers facilitate the navigation of the political, social and technical barriers to pervasive virtualization. They help smooth the progress of the organizational and architectural changes that must take place in order to effectively transform IT to a service.

 

 

Cisco UCS shatters the data center status quo

 

The first time I saw you I said, "There's no excuse for rebellion," and you said, "There's one - if you win!" 

         Lord Yoshi Toronaga. Shogun by James Clavell 

 

Traditional data centers tend to be segregated into feudal-like server, network and storage fiefdoms operating in silos with little collaboration among them. This stovepipe model of IT has long been supported by manufacturers operating comfortably within a demarcated territory – at least until two years ago when Cisco upset the established order. The Cisco UCS unified compute, networking, storage access and virtualization into the only platform designed for optimized hosting of virtual infrastructure. While some industry analysts and competitors predicted disaster, Cisco and its partners specializing in virtualization had no doubt that UCS was going to revolutionize the data center.

This week's IDC figures have vindicated both Cisco and the concept of pervasive virtualization in general. Cisco now holds the number three spot in worldwide x86 blade server sales with a 10.5% market share. But this market share figure is misleading because UCS is pitted against all server sales. If compared strictly against servers utilized for hosting virtual infrastructure, UCS would show even greater gains.

Cisco initially approached both HP and IBM around six years ago about jointly building a compute platform that would address the performance, management and resourcing issues that were bound to arise once virtualization progressed from a point solution to become the data center standard. After being turned down by both organizations, Cisco instead embarked upon the largest development initiative in the history of the company. It funded Nuova and a team of engineers which, led by VMware co-founder and former CTO, Ed Bugnion, spent 3 years developing the UCS. 

I’ve seen situations again and again where organizations deploying UCS virtualize not only their entire data centers, but increasingly their desktops and unified communications environments as well. UCS, with its myriad innovations, instills the confidence required to commit to an enterprise virtualization/IT-as-a-Service strategy. Anything other than UCS is simply a server designed for the physical world.

See Also:

• Cisco Makes Gains in x86 Blade Server Space, IDC Says 05/25/2011. Jeffrey Burt. eWeek
• Cisco UCS Market Share - Q1 2011 05/25/2011. Jeff Allen. Jeff Said So.
• Cisco UCS: Beating the Odds 05/24/2011. Anna Sui. Cisco Web Site
• Cisco Servers? They said UCS would never succeed…  05/24/2011. Soni Jiandani. Cisco Web Site
• Cisco Finally Releases UCS Market Share Numbers  05/24/2011. Kevin Houston. Blades Made Simple™
• They Were Wrong About UCS…What Else Are They Wrong About? 05/24/2011. Omar Sultan. Cisco Web Site
• Cisco UCS: There is a Movement 05/24/2011. Didier Rombaut. Cisco Web Site
• Is the success of Cisco UCS real? 06/06/2010. Steve Kaplan. By The Bell
• Cisco UCS – a Disruptive Platform 05/05/2009. Steve Kaplan. DABCC

 

Author Disclosure: I work for a professional services company which is also a leading Cisco partner

Business success means being able to say “no”

My former boss once told me that you know you are successful in business when you can afford to say no. When you’re worried about survival, it’s very difficult to turn away any potential business – no matter how ill-suited it may be. Smaller resellers in our industry often face questionable opportunities but end up, despite the warning signs, taking on projects that lead to frustrations, costly corrections and loss of good will.

One small reseller that doesn’t have this problem is Netblaze Systems, a 4-person shop run by my brother, Alan Kaplan, and his partner, Igor Akkerman for the past 6 years. The following email thread shows how Alan responded to a recent request generated from his Web site:

Brian: I'm an attorney. I want to start scanning in my legal briefs and notes. Do you guys offer a solution that fits this?

Alan: Hi Brian. We got your submission; are you available tomorrow morning for a call?

Brian: Can you offer the solution...yes or no?

Alan:  No.

Alan thought that was the end of it, but the next morning he received another email from Brian:

Brian:  Then this where we will end the conversation. Next time don't try to force a call when you know you cannot deliver.

Alan: [Expletive deleted]. Of course we can do what you're asking, but not for an asshole like you.

While Brian apparently works on his own, he undoubtedly would have received the same response even if he worked for a large law firm.

During my many years in the technology industry, I’ve continued to witness the paradox of increasing sales by turning down business. And while I’ve passed on many opportunies due to anticipated personality difficulties, I’ve never done it in quite this style – only the owner of a very small organization could get away with such bluntness. Still, it did give me a chuckle.

What does the future hold for IT skill sets?

I’ve visited a few large organizations where the server, network and storage functional groups had, for the most part, never even met. I’ve been been to many others where the different groups knew each other, but didn’t get along. Virtualization blurs the the former crisp lines of functional demarcation, rendering this stovetype model of IT specialization obsolete. Adoption of hybrid cloud environments brings additional pressures for change.

IT Organizational Gaps can be a Barrier to Pervasive Virtualization

CA Technologies’ Andi Mann and others have discussed various reasons behind the widespread problem of stalled virtualization projects. A common factor is a lack of IT processes geared toward a virtual environment. The CA-sponsored 2011 study, The State of IT Automation, showed that 47% of virtualized organizations still take a week or longer to provision a virtual machine. The server teams are stymied by the manual processes required such as procuring a LUN from Storage or a VLAN from the network group.

 
As virtualization breaks down the functional IT silos with unavoidable interdependencies, disagreements about domain responsibility can negatively impact effective collaboration. This dissonance will only increase with the convergence of desktop and voice as part of a unified virtual infrastructure fabric. Virtualized desktops, for example, typically run as workloads in the data center alongside the server VMs. So the question becomes, who is responsible for managing them, the desktop group or the server team?  A similar issue faces the VoIP group as their isolated physical servers become just another set of virtual workloads.

Even an absence of collaboration challenges does not preclude virtualization induced organizational disruption.  A former California local government agency CIO recently told me that most of his server administrators were directly tied to the physical servers for which they were responsible. They were uneasy (especially those less adept) with virtualization since server management now would become far more transparent. And the idea of moving the servers to the cloud would likely be perceived as an outright threat to job security since a virtual server in the cloud can be maintained by anyone, anywhere. There would be no need to for card-key access to press the on/off button for hard reboots, or to escort vendors in to upgrade memory, or switch backup tapes. The former CIO believes that government IT shops at all levels will play the “security” and “privacy” card if the talks get serious about moving their infrastructures to the cloud.

Integrated Stacks Reshaping Virtual Infrastructure Management

Organizational change is difficult to accomplish in either government or private enterprises. But new integrated computing stacks such as Vblocks and FlexPods are helping drive transformation by forcing roles-based and policy-driven administrative processes that span compute, network and storage. These stacks also eliminate much of the manual “rack and stack”, cabling and software installation required when purchasing the components separately – leaving the IT teams with more time to focus on productivity enhancements such as application optimization.

The integrated stacks enable the IT specialists to continue managing their own domains, yet collaborate far more effectively with their peers. But the writing is nonetheless on the wall that these specialists need to broaden their skill sets to incorporate a more holistic architectural perspective. The server team needs some understanding of IP routing. The network group should know how to do minor server troubleshooting and basic reinstalls. Storage specialists need familiarity with proper VMFS sizing and best practices. All three groups should understand the implications of how virtual infrastructure security affects their domains.

Organizations are adjusting to the requirement for cross-functional skill sets by changing reporting structures to effectively create a data center team. While this is a huge transition from the functional segregation model, many more changes are in store.

IT-as-a-Service Demands a Service Mentality

Data center computing appears to be heading toward a hybrid model that includes a private cloud for the majority of workloads but also federation to SaaS providers and public clouds. CIOs emphasize that the most appealing attribute of cloud computing isn’t a reduction in cost, but rather an increase in speed. Responding quickly to business requirements is imperative to maintaining a competitive advantage.

One of the objectives of cloud is the automatic provisioning of virtual infrastructure. Business units specify the SLAs of desired applications from a services catalogue. The required servers, storage, network and security components are automatically created and charged back based upon usage, thereby driving optimal utilization of corporate resources. Users should neither know nor care whether the servers are residing internally or with an external cloud provider.

IT must determine which workloads are better served in a private cloud and which are OK to outsource to public cloud providers. The recent Amazon outage illustrates that workloads cannot simply be placed with a public provider and then forgotten. Providers must be assessed on numerous criteria including performance, availability, recoverability, pricing, monitoring, reporting and clarity of invoicing – among others. Effective architecture of this environment demands knowledge around security, regulatory compliance, project management and negotiation. Applying additional safeguards to certain workloads may entail both provider transparency and alternative contingency plans. The IT staff must furthermore continually monitor, measure and test provider claims.

In addition to acquiring a broadened skill set, IT personnel also need to understand their roles as service providers to the business as a whole. This means adopting a mantra of “not giving no for an answer”, and becoming advocates for business unit objectives such as increased revenues and improved customer service. IT is in a prime position to help rapidly, yet economically, achieve them by creatively utilizing cloud computing capabilities.

 

Author Note: I will be speaking further on this subject at GTC West 2011 in Sacramento, CA on May 10^th.

 

See Also:

How Cloud Computing is Changing IT Staff Roles. 04/15/11. Crystal Nichols. Unitv.

Cloud Computing: Beyond the Buzz, Part 1. 03/18/11. Brent Weigel. Michael S. Kenny & Company.

How Cloud Computing & Web Services Are Changing the IT Job Market. 02/26/11. Gadget News Update.

Accelerate Hybrid Cloud Success: Adjusting the IT Mindset. Feb. 2011. Giorgio Nebuloni, Gary Chen. IDC White Paper.

The Organizational Impact of Converged Infrastructure. 12/02/10. Stuart Miniman. Wikibon Blog.

Professional Development and Staffing for the Cloud. 08/25/10. Joanne Kossuth. Educause.

How is Cloud Computing Changing the Role of IT. 08/05/10. Darren Cunningham. Informatica.

Wanted: New Skills for Cloud Computing Success. 06/23/10. Joseph Foran. SearchCloudComputing.com.

Cloud Computing will Destroy Jobs. 06/10/10. Pete Swabey. InformationAge.

Is ‘VM Stall’ the Next Big Virtualization Challenge? 06/01/10. Andi Mann. CIO.

These CIOs go Way Beyond IT-business Alignment. 05/24/10. Julia King. Computerworld.

Will UCS Unify IT Staffs?  07/24/09. Steve Kaplan. By The Bell.

 

 

Book review: Visible Ops Private Cloud: from virtualization to private cloud in 4 practical steps.

Authors Andi Mann, Kurt Milne and Jeanne Moran have written an IT Process Institute publication, Visible Ops Private Cloud: From Virtualization to Private Cloud in 4 Practical Steps. This book is short, easy to follow and engaging.  It not only is worth reading, but essential for any IT leader considering virtualization or private cloud technologies.

Information gained from over 30 interviews with organizations that have implemented private cloud solutions along with ITPI research data provides the basis for the book’s analyses and conclusions, although the footnotes reflect many other studies and sources as well. The 60 plus years of combined author IT process management experience is evident in their ability to take a very complex topic and distill it down to an easily digestible format.

The book starts off defining a private cloud and how it differs from a fully virtualized data center. It also discusses the three primary advantages that private clouds have over public clouds. While it should be fairly obvious that a private cloud enables a level of security and control not easily matched by a public cloud provider, much more surprising is the authors’ contention that a well executed private cloud is around 30% less expensive. Private clouds also enable a degree of customization that public clouds are unable to match.

The remainder of Visible Ops Private Cloud provides a four-phased approach for implementing a private cloud:

                Phase 1: Cut through the cloud clutter

                Phase 2: Design services, not systems

                Phase 3: Orchestrate and optimize resource

                Phase 4: Align and accelerate business results

The first Appendix dives into Virtualization impact on audit and compliance, and the second covers Reducing private cloud security risks. Noticeably absent are references to specific technologies by leading private cloud companies such as VMware, Cisco and Computer Associates.

While 107 pages (including appendixes and glossary) is only enough to provide a general overview to the topic of private cloud, the four phases constitute a realistic high-level guideline for a successful implementation. I especially like the way each phase starts off with a matrix describing both the issues that are addressed along with narrative from an IT organization staff member that actually had to deal with the particular issue. The layout in general is done really well for a technical book and includes both figures and highlight emphases written with monotony-breaking cursive. Occasional cloud-based Dilbert cartoons help to further make the reading enjoyable.

Despite the book’s conciseness, redundancy shows up in places such a repetition of the four implementation phases in Appendix A. It stretches a bit at times in order to provide an adequate number of bullets, and it lacks a consolidated section extolling the benefits of private cloud. The authors repeatedly insist that not all servers are appropriate for a private cloud, but they don’t explain what workloads should be excluded.

These very small drawbacks, however, pale in comparison to the positives of Visible Ops Private Cloud. While I’ve been writing for almost two years about the issues around the phenomenon that Andi Mann coined as VM Stall, this book was particularly useful to me in providing greater insight into both the cause and remedy. Unfortunately, it was written too late to incorporate the CA-sponsored 2011 study, The State of IT Automation, which shows that 45% of organizations take a week or longer to provision a virtual machine, but it nonetheless gives plenty of reasons as to why the statistic should not be surprising. Adopting a private cloud not only has the capability to fulfill enterprise virtualization objectives, but to enable true data center transformation.

The Cloudcast (.NET)

Last week I had the opportunity to be a guest on The Cloudcast (http://www.thecloudcast.net) with Brian Gracely and Aaron Delp. On Friday, Brian Tweeted, “Steve gives much better answers than I ask questions.” I thought that was amusing because I normally am not too happy with my videos and podcasts, but was pleased with this recording as Brian's questions were both thought-provoking and insightful. It was really a pleasure to be on the show.

I spoke about ROI for Private Cloud, VMstall (giving credit to Computer Associate’s Andi Mann for coining the term), the future VDI convergence with Collaboration and the emerging new role of Cloud Integrator. Show notes, downloads and links to the podcast for iTunes and Stitcher can be found on the website.

 

A 40,000 foot view of VMware vCloud Director

 

It was almost seven months ago when VMware’s John Arrasjid (@vcdx001 on Twitter) contacted me about writing a new USENIX book. Together with four other senior VMware consultants, we co-authored Cloud Computing with VMware vCloud Director which should be published by the end of the month. As the only non-engineer among the authors, I nevertheless found the book quite helpful in explaining cloud computing and the benefits it provides. I struggled, on the other hand, to understand what vCloud Director really is, and more importantly, why an organization should embrace it – particularly at this juncture of a 1.0 release. While the answers can be discerned from reading the book, this post is geared toward my fellow non-techies who might appreciate a brief distillation.

Why the Need for a Cloud Computing Management Platform?

Many years ago, mainframe and mini users were commonly forced to wait in an MIS queue for months in order to get a report produced. The PC era brought computing power into the hands of the users, but left them still dependent upon IT to provision the back-end infrastructure – networks, servers, load-balancers, firewalls, etc.  Since applications tend to be driven by departmental budgets, IT infrastructures often end up as over provisioned mishmashes of equipment, processes and technology entailing excessive cost and huge inefficiencies.

Virtualization taken to its logical extreme results in a transformation of the traditional static data center to a monitored, metered, managed and automated environment where IT is dynamically provided as a service, otherwise known as Private Cloud. In the cloud model, computing not only becomes efficient, it makes another titanic shift to the user. Business units specify the levels of performance, reliability and security required for an application, and the required virtual infrastructure is automatically and very quickly provisioned and deployed. 

Accomplishing this transformation, though, is not by any means a simple task. A platform must be implemented that intelligently pools and provisions virtualized resources. Network isolation, enhanced storage requirements, new monitoring and chargeback capabilities, and increased requirements for scalability, resiliency and storage are just some of the challenges.

What Exactly is VMware vCloud Director?

The Glossary of Cloud Computing with VMware vCloud Director defines vCD as:  “A software solution providing the interface, automation, and management feature set to allow enterprise and service providers to supply vSphere resources as a Web-based service.”

VMware vCloud Director is a cloud computing management platform. It abstracts the virtualized resources to enable users to gain self-service access to them through a services catalogue. Tasks previously requiring significant IT staff resources and time to accomplish, such as configuring a network, are automatically executed in minutes with vCD.

Another aspect of vCD is its ability to utilize open standards and the vCloud API to enable federation between private and public clouds. Organizations can not only transform their own IT environments into a service, but they can move virtual machines back and forth to external cloud providers for purposes such as facilitating high resource demand or disaster recovery requirements.

From a product perspective, VMware vCloud Director is arguably the metamorphosis of Lab Manager into an enterprise platform. It is one component of the VMware vCloud family which also includes VMware vSphere, vShield Manager with vShield Edge, and vCenter Chargeback. Other VMware complimentary products such as VMware vCloud Connector, VMware Orchestrator, VMware vCenter Operations, and vCloud Request Manager add further useful functionality. Additionally, a whole ecosystem of hardware and software products is rapidly evolving to take advantage of the vCloud API including prominent infrastructure stacks such as VCE Vblock, NetApp FlexPod and HP Matrix.

 Helpful excerpts from Cloud Computing with VMware vCloud Director include: 

•  “VMware vCloud Director is a platform that makes broad deployment of compute clouds possible by enabling self-service access to compute infrastructure through the ab­straction of virtualized resources.”
• “Think of vCloud Director as a centralized landing point for end users to access infra­structure resources through the Web browser. VMware vCloud Director provides the self-service portal that accepts user requests and translates them into tasks in the vSphere environment.”
• “VMware vCloud Director adds an additional layer of resource abstraction to enable multi-tenancy and provide interoperability between clouds that are built to the vCloud API standard.”

Who Should Purchase vCloud Director Version 1.0?

VMware vCloud Director at inception provides a starting point for vCloud – VMware is continuing to add capabilities. Right out of the gate, however, it is perfect for developers. Owners of VMware Lab Manager can exchange their licenses (which are based upon CPUs) for licenses of vCloud Director (which are based upon VMs). The product is also exceptional for organizations with requirements for building internal training or demo environments. Our Systems Engineers, for example, can use our internal deployment of vCloud Director to create an entire VMware View environment for demonstration purposes in about 10 minutes, and then blow away the environment when finished.

Caveats exist when using vCloud Director in production, but they do not seem to be slowing down its adoption. As an example, a current lack of integration with VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) means that off-site VM replication and recovery needs to accommodate either manually or with other automation tools. Backup/recovery of the vCloud workloads can be accomplished, but some vendors require manual steps in the process. Other vendors are working on fully automated solutions by using the vSphere, vCloud, and VADP APIs.

On the very positive side, vCloud Director puts organizations firmly on the path to cloud computing where IT is provisioned as a service along with monitoring, metering, chargeback and a self-service portal for business units/end users.  The open API enables integration with other applications to quickly build a customized, automated and flexible environment.

Another interesting potential customer group for vCD is the emerging category of cloud integrators that is perhaps the next rung on the evolutionary ladder from Reseller to VAR to Solutions Provider. Cloud integrators can potentially customize vCD as an aggregation portal in order to provide an extremely versatile yet automated assortment of cloud-based services to their clients.

 

See Also:

Cloud Computing with VMware vCloud Director (Available soon on both Sage and Amazon)

Foundation for Cloud Computing with VMware vSphere 4.  Amazon

VMware vCloud Director. VMware Web Site

vShield Products Packaging Explained (with a focus on vCloud Director). 03/14/2011 Massimo. IT 2.0

vCloud Networking for Dummies. 09/14/2010. Massimo. IT 2.0

VMware Lab Manager is Dead. Long Live vCloud Director. 02/11/2011. David Marshall. InfoWorld.

Introducing VMware vCloud Datacenter, provided by BlueLock.

 

Acknowledgements

Thanks to fellow vExpert, Mark Vaughn (@mvaughn25), of INX for his contributions to this article. And a special thanks to John Arrasjid (@vcdx001) and my other co-authors: Ben Lin (@blin23), Raman Verramraju (@ramantheman), Duncan Epping (@vcdx007), and Michael Haines (@michaelahaines).

What's behind the surge in HP Matrix customers?

At HP Summit a couple of days ago, David Donatelli, Executive VP, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking said, “How do we build this? Essentially from a sofware point of view, the cloud system is built upon HP’s BladeSystem Matrix which is a software technology now that we’ve been shipping for more than 18 months. We have literally thousands of customers running this around the world. It enables them to manage their entire infrastructure nondisruptively as one big common pool which is basically what a cloud is”. (http://www.visualwebcaster.com/HP/76709/event.html 01:35:35)

Partner Confusion

I was very surprised to learn that HP now has thousands of Matrix customers. Even in the presumably unlikely case that none have more than one unit, this means there are a whole lot of Matrix sales going on. I called several HP partners to get their perspectives. Most are not selling many, if any, of the BladeSystem Matrix. One who does appear to be having quite a bit of success with the product still would have guessed that Matrix customers might be in the hundreds, but not the thousands.

A Tweet yesterday morning by Stu Merriman’s (@stu) offered a possible explanation for the partner confusion. He asked HP about the Matrix, and the response he received was that most sales are made via HP’s direct sales force to large customers. While large enterprises are not our only focus, it does seem strange that we seldom run up against HP Matrix in our sales efforts, and I hear this same refrain from other Cisco partners. It would seem that with thousands of customers that the Matrix impact should be more prominent, and that we should see the Matrix showing up in more data centers.

Likewise, with such a quick ramp-up in sales, Matrix should be generating a much bigger buzz around the industry. As a comparison, Cisco UCS jumped from 900 customers last July to 4,000 at the end of last quarter. As might be expected, a Google Blog search on “Cisco UCS” returned 12,100 hits including many posts by integrators and customers describing their real-life experiences with the product. The same Google blog search on HP Matrix, however, produced only 306 hits. And I could find very few blog posts that reference an actual implementation.

Integrated Computing Stacks

The BladeSystem Matrix is HP’s entry into the new, but rapidly growing, category of integrated computing stacks. These stacks combine virtualization, computing, networking, storage, and system management in order to enable ItaaS, otherwise known as private clouds. While some products such as VCE’s Vblock and NetApp’s FlexPod combine solutions from multiple manufacturers, others such as HP Matrix, IBM Cloudburst, Dell Virtual Integration System and Oracle Exalogic rely on one manufacturer.

Integrated stacks, being a new category, are not necessarily easy to define as they vary greatly in composition between manufacturers. Making matters more complex are the differing ways in which manufacturers handle the inevitable customer requests for configurations that stray from the certified standards. It is my experience as a Vblock partner, for example, that VCE only will certify a Vblock shipped as such, and that only very minor alterations in the standard configurations are tolerated.

Initially and as recently as last July, HP took a similarly hard line approach with BladeSystem Matrix, requiring a 60 hour on-site engagement by HP Implementation Service. Partners were not able to be certified and customers were unable to upgrade any software or firmware in the solution and still be in a supported configuration. I estimated, after speaking with both current and former HP employees, that Matrix had no more than 60 – 75 implementations at that time.  

Since July, HP has appeared to take a much more relaxed approach in regard to what constitutes a Matrix. On December 10, 2010 HP announced the HP BladeSystem Matrix Conversion Services which appears from the brochure to be a 2-day engagement that, along with purchasing additional products, converts existing HP blades into “a complete, fully supported HP BladeSystem Matrix environment.” One possibility for Donatelli’s remarks, therefore, is that HP has very quickly converted thousands of blade customers into Matrix customers.

Waiting for the Answer

On Tuesday, I asked Burston-Marsteller, a firm that does public relations for HP, if they could explain Donatelli’s number. The PR firm promptly replied that they reached out to HP for clarification. I am eager to see what the official response will be, but my guess – and it is only a guess – is that some of the growth has been attributable to a direct sales force emphasis and some due to conversions, but the biggest increase is due to the way in which HP counts Matrix sales. Since the Matrix is essentially a rebranding of existing HP products, it would be easy to justify counting an organization with a substantial number of Matrix components as a Matrix customer.

 

Author Disclosure: I work for a leading Cisco partner.

Response to HP blog post on innovation

Brad Parks of the Worldwide HP Converged Infrastructure team, in response to the EMC announcements yesterday, just posted, "What do storage, convergence, and statistical physics have in common? http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Converged-Infrastructure/What-do-storage-convergence-and-statistical-physics-have-in/ba-p/86829.  His suggestion that HP originated the 70/30 IT split discussion “for over a year” is quite amusing. Here is an article, for instance, from Tech Republic from last May discussing how HP copied EMC’s messaging in that regard http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=4283. EMC’s (former) subsidiary, VMware, has been messaging about the majority of IT budgets going to “keep the lights on” at least since VMworld Europe in Feburary 2009.  

The theme of Brad's post is that HP is in the vanguard of breaking down IT silos, yet HP continues to propagate them by pitching Virtual Connect to server teams as a way to manage the switches without the inconvenience of network group oversight. EMC, on the other hand, partners with VMware and Cisco to enable a virtual infrastructure platform that both enables and encourages productive collaboration between functional teams.

Brad concludes by suggesting that the HP BladeSystem Matrix provides an answer to IT sprawl, yet from what I’ve been able to learn, it appears common for Matrix customers to become frustrated with the overwhelming complexity of the solution and instead revert back to using the Matrix as just a server.

VDI vs. SBC: ROI case study

The huge buzz around virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) may ironically drive more server-based computing (SBC) sales. Some organizations are considering, as an alternative to VDI, expanding and repurposing existing XenApp deployments used primarily for application delivery to instead facilitate enterprise desktop replacement. One such firm recently requested an ROI comparison for migrating its 1,700 (and growing) physical desktops to either virtual desktops or to an enterprise Server-Based Computing environment. The required investment and the 5-year Internal Rate of Return (IRR) was nearly identical for the two scenarios, but the VDI option had a slightly higher ROI along with a shorter  period required to payback the initial investment.

SBC and VDI Similarities

Server Based Computing (SBC) is a mature technology that has been utilized for over 15 years, but primarily for application delivery; it never really caught on as a mainstream desktop replacement. Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), although only four years old, has quickly captured the interest of IT professionals already familiar with server virtualization. IT is generally more receptive to the simplicity of the virtual desktop concept than they’ve previously been to the idea of enterprise server-based computing.

VDI and SBC both enable the hosting of desktops on central server farms and use the same protocols to deliver application screen prints to users (VMware View also utilizes a protocol, PCoIP, developed especially for VDI). SBC typically incorporates Citrix XenApp along with Microsoft Remote Desktop Service (RDS – formerly called Terminal Server). VDI utilizes the virtual desktop running in a hypervisor, typically either VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop.

Both VDI and SBC desktops intelligently separate the personality of the user from the applications and abstract both from the OS. They enable a model of personal computing where the information belongs to the user; the device becomes a “choice” whether a PC, laptop, thin client, zero client, Mac, iPAD, iPhone, Android device or Internet café terminal. Users can securely access their desktops from anywhere that they can get to a browser. The desktop remains exclusively in the data center where it is secure, managed, backed up and replicated for redundancy.

SBC enables the use of thin clients, while VDI enables the use of either thin clients or zero clients (devices manufactured for VDI without any local OS). Both thin clients and zero clients are fairly inexpensive and have no moving parts, local drives or fan noise. The devices are configured simply by plugging them in, enabling quick and simple replacement in the unlikely event one fails. They eliminate the requirement for upgrading PCs or laptops on a regular basis as well as the necessity for users to double as desktop administrators. User productivity is enhanced while IT support time is slashed.

Both SBC and VDI can reduce anti-virus costs, slash power consumption (by using terminals) and reduce downtime while users await new upgrades or help desk support. They empower users – giving them a new level of flexibility and agility. They facilitate acquisitions by enabling quick assimilation of new organizations into the existing desktop infrastructure while still allowing them to run their existing environments in parallel. They enable fast set-up of remote facilities and reduce time to market by accelerating application provisioning.

Server Based Computing

The SBC concept originated with Ed Iacobucci who worked for IBM on the OS/2 development team in the late 1980s. Iacobucci came up with an idea for a multi-user version of OS/2 that he unsuccessfully pitched to IBM. Microsoft liked the idea, however, and helped fund his new company, Citrix. Citrix’s first Windows based multi-user product, WinFrame, debuted in 1995. Citrix originally called the concept of hosting centralized desktops sessions “thin-client server computing”, but renamed the category “server-based computing” as Windows terminal manufacturers appropriated the thin-client moniker.

SBC relies upon RDS which is a version of Windows Server that supports multiple users. While RDS continues to improve, issues can still arise regarding application compatibility. Making applications work correctly may require specialized IT administrative knowledge of RDS along with registry hacks, trouble shooting or application streaming.

Because all users on a server share a single Windows Server session, one user can potentially affect all of the users on a host server. As an example, a user could receive an email attachment that installs malicious code on the server itself. Application packaging may also be required in order to resolve DLL conflicts resulting from incompatible applications installed and working on the same server.

SBC requires connectivity to the central server farm in order for users to work. User personalization needs to be added through the use of products such as Citrix Profile Manager, AppSense or many others. Users may object to working on an unfamiliar Windows Server desktop rather than the Windows XP or Windows 7 format with which they’re familiar.  It requires an approximate one-time $110 Windows RDS license.

The maturity of SBC may also indicate a dwindling support structure as VDI continues to capture the major mindshare not only of new ecosystem partners such as Unidesk and Pano Logic, but of existing legacy SBC players. Neil Spellings, for instance, recently raised some questions about potential challenges Citrix may have in supporting the legacy XenApp product.

On the positive side, SBC is a very mature platform – particularly when utilizing Citrix XenApp, which includes advanced tool sets such as session shadowing along with years of proven ecopartner complementary products. SBC tends to scale much better that VDI in terms of compute resources and also requires less storage IOPs. Tasks such as patches and upgrades are easily applied at the server level which then instantly propagate to all users – administrators do not need to manage a lot of desktops.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure

VMware coined the term "VDI" in 2006 in response to the increasing tendency of its customers to run desktop operating systems within virtual machines on their VMware ESX hosts. Gartner refers to the concept as Hosted Virtual Desktops (VDH) while IDC calls it Centralized Virtual Desktops (CVD). Cisco’s recent entry (building upon either VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop) is termed VXI for Virtual Experience Infrastructure. The VDI industry has huge momentum and now includes not only VMware and Citrix, but also Microsoft, Red Hat, Quest and many smaller niche players along with a rapidly growing ecosystem. 

VDI refers to hosting desktops on hypervisors. Persistent desktops are run as a complete image in the data center on a 1:1 ratio of desktop to user. While this approach provides the exact look-and-feel with which users are comfortable, it still requires managing the individual virtual machines as well as multiple identical copies of operating systems and user data. A non-persistent desktop creates a user’s desktop each time she logs in utilizing techniques such as parent/child pointers. While this approach enables consolidated management and storage, it loses the ability for users to customize their desktops. Ecosystem partners such as Unidesk and AppSense as well as market leaders VMware and Citrix themselves increasingly offer different approaches to enable the combined advantages of both approaches.

The ability for users to work on a familiar Windows XP or Windows 7 desktop is one of the most compelling aspects of VDI along with no worry about application incompatibilities. Other advantages include better security, fault tolerance, superior load-balancing, easier backups, off-line sessions and a potential pristine desktop every time a user logs in. VDI administrators do not need to be specialists in RDS or registry hacks, and can utilize standard Windows printing.

On the negative side, VDI requires a $100 yearly Microsoft Virtual Desktop Access license for thin-clients, zero clients, Macs and other non-Windows devices or for Windows clients not covered by Microsoft SA. It scales roughly about half as well as SBC on the compute side, although ever faster processors and optimized compute platforms such as the Cisco UCS increasingly will mitigate this negative. VDI also can potentially require significantly more expensive storage in order to supply the required IOPs.

VDI vs. SBC Matrix

 

ROI Comparison

The organization mentioned earlier is a financial services firm that will migrate 1,700 physical desktop users (growing to 2,200) to either a Citrix XenApp SBC or a Citrix XenDesktop or VMware View VDI deployment. The organization is running a small XenApp implementation today – primarily for application delivery, but the staff has significant XenApp SBC experience gained at other firms. The organization currently purchases quality PCs and laptops along with Microsoft SA, and refreshes them every three years. It maintains a server in each of its 20 remote offices that can be eliminated under either a VDI or SBC scenario without requiring increased costs for bandwidth. It runs VMware vSphere in the data center, but requires new shared storage for either solution.

 

 

The cash flow comparisons for years 1 – 5 reflect the difference in total expenses (CapEx + OpEx) between the existing physical desktop scenario and the proposed VDI or SBC scenarios, discounted for the firm’s cost of capital. The SBC solution includes Citrix XenApp Platinum Edition while the VDI solution utilizes VMware View Premier along with the required vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses. Both solutions assume identically priced thin-client devices that gradually replace PCs/laptops as they come up for refresh. VDI assumes increased storage costs of $410K while SBC incurs a little less than half that amount. Neither solution incorporates user productivity savings.

The organization would have to purchase either RDS licenses up front if going the SBC route, or SA licenses annually as it replaces PCs with thin clients if going VDI. Two additional full-time administrators were assumed to be required under SBC rather than just one under VDI. If only one additional administrator were required under SBC, the payback period would drop to 15.9 months while the 5-year ROI would increase to 228% and the IRR to 63%.

Choosing the Optimal Platform Requires Context

As with every key virtualization platform decision, I recommend taking a strategic approach. Start with an ROI analysis to first evaluate the economics of moving to a hosted desktop architecture whether VDI or SBC, but supplement it with an evaluation showing how the new technology will impact corporate objectives such as responsiveness, employee empowerment, disaster recovery, green initiatives, etc.

While industry analysts often contend that VDI does not offer a positive ROI, I have found that generally it does. Additionally, there may be benefits in terms of improved security, time to market and user productivity that warrant a move to hosted desktops even without a compelling ROI. A law firm with which I worked, for example, estimated increased billings of $1.6 M per year by enabling partners to bill more hours through remote desktop capabilities – an amount that easily overshadowed the projected savings.

Assuming the ROI and other benefits warrant a move away from traditional physical desktops, the best architecture can then be determined based upon environmental conditions and staff experience/expertise. An organization, for example, with a significant deployment of XenApp, even if used primarily for application delivery, might find it an easy transition to implement XenApp as an enterprise desktop replacement solution without requiring a significant investment in IT staff training or back-end infrastructure. A highly virtualized organization, on the other hand, may find that it makes more sense to extend its virtualized data center down to the desktop leveraging the existing infrastructure, licensing, management console and staff expertise.

Cisco VXI

Cisco’s recently announced Virtual Experience Infrastructure (VXI) has the potential for significantly weighting the VDI/SBC debate toward VDI by combining virtual desktops with unified communications. VXI takes a network-centric approach to addressing the gaps in enterprise scalability, performance and security that have contributed to a lack of wider VDI adoption. By both enriching the user experience and improving the economics of virtual desktops, VXI will make it easier for many organizations to commit to a virtualized desktop platform. The ROI analysis featured in this article was started before the advent of Cisco VXI; the Cisco convergence and other advantages were not considered.

The Decision

The financial services firm’s IT staff has yet to decide which hosted desktop solution they will implement. Given the similar ROI results of the two options along with the very positive experience the CIO had with an enterprise SBC deployment of Citrix MetaFrame at his last company, my guess is that SBC is going to win out.

 

Contributors:  Mark Vaughn, INX and Alan Kaplan, NetBlaze. Although Douglas Brown www.dabcc.com and I don’t always agree, he provided fantastic feedback (most of which I incorporated) and corrections.

 

References:

Server Based Computing vs. Desktop Virtualization Jeff Muir – Citrix Blogger

VDI vs SBC, like Gas Stove vs Microwave? James Rabev – The Citrix Blog

VDI is Dead, Long Live VDI-SBC! Christophe Corne – Business Computing World

VDI vs TX – What will you choose? Daniel Feller – The Citrix Blog

Terminal Services versus VDI: Brian’s presentation from VMworld Europe 2009. Brianmadden.com

Cisco targets virtual desktops with VDI. By The Bell

Cisco Unveils Virtualization Experience Infrastructure…  Cisco Press Release

The desktops may be virtual, but the ROI is real. By The Bell

 

Author Disclosure: I work for a leading Cisco/VMware partner.

VXI: Phase 2 of Cisco's virtualization strategy

Brian Madden ran a post last week titled, Cisco enters the VDI fray with “VSI” (Related: we have a new leader in the “most press for least actual prouct” race!) that  sparked some lively debate. While a bit early to make any defensible conclusions about the ultimate success of VXI, it’s reasonable to expect that it will shake up the under-performing virtual desktop market.

Redefining VDI

Madden dismisses VXI as a “reference architecture”, but this would be comparable to calling the VCE Vblock simply a reference architechture for a private cloud infrastructure. Vblock is already grabbing huge industry mindshare because customers are intrigued with the idea of a validated, preconfigured, certified solution that is supported as a single product.

Virtual Experience Infrastructure (VXI) is a solution initiated by Cisco, but it cleverly redefines the VDI category to include not only virtual desktops, but also voice, phone, video, Telepresence and collaboration. It incorporates contributions from ecopartners such as EMC, Wyse, VMware and Citrix along with legacy technologies such as WAAS updated to optimize VDI protocols. As with Vblocks, it also is built around the unique advantages that Cisco UCS brings as a hosting platform for virtual infrastructure. VXI leverages the UCS to enable denser VM capabilities, thereby enabling reduced infrastructure costs, along with cost reductions from consolidating voice and virtualization infrastructures.

Piggybacking off Cisco UCS Success

When Cisco UCS debuted last year, it faced skepticism from both competitors and the press who questioned its relevance. HP called it a “giant switch”. Byte and Switch called it, “next year’s servers…shipping this year”. According to ComputerWorld, a Dell executive referred to it as a “one-size-fits-all blade server”.  But in only 16 months of shipping, UCS now has 2,800 customers with an annualized run rate of almost $500 Million. UCS has disrupted the data center status quo, set the industry abuzz and is displacing long-term data center competitors seemingly at will because it instills CIOs with the confidence they need to virtualize their mission critical applications. VXI has the potential to similarly impact the virtual desktop space by addressing the enterprise performance, security, user experience and cost issues that inhibit their wider acceptance today.

 

Author Disclosure: I work for a leading Cisco partner.

Cisco targets virtual desktop ROI with VXI

Cisco’s  Virtual Experience Infrastructure (VXI) extends the concept of a virtual desktop to include voice, video, multi-media, and collaboration.  It takes a network centered approach to resolving current virtual desktop limits in rich user experience, enterprise performance, security and ROI.

VXI: Marketing hype or true innovation?

Cisco disrupted the data center status quo last year when it introduced the UCS, the first purposefully built product for hosting virtual infrastructure. The UCS has received tremendous industry and customer acclaim due to its myriad innovations ranging from converged fabric to stateless blades. Cisco VXI is a framework – or really a stack – for virtualized desktops that leverages the UCS along with other existing Cisco technologies. It incorporates unified communications capabilities such as telephony, video and Web collaboration applications but also introduces new innovations such as Cisco's new zero clients and Cius tablet. VXI includes partnerships with other manufacturers such as VMware, Citrix, Wyse, EMC and NetApp.

VXI shares an important attribute with UCS in that both technologies are geared to facilitating pervasive virtualization. UCS, as an enterprise hosting platform rather than just a server built for the physical world, helps organizations break through the phenomonon of VM Stall. It engenders confidence for virtualizing both resource intensive and mission critical applications. VXI similarly removes obstacles to large scale desktop virtualization by addressing the gaps in performance, security and user experience capabilities.

Desktop virtualization has been the subject of huge industry buzz for years, but adoption is well behind expectations. In 2007, for instance, Gartner predicted that all new PC deployments would be virtualized by the end of this year (see Virtual Strategy Magazine). SearchVirtualDesktop.com recently reported that Gartner now predicts only 4.5 million virtual desktops by the end of this year growing to 50 million, or 10% of the market, by 2014.

With VXI, the network maintains awareness of the virtual machine user session – QoS and security policies are applied at the virtual desktop level. Media and applications are prioritized within the virtual desktop session which benefits from optimized bandwidth along with optimized rich media, print services and other capabilities. Users gain secure access to virtual desktops and applications outside of the corporate office which can be regulated based upon their location. The user experience is enhanced while IT management, security and support challenges are reduced.

Enhanced ROI

Perhaps even more important to proliferating virtual desktops than improvements in performance, security and user experience is an abilility for organizations to easily identify the financial benefits. VDI can slash operating expenses through reducing administrative tasks, but these savings are likely to be far lower when compared against well managed and locked down PCs. And while thin or zero client devices can enable considerable power savings compared to PCs or laptops, they are more than negated by the annual Virtual Desktop Access license Microsoft charges for using them. Justifying CapEx reductions for VDI also can be difficult due to the increased backend infrastructure costs for compute, storage, network and licensing.

VXI addresses some of these cost challenges by incorporating the higher densities and lower operating costs of the Cisco UCS. More importantly, the convergence of unified communications and desktop virtualization technologies consolidates overlapping expenses. Separate backend infrastructures for voice and data are no longer necessary. Desktops, phones, video, Telepresense and collaboration all are enabled on a single device which  is accessing a virtual machine running on a UCS in the data center.

VXI Today

Phase one of VXI focuses on desktop virtualization. It includes a configuration of UCS optimized for VDI along with Cisco Cius and enhanced thin-client devices from Wyse. It emphasizes three primary areas of improvement: Performance, security and multimedia.

Performance: The industry leading virtualization performance of Cisco UCS are combined with addressing WAN bottlenecks with Cisco WAAS and offload of SSL encryption to dedicated hardware using Cisco ACE to increase server density, accelerate WAN traffic and both application performance and end-user experience.

Multimedia: Cisco Virtual Desktop Service (VDS) applies service priorities, QoS and optimized VDI traffic over the WAN to ensure that users receive a rich multimedia experience. Cisco enhanced endpoint devices further improve the experience by directly supporting not only virtualization but collaboration applications.

Security: Cisco UCS, Nexus 1000V and VN-Link technology provide VM-specific visibility and allow application of network and security policies to mobile virtual machines. Cisco’s ACS Server and Mobile Services Engine enable role and location based access restrictions.

VXI Road Map

Cisco has a five phase plan for VXI, and  Cisco will be introducting new capabilities such as location based services and advanced management tools. Unlike the server virtualization journey upon which the majority of organizations have been slowly traveling now for years, desktop virtualization is still in its infancy. Cisco’s  VXI enables a strategic approach to not only desktop virtualization, but to the entire desktop experience including voice, video and collaboration. It offers the promise of a more cost-effective and much quicker adoption of the technology on an enterprise scale.

 

Author Disclosure: I work for a leading Cisco partner.

Customers embracing Vblocks, but VCE sales harmony a work in progress

Skepticism was my first reaction upon hearing about the Virtual Computing Environment coalition (VCE). I’ve worked with a couple of large IT organizations where the compute, network, application and storage teams have never met. I’ve visited many other firms where the different teams know each other, but don’t get along. It seemed to me unlikely that these groups would agree to purchase a single solution set from Cisco, EMC and VMware. The typically dissimilar purchasing and depreciation cycles of the various VCE components would further amplify the resistence. Much to my surprise, customer demand for Vblock appears robust. On the other hand, some synchronization challenges are impacting the manufacturer side of the selling equation.

Vblock Customer Appeal

The VCE coalition, announced in December of last year, delivers Vblock infrastructure packages while Acadia, a joint venture funded by Cisco, EMC, VMware and Intel, “…was established to help partners and customers accelerate the transition to pervasive virtualization and private cloud.” Vblock sales numbers are not publicly available but both Rob Lloyd, Cisco SVP Worldwide Sales, and Joe Tucci, EMC CEO, have stated that VCE/Vblock activity is well beyond expectations. One positive indicator is the hundreds of recent requisitions for Vblock related positions at Acadia and EMC. Another is the credibility brought when former Compaq and First Data Corp CEO, Michael Capellas, joined Acadia as CEO this past May.

VCE members are overcoming data center politics by pitching Vblocks to the IT leadership level rather than to the individual IT groups. The CIOs are then driving the sales internally, encouraging and coordinating functional team acceptance of Vblocks regardless of previous brand and model preferences. CIOs grasp the bigger picture perspective of virtualization as the underpinning technology for private clouds and as the key to transforming the way that IT provides services to business. They understand that stack infrastructures are pivotal to enabling both rapid and successful pervasive virtualization.

The stack consolidation plays of manufactures such as Oracle, IBM and HP have also helped to increase receptivity to the VCE coalition. Vblocks allow CIOs to continue working with independent manufacturers while also enjoying the benefits of a preconfigured, certified solution that is quickly acquired, set up and integrated with existing systems – and which is supported as a single product. The icing on the cake is both the inclusion of management tools such as Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager (UIM) as well as the lowered cost of implementation and operation.

Sales Incentive Challenges

It’s safe to say that the three VCE parties entered into the arrangement with eyes wide open. During the VCE announcement, Cisco’s CEO, John Chambers, remarked that IT coalitions have a lower success rate even than acquisitions. But the VCE challenges that have arisen thus far appear to have more to do with education and with incentive and logistics adjustments than with onerous partnership roadblocks.

Misaligned quarter endings between Cisco and EMC, for instance, can result in the former just ramping up the selling process while the later is desperately trying to close business. But anyone who has dealt with EMC reps knows that these folks are not, let’s say, exactly happy-go-lucky when it comes to meeting their quotas.

EMC reps receive a significant uplift against quotas for Vblock sales while Cisco reps receive spiffs. VMware reps not only receive no additional Vblock incentives, they also are commonly under a misconception of a negative commission impact when VMware products are sold through VCE. Not surprisingly, EMC drives the majority of Vblock sales today, followed by Cisco with VMware a distant third. Despite the spiffs, Cisco reps appear far more interested in selling UCS than entire Vblocks.

Another difficulty facing the VCE sales reps is discounting. A single manufacturer such as IBM or HP has the flexibility to discount any component they deem to be particularly price sensitive knowing they can make up the lost margin on other components. The VCE players, of course, don’t have this option which can detract from the goal of a seamless and unified presentation of the unified stack.

The virtualization channel is also a bit wary of VCE/Acadia. A Vblock partner recently told me that while on a joint sales call, the EMC rep encouraged the customer to use Acadia for the Vblock implementation rather than his company. Acadia’s ability to bundle Vblocks with common channel services such as racking/stacking and cabling may also lead to conflicts.

FrankenBlocks

A potential pitfall of multiple manufacturers offering an integrated virtualization stack is how to accommodate inevitable customer requested scope changes while ensuring that a Vblock stays a Vblock. The three VCE manufacturers have addressed this issue by putting in huge efforts to develop a common reference architecture that provides enough flexibility to avoid reversion into a FrankenBlock.

Ironically, some of the competing single-manufacturer infrastructure stacks may lack this degree of forethought and flexibility. I’ve written, for instance, about the potential obstacles to simply applying a software patch to one one of the 16 software products comprising the HP BladeSystem Matrix.

Another problem with which VCE initially struggled was providing timely and organized delivery of the many different components from the different manufacturers. This difficult logistics issue is being resolved with an EMC manufacturing facility in Franklin, Massachusetts that has been retooled to just fulfill Vblock orders. A similar facility is being set up in Europe.

Vblock Market Opportunity

The Register reported this past May that, “The VCE founders think the total market for private cloud infrastructure, including the element that can be addressed by the VCE coalition, will be $85bn by 2015.”  In order to realize the Vblock full potential, the coalition members will need to continue fixing the incentive and logistical challenges. They should also address the marketplace confusion about where VCE leaves off and Acadia begins, as well as the channel apprehensions about working with Acadia.

The close partnerships between EMC, Cisco and VMware bode well for overcoming these issues as well as more substantial ones that may yet still show up as the coalition expands. Whatever these challenges may be, they should be be vastly overshadowed by the opportunities realized from allowing customers to quickly and efficiently complete their private cloud infrastructures. With Vblock as the architectural foundation, access to all applications whether physical, virtual or SaaS is enabled by simply connecting to a private cloud.

 

Author Disclosure: I work for a leading Cisco/VMware partner which recently became Vblock certified.

Who really invented virtual desktops?

A CIO article on 10/08/2010 by Kevin Fogarty sparked a Twitter debate this morning as to whether or not “VMware invented desktop virtualization” as claimed by VMware vice president of desktop products, Vittorio Viarengo. Andi Mann and Michael Keen both made the case that Citrix enabled desktop virtualization long before VMware. Keen tweeted, “Citrix ‘WinView’ circa 1993. VMW wasn't even a twinkle in Diane & Mendel's eye.”

Server Based Computing

The pre-XenDesktop Citrix Server Based Computing (SBC) products enable, similar to VDI, a hosted desktop solution by letting users view their desktops remotely using a special protocol. But unlike VDI, SBC is accomplished by sharing the operating system among multiple users. It is a completely different technology with entirely different ramifications than VDI which abstracts the desktop operating system from the underlying hardware.  

Starting with WinFrame, the Citrix messaging of its SBC products has emphasized access and application delivery – not centralized/hosted desktops. I suspect the underlying reason was that Citrix didn’t want to poke its all important partner, Microsoft, which stressed the importance of utilizing local PC resources.

One of my previous companies was an early reseller of Citrix starting with the OS/2-based Citrix WinView product, and we ended up being named the Citrix Partner of the Year for 2000. I spent four years as a Microsoft MVP for Terminal Server and co-authored several books on Citrix/Terminal Server along with dozens of white papers and articles. All of my writing, selling and messaging was always focused on using Citrix to run complete desktops from server farms because that is the by far the best way to achieve a tangible ROI story. When I read an article years ago by Ron Oglesby (now at Unidesk) explaining VDI, I was jazzed because I believed that as the virtualization technology matured, it would finally engender mass adoption of the hosted desktop concept.

Did VMware Invent VDI?

Denis Guyadeen tweeted that IBM had mainframe terminal emulation decades ago, but VMware created desktop virtualization with VMware Workstation. Mike Sterling pointed out that Connectix beat VMware by two years when it introduced Virtual PC in 1997. I don’t consider either product, though, to be an example of VDI which is typically associated with server-hosted virtual desktops, not local.

VirtualBridges unabashedly claims that it invented VDI. And, while its solution was very basic, I think it probably was first. But as VirtualBridges acknowledges in its Web site, it wasn’t called VDI at the time.

The actual term “Virtual Desktop Infrastructure” appears to be uncontested as VMware’s. The story I’ve heard is that some of VMware’s customers began virtualizing desktop operating systems on their ESX hosts around 2005. By 2006, VMware had noticed the nascent trend and figured that it could be a huge opportunity. Someone at VMware coined the term “VDI”, and a new industry was born.

Jumpstarting VM Stall

According to VMware, the endpoint of the virtualization journey should ideally be enterprise-wide IT as a Service. The lure of large cost savings, flexibility, and even the eco-benefits of a virtualized data center should be driving organizations to quickly expand their initial virtualization projects into enterprise implementations. But more often than not, virtualization deployments sputter, leaving the organizations with hybrid virtual and physical infrastructures.

 

CA Technologies’ Andi Mann recently coined the term “VM Stall,” defining it as “the tendency of virtualization deployments to stall once the ‘low-hanging’ fruit has been converted (typically around 20% - 30% of servers).” Mann observes that while some organizations “are able to power through it,” the majority become stuck (often permanently) in VM Stall. Mann and others pinpoint several possible causes, including risk avoidance, resourcing, scalability, manageability, process, and coordination issues, plus lack of ISV support, but I submit that the underlying problem is generally adopting a tactical, rather than strategic, approach to virtualization.

 

The Tactical Road to VM Stall

 

VMware started the virtualization revolution as a small company with a unique go-to-market plan: it strove to get an evaluation copy of ESX in the hands of every techie willing to take it for a spin. Inevitably, the techies would be enthralled by the product – and their enthusiasm became evangelism, resulting in additional purchases of ESX in pockets throughout the organization.

 

This strategy worked surprisingly well. VMware’s sales raced ahead as ESX quietly became the de facto virtualization standard. But even as the company matured and began pitching VI3, and then vSphere, as a data center platform, customers continued to commonly deploy it as a point solution for test/dev and low-impact machines instead of developing a comprehensive virtualization plan. These tactical implementations work great in limited deployments, but because they were designed without the requirements of enterprise architecture in mind, they tend to fail miserably when serving as a foundation for a virtualized data center (vDC). In addition to the scalability and management limitations that Mann highlights, these limited deployments typically lack the capability to remedy even basic enterprise virtual infrastructure concerns such VM sprawl, I/O performance issues, and efficient virtual infrastructure provisioning.

 

A Physical Mindset Leads to Data Center Gridlock

 

Because the huge costs and inefficiencies of existing physical infrastructure continue to consume the lion’s share of financial and staffing resources, IT administrators inescapably view their world through a physical filter, meaning that virtual machines are relegated to the status of tertiary infrastructure. It’s a case of the squeaky wheel getting all – or at least most of – the grease, and in the transition to a virtual data center, physical servers do a lot of squeaking: they still need upgrading, rack space, switch ports, UPS slices, cabling, power, and cooling. And tasks such as testing, adding hardware, remote access, performance monitoring, troubleshooting, patching, and capacity planning require far more time than in a vDC.

 

While the virtual machines clearly reduce some costs and staffing requirements, a hybrid physical/virtual environment leads to an overall increase in staffing demands and complexity. IT now has many more objects to manage, including virtual machines, virtualization hosts, vSwitches, and vAdapters –  all with resources typically limited by  the need to contend with physical infrastructure. Even simple bottlenecks in the virtual environment commonly force IT back to the well multiple times for additional licensing, memory, ESX hosts, or storage funds. This reactionary approach to virtualization ensures that any expansion of the environment will be slow and painful – assuming, of course, that it doesn’t stall altogether.

 

Accelerating the Virtual Shift by Emphasizing ROI

 

Doing virtualization right requires making a commitment to the technology as the data center standard. The virtualization platform must become the rule and the remaining physical servers the exceptions. Whether implementing innovative workarounds for lack of ISV support or facilitating effective coordination among functional silos, with a changed organizational mindset – and the necessary preparation – IT can address the challenges of a vDC by deploying the appropriate resources, equipment, tools, and processes.

 

An ROI analysis showing discounted cash flows on a yearly basis can convince senior management to change their way of thinking and invest in the hardware, software, and services necessary for a successful vDC. Financial people are familiar with this format, and it allows them to easily compare the expected return from a strategic virtualization initiative with other opportunities for the organization’s funds.

 

Fortunately, virtualized data center transformation tends to produce a remarkable return on investment that attracts a good deal of attention. The economic enthusiasm is augmented by emphasizing additional benefits in areas such as high availability, enhanced “green” initiatives, and superior disaster recovery. Including a roadmap to private cloud/ITaaS, complete with self-service portal, monitoring, metering, and chargeback can further excite senior executives and free up the funding with surprising ease. When the point of driving hard to a virtualized data center is made clear to those who hold the keys, VM Stall roadblocks are eliminated, dramatically accelerating the virtualization journey.

Is the success of Cisco UCS real?

Synopsis: Virtualization is an exceptional technology in that it enhances staff capabilities, reduces risk of downtime and significantly facilitates “green initiatives” all while providing a remarkable and easily measurable ROI. Organizations want the benefits while IT personnel want the technology – but many need assistance in getting past the VM Stall. Cisco UCS’s success will continue because it significantly accelerates the virtualization journey to the private cloud.

--------------

 

In my frequent discussions with financial analysts covering the virtualization space, I inevitably bring up the important role Cisco UCS can play in facilitating data center transformation. The typical response is a query as to whether or not the UCS is for real.

 

Cisco UCS has only been shipping for around 14 months and its calendar 2010 revenues may amount to just 1% or so of the $40 billion in global server sales. But then again, Cisco UCS is not a server designed for the physical world; it was built as an optimized hosting platform for virtual infrastructure. The number of customers now deploying UCS has grown from approximately 70 at the end of Cisco’s FYQ1 (10/24/09) to 1,700 at the end of FYQ4 (07/31/10).

 

 

A promising indication of continued UCS success is its increasing role as the hardware foundation of key virtualization initiatives. For example, the leading storage manufacturer, EMC, is fiercely gearing up to handle the demand for Vblocks which combine UCS and VMware vSphere with its storage. The third leading storage producer, NetApp, has a similar offering called Secure Multi Tenancy.

 

Organizations delivering IT-as-a-Service gravitate toward UCS in order to solve the security and scaling issues associated with this transition. Hosting provider, Savvis, bases its private cloud service on UCS, and CSC includes UCS/Vblock as the foundation for its cloud computing offering.

 

Unsticking VM Stall

 

CA Technologies’ Andi Mann coined the term “VM Stall” as “the tendency of virtualization deployments to stall once the ‘low-hanging’ fruit has been converted (typically around 20% - 30% of servers).” Mann goes on to provide several possible causes for VM Stall including risk avoidance, resourcing, scalability and manageability.

 

Cisco approached both HP and IBM around five years ago about jointly building a compute platform that would address the performance, management and resourcing issues that were bound to arise once virtualization progressed from a point solution to become the data center standard. After being turned down by both organizations, Cisco instead embarked upon the largest development initiative in the history of the company. It funded Nuova and a team of engineers which, led by VMware co-founder and former CTO, Ed Bugnion, spent 3 years developing the UCS. 

 

Analysts tend to view UCS with skepticism because they don’t see how Cisco can possibly make much headway among what they perceive to be its firmly entrenched server competitors. But customers increasingly understand that the UCS is a new category of equipment designed to alleviate the unique performance issues and complexities that accompany a virtualized data center. The UCS instills the confidence they need to virtualize their production servers onto an enterprise hosting platform rather than onto just, well…servers.

 

Cloud Computing

 

According to VMware, the final stop on the virtualization journey is IT-as-a-Service, also known as cloud computing. Its new vCloud Director is designed to work in conjunction with vSphere to facilitate the construction of hybrid clouds by adding the automation, management, security, accountability and policies required.

 

But regardless of how capable vCD and its eventual software based competitors may be in facilitating a dynamic cloud infrastructure, organizations will still face the challenge of efficiently provisioning the underlying compute, network and storage resources. Not only does Cisco UCS incorporate all three elements as part of its stateless computing architecture, but the XML based API of the UCSM (UCS Manager) will enable a particularly symbiotic relationship with vCD.

 

Engineer Endorsement

 

Lacking the capability to actually configure and work with the various virtualization technologies, I rely upon the opinions of the engineers. The enthusiasm I hear for Cisco UCS is exceptional as exemplified by Mark Domel of Drilling Info.  It is this type of endorsement for the architecture, performance and capabilities of the Cisco UCS that ensures its continued rapid growth.

 

Author Disclosure: I work for a professional services company which is also a leading Cisco partner.

 

VMware introduces Solutions Enablement Toolkits for its partners at VMworld

At VMworld 2010 this week, VMware unveiled its new Solutions Enablement Toolkits (SET). SET represents a unique approach to empowering partner virtualization capabilities and reflects VMware’s years of experience in working with its virtualization channel.

 

Ready, SET, Go

 

While VMware has been around a long time (2010 VMworld is the 7^th such event) and while 50% of new servers are now configured as virtual machines, the typical organization is still only around 20% virtualized. The big stumbling block is inevitably the tier 1 applications such as Microsoft Exchange, ERP and database servers. Successfully virtualizing these mission critical applications requires a complex offering combining both products and services.

 

The SET framework is VMware’s attempt to accelerate what it calls the “virtualization journey” by providing VMware partners with a framework to enable productization of a combined product and services solution. Moreover, it allows partners to quickly add their own unique go-to-market approach and IP in order to customize their offerings.

 

The natural tendency of channel salespeople without extensive experience in an area such as virtualization is to simply grab all of the corporate resources they can when working on an opportunity. This results in both a considerable waste of effort as well as lost opportunities from misapplication of resources. The SET was developed to enable both identification and qualification of opportunities by the salesperson before engaging corporate resources.

 

Phase 1 of the formal SET release in addition to a vSphere jumpstart includes Microsoft Exchange, SAP and SQL solutions – all on vSphere of course. Two other SETs include a desktop virtualization assessment and a VMware View pilot. Additional SETs are planned for release each quarter.

 

Pilot Results

 

The SET templates were originally conceived as a result of VMware working closely with a group of select partners. The first templates were focused on simply upgrading VMware vSphere. The partners reported that the streamlined sales fueled accelerated growth.

 

The initial success of SET indicates it is likely to become a popular tool for VMware’s channel. The framework widens the competitive advantage when pitching a virtualization solution against Microsoft’s Hyper-V. It is the IP bundling component, though, that provides the most interesting opportunity. Partners that are able to capitalize on this aspect will be able to differentiate themselves with branded offerings.

VMware advertisement acknowledges the competition

As VMware has previously demonstrated, an advantage to being the market share leader is an ability to obtain disproportionately large benefits by promoting the category itself rather than combating specific competitors. I was consequently surprised last night to see a backlit display at San Francisco International Airport declaring that desktop virtualization with VMware View costs half as much as with Citrix XenDesktop.

 

Pacific Crest/Mosaic Conference

 

During the Pacific Crest conference in Vail a couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak with nearly two dozen financial analysts about virtualization. Their impressions overwhelmingly were that Citrix has already assumed the VDI leadership mantle. As Perilli virtualization.info pointed out, this perception is likely due in part to the skepticism VMware expressed about the maturity of VDI in its latest earnings call. The XenDesktop mindshare also undoubtedly received a huge boost from the $60M in VDI sales and 1,000 new XD customers that Citrix reported last quarter.

 

I told the analysts that VMware is hardly out of contention for the VDI leadership role, and Goldman Sachs agrees, at least for the next couple of years. While I admittedly have a VMware bias, I continue to see hordes of customers adopting View as their virtual desktop platform. Treating the virtual desktop as an extension of the virtualized data center leverages their existing investments in licensing, equipment, management tools and IT skill sets. Reduced server, storage and administration requirements further make View a compelling solution. The good news for the two leading VDI manufacturers, though, is that the potentially vast virtual desktop market means both are likely to thrive.

 

You Can’t Read too much into an Ad

 

VMware ‘s advertising challenge is likely meant to stave off a fast growing competitor. On the other hand, Citrix peppered cabs and benches at the last San Francisco VMworld with its own advertisements. This campaign may just be VMware’s preemptive strike to reach VMworld attendees as they first come into town.

IT architect finds Cisco UCS capabilities and cost more compelling than servers

One of the fastest growing companies in Texas, Drilling Info, Inc. provides drilling and other data along with analytical tools and applications to over 3000 companies that together account for over 90% of U.S. oil and gas produced. After evaluating several options from traditional server manufacturers for hosting his VMware based virtual infrastructure, Drillinginfo IT architect, Mark Domel, chose Cisco UCS.

"In a typical blade solution," said Mark, "we would have needed to add all these points of management each time we added a blade chassis. We would have had to manage each switch, each chassis and also the SAN fabric by extending it onto yet another fibre channel switch. UCS gives us the flexibility to deploy additional chasses as needed without having to add additional points of management and without needing to configure network and storage switches."

Unlike traditional server products, Cisco UCS was designed from the ground up as a new type of optimized hosting platform for virtual infrastructure. Mark is confident in Cisco's abilities, "Cisco has been engineering and deploying modular and blade solutions for nearly 20 years. They're not behind the curve; they're way ahead of it. Factor in Cisco's history of pioneering technology and you've got a solid solution that's easy for IT architects to believe in. The way I see it is that UCS is about building a total solution, not just a response to a specific datacenter hardware need. Pair up matched virtualization and storage technology and you've got everything you need in a datacenter."

Drillinginfo Virtual Infrastructure Schematic

 

UCS Economics

Mark and the Drillinginfo IT team compared various VMware vSphere host options including Dell Blades, Dell Rackmounts, HP Blades, HP Rackmounts, IBM Blades, IBM Rackmounts and Cisco UCS Blades. He summarized, "As the apples-to-apples quotes starting coming in, we noticed that the UCS solution was significantly less expensive than the alternatives. Not only was the pricing more aggressive, but it required far less of an investment in the networking components as they were already included in the design. Also, UCS utilizes a 10Gb network as its base architecture. This gave it a significant advantage from a future proofing and simplicity of design standpoint."

The Dell Rackmount solution, while considerably more expensive than the Cisco UCS, was the most competitive of the non-UCS quotes in both price and rack space consumed. It allowed Drillinginfo to use the four onboard NICs with ISCSI TOE for the SAN and an add-in quad-port NIC for the LAN, although Mark said, "the cabling would still be a steep administrative burden."

Other Key Factors in the Decision Process

The competitive up-front cost of the UCS was just one of the many variables weighing in Mark's decision process. Other key points included cabling, implementation ease, growth, break-fix, administration, compatibility, supportability and size.

Cabling: "There's this great image floating around the Internet of a comparison between standard servers, a blade center, and UCS. It's really very telling. Having worked in a very diverse and segregated network environment and deployed both high density traditional servers as well as blade solutions I can tell you that neither are fun from a datacenter administrator's point of view."

 

Implementation: "In our case the time it took to un-box the solution, rack, cable, bring online, and install VMware was about six hours with two guys. We were building VMs and remarking at how fast it all went. Planning and managing cabling from a traditional blade solution to the storage and Ethernet networks is a usually a major task. However, with UCS it was all just as simple as choosing how much redundancy and performance we wanted between the 6120s and the chassis and then connecting the uplinks to the network and storage."

Growth: "It was very important to me that we have a solution that's simple to grow. UCS embodies that in a way none of the other solutions could. Adding another chassis is as simple as racking it and plugging in the interconnect and power cables. That's it! You don't have to configure the LAN, SAN, or individual chassis modules. Just plug it into the UCS fabric and you're off to the races, amazing. Additionally, I have pools configured such that if a blade server of a certain hardware specification is inserted UCS will automatically configure it to be a VMware host with WWNN, WWPN, MAC, and naming from pools. Being able to pre-provision storage and network security devices based on hardware id pools is just awesome."

Break-fix: "Replacement of a blade no longer means getting involved with anything other than simply replacing the gear. We can have the replacement blade shipped to our collocation provider, we put the blade in maintenance mode, they remove the defective, insert the replacement, and we assign that replacement blade to the defective's profile. UCS will automatically give that replacement blade the hardware identifiers associated with that profile. Simply put, UCS abstracts the hardware from the server. This requires boot from SAN, which is incredibly convenient."

Administration: "The UCS Manager interface is far and away the best of breed interface I've used. In comparing it to the Dell, HP, and IBM systems I've managed in the past, I certainly have developed a love for how logically it's laid out. A lot of what you'll pay extra for to buy something like IBM's Open Fabric Manager is included in the UCS solution – multi-chassis blade redundancy for example. It doesn't require a separate server and is already redundant as the solution is designed that way. UCS feels to me like it's more IT administrator centric than the counterparts that I've used."

Compatibility: "Microsoft guest operating systems on VMware virtualization on Cisco UCS blade servers with EMC storage generated the perfect union of compatibility for us. Every vendor involved is aware of our solution and accepts that it all works perfectly together."

Supportability: "Both EMC and VMware have support facilities with which most IT personnel are familiar. Cisco's TAC is pretty unique to network and security administrators. Well sys admins rejoice, you don't know how good the network guys have had it. TAC is a true gem in the support realm. Those guys are all-stars technically and Cisco's support model is the best I've encountered. Throughout my time as a network engineer I've always had comfort in knowing that TAC had my back if something hit the fan. I'm now so glad to see that as an architect I can put a solution in place that gives our team a strong safety net. When we call TAC about UCS, we do so knowing that that we'll be well taken care of despite the many technical disciplines that might be required to troubleshoot and resolve the issue. The typical TAC guy is going to be far more versed in Ethernet networking, storage networking and virtualization than when calling a traditional server manufacturer. I certainly don't trust any other server vendors to jump into the CLI of my production SAN switches."

Size: "Size is everything. Relatively speaking, we're a small shop. I couldn't commit to a solution designed to start at massive scale. We needed something that could start off just providing basic redundancy and scale to meet our needs over the next five years of growth. UCS fits the bill. There are tons of presentations showing how big it gets but I think Cisco sometimes forgets to show how small it works too."

Savings so Far

Drillinginfo was able to reduce its footprint from five racks down to two, saving nearly three-thousand dollars a month in collocation costs. Other cost savings result from decreased Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server licensing required under virtualization. About 70 VMs currently run on the three vSphere UCS blades, and according to Mark, "they're dramatically outperforming their physical counterparts. The savings in power consumption alone is enough to pay for those hosts and licensing within a year. We chose to install the SQL servers directly on the blades to take advantage of the full memory, CPU, and IO capabilities of the systems. We've reduced our licensing costs there dramatically by cutting the number of sockets by 75% and increased performance by 400%."

"So far we've seen an average of about four times performance increase by using virtualization on the new Intel Nehalem-class processors when compared to the two and three year old physical systems. This has reduced the quantity of our operating systems and applications by virtue of the new VM systems outperforming the old model, saving licensing dollars and IT administrative costs.

"Although I'm not aware of the numbers, I know we've saved monies in our travel budget by not having to reimburse admins for trips to the collocation facility. Between UCS Manager and VMware vCenter we're able to do just about everything remotely."

Future Drillinginfo Virtualization Initiatives

In addition to evaluating the potential virtualization of its desktop environment, Drillinginfo is also increasingly enabling cloud access to its customers in order to access data in a raw format. The company is considering eventually making VMware Lab Manager virtual machines available to customers to help them build their own environments. The UCS plays an important part in enabling its cloud activities by providing great flexibility for multi-tenancy environments. According to Mark, "…it lets the IT staff pre-provision a UCS slot to match a pool which is then automatically configured for the ESX host to provision storage, etc."

Mark believes that the success of the UCS will spur other server manufactures to step up their games. From this perspective, he compares the UCS with Apple's iPhone, "The iPhone package Apple put forward was so innovative, well integrated and high quality that everyone else had to take it up a notch. The same thing will happen with the virtualization market and everyone will benefit from Cisco's hard work."

Drillinginfo's virtual infrastructure environment includes:

UCS

2x Cisco UCS 6120XP 20-port Fabric Interconnects

2x Cisco UCS 5108 Chassis

2x Cisco UCS B250 M1 blades w/ 2x Intel x5550 CPU, 48x 4GB PC3-10600 RAM, 1x Emulex M71KR-E 10Gb CNA

1x Cisco UCS B250 M2 blade w/  2x Intel x5650 CPU, 48x 4GB PC3-10600 RAM, 1x Emulex M71KR-E 10Gb CNA

3x Cisco UCS B200 M1 blades w/ 2x Intel x5550 CPU, 12x 4GB PC3-10600 RAM, 1x Emulex M71KR-E 10Gb CNA

2 x Cisco UCS B200 M1 blades w/ 2x Intel e5520 CPU, 12x 4GB PC3-10600 RAM, 1x Emulex M71KR-E 10Gb CNA

Switches

2x Cisco Catalyst 3560E-48 Ethernet switches

2x Cisco MDS 9124 Fibre-channel switches

Storage

1x EMC Celerra NS120

 - 2x Celerra NS40 Data Movers

 - 1x CX4-120 w/ 2x 300GB FC DAE, 2x 1TB SATA DAE, 1x 67GB SSD DAE

Software

VMware Enterprise Plus

Cisco Nexus 1000v

Microsoft Server 2008 R2 Datacenter

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise

Ubuntu Server 9.10 x64

Thanks to Brent Blaha and the INX Austin team for introducing me to Mark.

Use ROI to achieve virtualization success

Virtualization Zen Koan*:  If an organization virtualizes without an ROI analysis, did it achieve any savings?

 

* Xen Koan for Citrix shops

 

A CA funded 2007 independent global study found the most important factor to virtualization success as “being able to measure performance of the virtualized environment.”  The study also showed that 44% of the 800 respondents were, “unable to declare their deployment a success.”

 

As I wrote earlier this year, lack of an ROI analysis makes it less likely that organizations will adopt a strategic approach to virtualizing their data centers. Mixed environments of both physical and virtual machines instead continue to perpetuate the difficulties of a physical infrastructure while also incorporating new complexities of a virtual environment – straining the limited financial and staffing resources available.

 

The Risk of a Partially Virtualized Data Center

 

Virtualization is a very impressive technology with easily understood consolidation benefits. The low-hanging fruit of test/dev and minor impact servers can often be virtualized without a great deal of cost or effort. But once established, the virtual machine population inevitably undergoes pressure to expand. More intense demands for performance, scalability and reliability can quickly exceed the capabilities of the original equipment.

 

Tools and processes put into place to manage a limited number of non essential servers often prove inadequate for more mission-critical applications. New requirements for collaboration come into play for server, storage, network and development teams who may not be accustomed to working together.

 

Administrative complexity increases as well. The inefficiencies, troubleshooting and management requirements of a physical infrastructure remain along with administering a whole new set of virtual infrastructure components including virtual machines, hypervisors, virtualization hosts, vSwitches and vAdapters. Implementations can slow or even stall as IT leaders, already discouraged by continuous trips to the well for infrastructure upgrade funding, back off from their virtualization advocacy.

 

Using an ROI Analysis to Change the Virtualization Perspective

 

Going through the exercise of an ROI analysis leaves no choice but to see the big picture possibilities of virtualization. Rather than operating a physical data center with virtual machines, IT organizations can architect a virtualized data center (vDC) that runs some physical servers as exceptions. This flip in perspective can make all the difference in terms of the level of success achieved. 

 

Imagine, for example, someone asking if he should purchase a Ford T-Bird or a Chevy pick-up. The vehicle’s intended purpose is obviously the most important factor in making the best choice. IT organizations commonly lose sight of this truism as they ponder vDC architecture decisions without considering the ultimate objectives. They compare vSphere against Hyper-V, EMC versus NetApp and HP Servers against Cisco UCS based upon features or price instead of upon each solution’s relative ability to enable the desired end-state.

 

Quantifying the respective benefits and costs of an enterprise vDC implementation frees up the funding required to do virtualization right. Comparing discounted cash flows for a vDC against the projected return of other corporate initiatives enables senior management to gauge just how compelling virtualization tends to be – provided it is deployed effectively on an enterprise scale. Ensuring vDC success furthermore lays the groundwork for additional efficiencies from the automation and resource utilization transparency of a private cloud architecture.

 

Special thanks to David McNichols of Comstor who called my attention to the CA study referenced in the article.

 

How to discourage producers from producing

Imagine a company deciding to change its sales compensation plan. Rather than providing incentives for salespeople who achieve difficult quotas, it instead implements a sliding commission rate that declines as sales increase. The most talented salespeople would be the most severely impacted and human nature being what it is, they would certainly reduce their efforts accordingly. Business would decline.

The U.S. government is currently debating whether or not allowing expiration of the Bush tax cuts for high-earning individuals will reduce their incentive to spend. This, though, should be a relatively minor concern. The real problem is the reduced incentive to produce. I remember a friend of my father’s who was a renowned surgeon during the period of 70% top marginal tax rates. He would only work 6 months of the year – saying he refused to work for 30% of his money.

The taxpayers targeted by the current administration are the ones most instrumental to our economic success. Many of them are small business owners and, particularly in a credit challenged economy, need their profits in order to facilitate growth. Taxing away earnings leaves the owners with both less incentive and less ability to continue to invest in their companies. Small business is the primary driver of employment; meaning that the higher tax rates will continue to thwart economic progress.

Cisco UCS vs. HP BladeSystem Matrix: an Update

HP's Chief Architect for Infrastructure Software and Blades, Gary Thome, responded to my December 2009 post writing that HP "does not see UCS as comparable in functionality to BladeSystem Matrix, which we believe is in a category by itself." This argument is not without merit; either the EMC/vSphere/UCS Vblock or the NetApp/vSphere/UCS Secure Multi-Tenancy might better compare with the Matrix, particularly when purchased in conjunction with optional EVA storage. I nonetheless decided to maintain the Matrix vs. UCS face-off in this updated comparison for the following reasons:

1. Both customers and other industry players perceive Matrix as competition to UCS. Egenera VP of Marketing, Ken Oestreich, emphasized this in his blog post last month.
2. HP's Web site positions Matrix as competition to UCS. [see author update note below]
3. The Matrix press release last year closely followed the UCS announcement and included a jab at Cisco's data center strategy. Publications such as InfoWorld, CIO.com, searchdatacenter.com and The Register all ran articles spotlighting Matrix and UCS as competing products.

Technical Advances

One of my colleagues received the following unsolicited email a couple of months ago from an HP rep:

From: Citte, Chad (ESS Mid-Market Partner Specialist)

Sent: Monday, May 17, 2010 1:29 PM
Subject: IT Critics Declare HP Dominance Over Cisco

In recent IT competitive news, HP is capturing wins across the board. While Cisco is busy fighting for credibility with their “Unified Computing Strategy” (UCS), HP continues to advance without missing a beat. 

As can be inferred from the email, the Matrix has advanced since its debut including a tripling of the number of supported servers to 1,500 and support for VMware vSphere 4.0 (though not the VMware Virtual Distributed Switch). The full list of Matrix enhancements can be found in the new HP BladeSystem Matrix 6.0 Update 1 Release Notes, and an updated UCS vs. Matrix matrix follows at the end of this post.

Despite its enhancements, the Matrix remains a daunting assimilation of existing HP products including enclosures, blades, Virtual Connect switches and 16 HP Insight Software packages. The Central Management Server (or servers) is similarly comprised of HP SIM, Storage Works XP CommandView, etc. as can be found on Page 13 in the Compatibility Chart. Conceivably, the Matrix functionality could be built outside of the "Matrix". Unlike the Cisco UCS, however, which only automates the provisioning of virtual servers, the Matrix automates both the virtual and physical environments.

Cisco Fighting for Credibility with UCS?

The HP email claims that Cisco is fighting for credibility with its UCS, although evidence indicates otherwise:

• Sales: UCS sales continue to soar. A May 12, 2010 article in The Register said that Cisco's UCS sequential revenue growth last quarter was up 168% with the unique customer base doubling to over 900. A Cisco June blog post put the number of UCS customers at around 1,000. HP does not disclose BladeSystem Matrix sales, but discussions with both current and former HP employees indicate total implementations are around 60 – 75. Customers, though, are unable to upgrade any software or firmware in the solution and be in a supported configuration. Even a bug fix in one of the myriad Matrix components cannot be installed until the entire Matrix solution is tested and certified with the fix, which can take months. Many Matrix customers have apparently given up on dealing with the complexities and now run its blades as just standard servers.
• Partnerships: Cisco UCS is generating outstanding momentum with key industry players. Two of the top three leading storage manufacturers have strategic virtualization offerings that build upon UCS as the compute platform.
• Customer References: Customers rave about UCS. The hosting provider, Savvis, for example is basing its private cloud hosting strategy upon the UCS. Vince Stephens, TASER International VP of Network Operations, said, "We realized we couldn't build the data center of the future with yesterday's technology". Joe Onisick's post shows how UCS converted him from skeptic to advocate stating, "UCS changes the game for server architecture." Michael Heil says, "Terms that come to mind that describe UCS are simplified management, elegant design, paradigm shift, future of computing, time and cost saver, etc."
• Buzz: A Google Blogs search shows 8,553 results for Cisco UCS compared to 228 for the HP Matrix, and I could not find a single customer touting its Matrix experience. A Twitter search inevitably shows abundant UCS related Tweets. HP Matrix is generally nowhere to be found.
• Awards: Cisco UCS has garnered both awards and trade journal accolades including the VMworld 2009 Gold Award for Hardware in Virtualization, the Best of Interop 2009 Award and the Best Data Center Innovation Award at BladeSystems Insight 2009 Event. HP Matrix has won no awards.

Price Comparison

Some media stories have speculated that HP's low server margins will force Cisco to reduce UCS prices. The relative capability of UCS vs. Matrix to enable a successfully virtualized data center (vDC) and the associated huge savings and other benefits matters far more than any cost differential. But for a reality check, I compared pricing for both UCS and Matrix assuming 32 blades (UCS B200 M2 and HP BL 490c respectively) with 96 GB of DDR-3 1066 dual rank RAM. I used the lower of prices from the HP Web site or the HP BladeSystem Matrix TCO calculator and then validated that they were equivalent to, or lower than, the CDW Web site. I used Cisco's MSRP UCS pricing which customers should easily be able to obtain from their Cisco partner.

 
 
The table shows the UCS is less expensive for this configuration. Additionally, fewer switches and cables result in lower ongoing operating costs than the Matrix, while the Fabric Interconnect 10GB Ethernet switching capability helps further reduce comparative costs as the units scale.

Implementation

The Matrix requires a 2-week Implementation Service by an HP-Certified Matrix Professional from HP Engineering Services. The company is considering a partner implementation program; although one of the two partners with whom I spoke told me he was not enthusiastic about going through the arduous certification requirements. The other liked the idea, but said his company will probably continue approaching converged infrastructure from a best-of-breed approach rather than specifically promoting HP Matrix.

Cisco has certified its partners to provide UCS implementation since its debut, and customers can also take a 2-day UCS boot camp. Mark Domel of DrillingInfo, recently sent me an email describing his experience with installing UCS:

"In our case the time it took to un-box the solution, rack, cable, bring online, and install VMware was about six hours with two guys. We were building VMs and remarking at how fast it all went. Planning and managing cabling from a traditional blade solution to the storage and Ethernet networks is a usually a major task. However, with UCS it was all just as simple as choosing how much redundancy/performance we wanted between the 6120s and the chassis and then connecting the uplinks to the network and storage."

Virtualization Philosophy

Cisco UCS was developed from a clean slate over a period of three years under the leadership of VMware's co-founder and former CTO as an optimized hosting platform for virtual infrastructure. It supplements the hypervisor in managing the virtualization environment and provides an XML API to which anyone can write and orchestrate the entire compute and network environment. This will enable a particularly symbiotic relationship with VMware's upcoming Redwood (vCloud Services Director).

HP Matrix is designed as a self-service provisioning portal handling tasks from migrating virtual machines to managing VM lifecycles. These capabilities while ambitious, can put it at odds with data center architects striving to run a vDC as the standard with (if necessary) a limited number of physical servers as exceptions. For example, the Matrix' Virtual Connect component is pitched to server teams as a way to manage the switches without the inconvenience of network group oversight. And while Matrix includes Roles Based Access Control, once an HP enclosure is incorporated into the Matrix in production mode, the network team cannot even make changes such as VLAN configurations.

Wrap Up

HP makes great servers and recently passed IBM as the world leader in server sales. But unlike the UCS which is on its way to becoming a major player in the vDC space, the Matrix' tepid reception does not bode well. In order to avoid a fate as the "New Coke" of the virtualization era, future versions of the Matrix likely will need to incorporate the type of resiliancy and management ease that is contributing to the success of the UCS.

 

Cisco UCS vs. HP Matrix Matrix - Updated

Attribute	Cisco UCS	HP Matrix
Enterprise scalability	14 chasses (eventually 40), 112 blades – potentially thousands of VMs. Up to 5 UCS chasses in a rack.	1,500 total logical servers (or up to 70 VM hosts – whichever is less). Can combine up to 4 CMS to reach 6,000 logical servers, but no clustering or information sharing. Server profiles cannot be moved from one CMS to another unless using EVA with HP IR & like logical servers on both CMS servers. Up to two C7000 chasses in a rack (due to high power requirements).
Redundancy	All components redundant	Central Management Server has no fault tolerance or clustering and little or no redundancy.
System Management Software Packages Required	UCSM	Onboard Administrator, Systems Insight Manager, Virtual Connect, Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager, Insight Dynamics VSE. (Note: ID-VSE has capabilities that UCSM lacks including trending/baselining, physical and virtual resource monitoring).
"Closed" Architecture Limitations	Cisco UCS requires Cisco servers, CNAs and Fabric Interconnects for optimal performance	Requires one of the following specific HP ProLiant blades: HP ProLiant BL260c, HP ProLiant BL460c, HP ProLiant BL465c, HP ProLiant BL490c, HP ProLiant BL495c, HP ProLiant BL680c or HP ProLiant BL685c.1
vNIC & vHBA Support	56 vNICs per server for every 2 port Palo Adapter	LAN – Ethernet 32 x 10 Gb downlinks to server ports with 2 Flex-10 modules & each server can have 8 FlexNICs. SAN – Fiber 16 X 8 Gb 2/4/8Gb auto negotiating server ports
Automated Server Provisioning	Virtual Only. Automated physical server provisioning requires 3rd party tools.	Both Virtual and Physical
Storage Support	Works with most leading industry storage manufacturers to enable automated provisioning, though requires 3rd party management applications. Particularly tight integration with both EMC and NetApp.	Automated storage provisioning only supported at this time for HP EVA – and only in experimental mode. Otherwise, storage must be manually provisioned.
Unified Fabric/Converged Network	Both Ethernet and Fibre Channel enabled without purchasing separate infrastructure components.	HP does not currently support the convergence of Ethernet and Fibre Channel in any Blade System products, although Flex Fabric has been announced which will converge Ethernet & FC within an HP enclosure, but which will not reduce cabling to or from the enclosure. Each enclosure requires 2 Ethernet and FC interconnect devices and these must be Virtual Connect Flex-10 modules.
Systems Management Software	None. Cisco's approach is to utilize the XML API to which anyone can write and orchestrate the entire compute and network environment. VMware's Ionix is an example, BMC Bladelogic another	Yes. Requires HP hardware and software.
Stateless Computing	Yes. UCS Service Profiles can capture the entire personality of the server and it's hardware configuration	Limited capabilities using Virtual Connect, but the hardware configurations must be identical. While VC does have Roles Based Access Control enabling the network team to configure VC, once it is in production as part of Matrix, the network administrators can no longer make changes.
Ability to deliver native network performance to VMs via hypervisor bypass	Yes	No
Network traffic monitoring & application of live-migration aware network and security policies	Cisco VN-Link / Nexus 1000V	None
Memory	96GB Half Width Blade and 384GB Full Width Blade (8GB DIMMs)	With HP BL490C half-height blades : 144 GB w/8 GB DIMMs, 192 w/16 GB DIMMs With HP BL685c (AMD) blades: 256 GB (NOTE: New HP BL620 AMD based blades have been announced with larger memory capabilities but are not yet part of Matrix)
OS Support for Management SW	No separate management server required	Windows Server® 2008 SP2/R22 Windows Server® 2003 SP2/R2
Database Support for Management SW	None required	Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP1, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP3, Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition - though only up to 500 systems and 5,000 events and no remote database support
Browser Support for Management SW	Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher; Mozilla Firefox 3.0 or higher	Internet Explorer 7 or 8 or Firefox 3.x (some limitations)
Runtime Environment for Management SW	Sun JRE 1.6 or later	None required
Added Prerequisite SW for Management SW	None	.NET 1.1 Framework, .NET 2.0 SP1 Frameowrk, .NET 3.0 Framework, .NET 3.5 SP1 Framework, AP .Net service, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Adobe Flash Player Version 9 or 10, MS iSCSI Software Initiator, SNMP, TCP/IP with DNS installed, Windows Automated Installation KIT (WAIK) Version 1.1; Windows Server 2003/2008
Hypervisor Support	Supports any X86-based hypervisor. Particular advantages from tight integration with vSphere	VMware ESX Server 3.5.0 Update 4 or 5 VMware ESX Server 4.0 & Update 1 VMware ESXi Citrix XenServer 5.5 Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V SP2/R2 Xen on RHEL Xen on SLES
Guest OS Support (server)	Windows Server 2003 R2, 32 bit, 64 bit, Windows 7 with Hyper-V, 64 bit, Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V, Standard and Enterprise Edition, 64 bit o VMware ESX 3.5 U4, VMware vSphere 4, 4 U1, 4i, 4i U1 o RedHat RHEL 5.3, 64 bit, RHEL 5.4 KVM, 64 bit, RHEL 6 KVM, 64 bit, RedHat Rhat 4.8, 64 bit, and Fedora Novell SLES 10 SP3, 64 bit, SLES 11, 64 bit, SLES 11 SP1 XEN, aSLES 11 XEN , 64 bit Solaris x86 10.x, 64 bit Oracle OVM 2.1.2, 2.2 Oracle Enterprise Linux XenServer Citrix	Windows Server® 2008/2003. Microsoft Windows Vista. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.8 Update 7: 32 bit Update 7: AMD64 and Intel® EM64T Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 Update 3: 32 bit Update 3: AMD64 and Intel® EM64T SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP3 & SLES 11 (Note: RHEL & SLES VM guests on Hyper-V are not supported by Insight Orchestration or Insight Recovery. Insight Recovery supports non-clustered Hyper-V Windows guests as a technology preview).
Distributed Virtual Switch Support	VMware vSphere vDS & Cisco Nexus 1000V	None – just standard VMware vSwitch
Guest OS Support (VDI)	All	None (No Matrix automated provisioning support )
VMware vCenter Integration	Yes	Limited
3rd party development	XML-based API	None
QOS	Yes	None
V2P Capability	No, unless in conjunction with certain storage partners	Yes
Switch Efficiency	One set of top rack switches manages up to 14 chasses (eventually 40).	One set of top of rack switches required for each rack.
Minimum cables required per chassis (inc. FC & redundancy)	2	6
Maximum cables potentially needed per chassis (inc. FC & redundancy)	8	34
FCoE	Yes	Limited – only within the chassis with FlexFabric.
Complexity and ease of implementation	Very fast set-up, though designing and fine-tuning service profiles and templates for optimizing virtual infrastructure provisioning/management can take time. Many Cisco channel partners are certified in implementation and customers can also take UCS classes.	60 hour on-site engagement required by HP Implementation Service – no partner certified implementers. Customers also unable to upgrade any software or firmware in the solution and still be in a supported configuration.
Ease of Support	Customers can apply their own patches and updates to individual components as appropriate.	If a bug is found in any one of the Matrix components, the customer is prohibited from installing an update until the entire Matrix solution is tested and certified.
Mfg. Support	3 -year	3-Year

 

¹ While the c7000 will work with any HP ProLiant blade, Matrix only works with the blade models listed.

²HP strongly recommends the use of Windows Server 2008 SP2, Enterprise Edition (64-bit version) on a ProLiant server with at least 32 GB memory

 

Author Disclosure: I work for a professional services company which is also a leading Cisco partner. I researched this article carefully, but welcome any corrective feedback.

07/22/2010:  Author Follow-up Note:  HP just changed its Web Site page titled "The Real Story about the Cisco UCS " that I linked to in my article. Here is the original page as a PDF on ViewYonder.

07/26/2010: Author Follow-up Note: HP’s Director Biz Strategy blogged in response to this post. I in turn commented back on his post, but my comment was taken off line (I assume it is going through some sort of standard review process). While I did not keep an exact copy, it is close to the following:

---

I am the blogger mentioned in your post. addressed the comparison issue at the beginning of my article, and still stand by it 100%.  In fact, unbeknown to me, searchdatacenter.com published an article the day before the publication of my post leading off with a grouping of Cisco UCS and HP Matrix.

In terms of access to HP experts, Jason Treu was my only point of contact. While Gary Thome personally and graciously had taken the time to speak with me following my first post, I know how busy he is and did not feel it appropriate to reach out to him directly. Instead I sent the following email to Jason. He never responded.

From: Steve Kaplan
Sent: Friday, June 11, 2010 6:41 AM
To: jason.treu@hp.com
Subject: Questions for HP

Hi Jason,

Gary asked that I bring any questions to HP.  I am planning to write an updated post on UCS vs Matrix, and have the following questions:

1)   Ballpark # of Matrix customers

2)   Reference list of 3 customers to call

3)   Any information on the upcoming channel program for authorized channel implementation of Matrix

4)   Any other relevant updates/capabilities about Blade Server Matrix.

Thanks,

Steve

[my contact information including both office and cellular phone numbers]

Microsoft says VMware has determined virtualization is an OS feature. What?

The June 9, 2010 Microsoft Virtualization Team Blog is titled, VMWare (sic) figures out that virtualization is an OS feature. The post makes a rather inexplicable, and clearly incorrect, argument that VMware now has embraced Microsoft's perspective. It's remarkable not because of the misunderstanding of VMware products or strategies, but because it unabashedly proclaims what has previously been a less emphasized Microsoft assertion: "Virtualization is simply a role within the Windows® operating environment."

What's Wrong with Virtualization as a Feature of the OS?

VMware would certainly make a case that running virtualization as an OS feature not only incurs unnecessary bloat, but also results in less performance, reliability and security. Microsoft undoubtedly would claim the opposite. But more importantly than the technical arguments are the very different approaches to virtualization that result from the two perspectives.

VMware's promotion of virtualization as a platform mandates not only exceptional reliability and performance, but also encourages development of enterprise toolsets such as Fault Tolerance, Storage VMotion, vDS for virtualizing the network and many more. Gartner validated this advantage when it recently positioned VMware as the only firm in the Leaders quadrant of the Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure.

On the other hand, I've written about Microsoft's advocacy of a slow, evolutionary virtualization journey designed to "preserve and extend existing investments", or in other words, maintain the status quo. The downside is that this approach incurs unnecessary expense, risk and inefficiencies. It also can lead to less than optimal architecture and product choices.

The Private Cloud

While inefficient, organizations can still be successful with deploying virtualization at a grass roots level and expanding the environment until they eventually end up with a virtualized data center. Despite Microsoft's advocacy to the contrary, this approach is not likely to be successful with establishing a private cloud.

Transitioning IT to a service where resources are dynamically allocated as needed and charged as consumed requires a commitment to new technologies, equipment and operations processes. Only an enterprise level approach will free up the economic and political resources necessary to effect the transformation.

 

 

Microsoft pushes virtualization partners to promote Hyper-V

"Growth in Hyper-V is inevitable. It wins with price sensitive customers, small customers, and customers new to virtualization."

    -VMware partner quoted in the MS Virtualization Profitability Kit

 

A Virtualization.info article this morning titled, Microsoft admits that VMware has been the only choice for partners so far, reported Microsoft's "call to action" beseeching the partner channel to promote Hyper-V. A Microsoft Virtualization Partner Profitability Kit claims the lower cost of the Redmond giant's virtualization offering allows partners to "sell more of it". The hypervisor huckstering approach, though, is not likely to be widely embraced by entrenched VMware partners.

Partner Profitability Model

The Kit, while primarily encouraging VMware partners to also sell Microsoft, includes a Partner Profitability modeling tool that calculates incremental revenues and margins from promoting Hyper-V products rather than vSphere. It emphasizes an assumed concentration on "more price-sensitive" customers.

The modeling tool's default assumptions, not surprisingly, show that a Hyper-V practice results in more business than vSphere – driving $111K of increased revenues the first year which increases to $1.1M by year three. A 2-month payback covers the $16,000 (2.5 days) of training required for converting two VMware engineers to Hyper-V prowess.

One of two primary variables determining whether the outcome will favor Hyper-V or vSphere, the assumption that lower Hyper-V licensing costs enable an upsell of additional hardware/software products has only a minor impact on the results. The implication is that spending less money on virtualization software frees up funds to purchase more of said software along with more hardware. But virtualization should be part of a strategic initiative that first calculates the overall savings and then works backward to determine the optimal architecture and associated products required to enable the savings.

The second and truly key assumption is that pitching Hyper-V results in a higher win rate in price sensitive segments. This is a huge stretch, especially since VMware continues to dominate the market despite the free inclusion of Hyper-V with every copy of Windows Server. It also disregards the significantly higher percentage of servers that can be successfully virtualized with vSphere due to superior performance and many more enterprise capabilities such as zero downtime and the ability to virtualize the network.

Partner Motivation

As Alessandro Perilli points out in his Virtualization.info article, Microsoft's channel entreaty is a departure from its messaging focus on customers. Microsoft is one of the savviest companies on the planet, and certainly understands the value of channel influence. I recently met with the COO of a sizeable Windows shop who opened the conversation with the declaration, "I've made my decision. We're going with Hyper-V". A few weeks and an ROI analysis later, however, the purchase orders were issued for VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus along with a large Cisco UCS.

The Profitability Tool Kit argues that increased deals and product sales more than compensate for the lower Microsoft revenues and margins. Offering a lower-cost Hyper-V solution enables partners to become trusted advisors. It also warns that increasingly customers "will choose the partner that offers them the lower-cost, feature-parity Microsoft solution".

Despite the apparent hullabaloo over Hyper-V vs. vSphere, virtualization plays a relatively minor role at Microsoft and virtualization revenues result only from associated management products. It is hard to imagine the Redmond giant truly fired up about Hyper-V with so much going on from Office 2010 to Xbox to Bing. VMware, on the other hand, lives or dies by its ability to provide the most innovative, high quality and and effective virtualization solutions. It spent over 3,000,000 engineering hours alone on developing vSphere over a period of three years.

Attending VMware Partner Exchange or VMworld quickly reveals both partner and customer fervor for the technology. But I doubt whether it is unbridled passion or the ability to make a little extra margin that drives partner loyalty. VMware provides the best and easiest way for organizations to achieve their overall business goals which, in the end, is the best way for a partner to build a successful and profitable consultancy.

 

Author Disclaimer: I work for a leading VMware partner and am VMware biased, but the opinions expressed in this article are my own and are not approved or endorsed by my employer.

Calculating the optimal Microsoft SQL licenses for virtualization

Microsoft recently changed its SQL Server licensing products, prices and policies under virtualization. The SQL Server licensing is now similar to the Windows Server licensing in the sense that there are three flavors of SQL Server: Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter, and as with Windows Server Enterprise, the Enterprise license allows 4 instances of SQL Server (either Standard or Enterprise) while the Datacenter Edition allows unlimited instances. (Note that under the CPU licensing model, SQL Server Enterprise must be licensed for all of the physical CPUs in order to allow the 4 instances). Both Datacenter Editions (Windows and SQL) are only licensed by CPU, and both require a minimum of two physical CPUs. Both products must be licensed for all of the physical CPUs on the virtualization host.

There are also important differences. While Windows Server requires CALs, SQL Server, when licensed by CPU, does not. Windows Server Datacenter pricing at $2,999 per CPU is in the ballpark of Windows Server Enterprise which lists at $3,999 per server including 25 CALs. SQL Server Datacenter, on the other hand, costs $54,990 per CPU (without SA) which is twice the $27,495 cost per CPU for SQL Server Enterprise.

Another important difference involves licensing for migrating SQL virtual machines between virtualization hosts whether using VMware VMotion, Microsoft Live Migration or Citrix XenMotion, something Microsoft refers to as Application Server License Mobility. With Windows Server, each CPU on every host in the cluster must be licensed if a VM is moved more than once within a 90 day period. With SQL Server Enterprise or Datacenter Edition, however, running instances can be migrated as needed across servers within a server farm – there is no 90 day minimum period before reassignment. The caveat is that for SQL deployments licensed under the Per CPU licensing model, the number of CPUs on the target host cannot exceed the number of CPU licenses.

Optimizing SQL Server Licensing for a Virtualized Environment

In a physical world, many disparate servers running either SQL Server Standard or SQL Server Enterprise leads organizations to frequently license SQL Server by the Server/CAL model. The relatively small number of hosts of a virtualized data center (vDC) generally makes the CPU licensing model preferable.

An important exception is an organization running a single instance of SQL Server Enterprise and three or less instances of SQL Server Standard on a 2-CPU server. Purchasing two licenses of SQL Server Enterprise to cover both physical CPUs of a virtualization host would be more expensive than running the instances physically. Licensing costs equivalent to the physical scenario can still be achieved by licensing only the portion of the physical processor actually used for the Enterprise instance. This scenario is explained in more detail below.

The ability to consolidate multiple SQL instances onto a single host combined with application server license mobility rules generally make either SQL Server Enterprise or SQL Server Datacenter the best choice for a vDC. A 2-CPU VMware vSphere host, for example, running two licenses of SQL Server Enterprise could run up to eight instances of either SQL Server Standard or Enterprise. Additionally, these instances can either be VMotioned to another host in the cluster or even utilize the continuous availability of vSphere Fault Tolerance without requiring additional SQL licensing for the target host.

An organization running no SQL Server Enterprise and less than eight instances of SQL Server Standard on a 2-CPU server will spend less by purchasing just the SQL Server Standard licenses. Of course, other criteria may warrant instead purchasing two copies of SQL Server Enterprise such as a desire for VMotion, HA or Fault Tolerance as well as to take advantage of the enhanced capabilities of SQL Server Enterprise or to allow for expected SQL Server application growth.

Calculating the optimal type and number of SQL Server licenses can be complex, particularly with a mix of SQL Standard and Enterprise instances. This updated on-line calculator (or the Excel version) provides the lowest-cost licensing option for SQL Server when licensed by processor on a 2-CPU virtualization host.

The calculator assumes that new licenses are being purchased. If an organization has already purchased SQL Server Enterprise with SA prior to May 1, 2010, it has the grandfathered right to run unlimited instances of SQL Server VMs, "as long as Software Assurance coverage remains active and until the SQL Server version that follows SQL Server 2008 R2 is generally available".

Special Case: SQL Server Enterprise Licensing by Processors Used for SMBs

If an organization has only a few instances of SQL Server, with one of them being Enterprise, it has the option to license Enterprise by Processors Used. In this case, as long as the SQL Enterprise guest is only using a single virtual processor, then only one SQL Server Enterprise processor license is required for the Enterprise guest. SQL Server Standard licenses are still required for each guests running SQL Server Standard. Another option to potentially reduce licensing costs is to utilize the server/CAL licensing model instead of the per CPU model. A third option would be to use a virtualization host with only one CPU; the SQL Server Enterprise license would then also accommodate an additional three instances of SQL Server Standard.

 

Acknowledgements/Disclaimer: I would like to thank the Microsoft licensing specialists at both Ingram-Micro and Microsoft for their extensive assistance in understanding the new licensing rules. Any errors in either this post or in the calculator, however, are mine and mine alone.

To justify a virtualized data center, think private cloud

"Most hardware vendors commit to five years of parts availability for servers; therefore, five years is the reasonable upper limit ofr the life of a deployed server."

-Information Technology Equipment Life Cycle – Michigan Public Act 327

I recently prepared an ROI analysis for a new client for expanding its virtualization environment from 30% of the servers to a VMware vSphere and Cisco UCS architecture encompassing the entire 1,000 server data center and DR facilities. An investment of $2.5 million would save around $18 million over 5 years. Unfortunately, a new generator had just been procured costing $1 million, or 40% of the cost of the entire virtualization project. The virtualization expansion would have made the new generator completely unnecessary.

These types of stories are, unfortunately, commonplace. They result from an ad-hoc approach to a virtualized data center (vDC) whereby virtualization tends to expand based upon one of two criteria: servers that would normally be purchased for new applications instead are configured as virtual machines; and end of life servers are converted to virtual machines rather than being replaced with new physical boxes. While seemingly prudent, this approach leads to both higher costs and risks as well as to lost opportunities.

Server Refresh Cycles and vDC Justification

One of the primary inhibitors to justifying a vDC is the lack of a server refresh cycle. Many organizations continue operating servers in production long after the expiration of the typical 3-year manufacturer warranty. I recently came across a large organization that keeps all old servers in production until even the band aid fixes no longer work. Many of its existing machines are seven to nine years old and run different versions of operating systems that shipped with the servers going back to Windows Server 2000.

Since the primary savings component of a virtualized data center ROI is typically server refresh, lack of an upgrade policy makes vDC justification more difficult. But running old servers into the ground entails both increased costs and risks. Old servers consume, for instance, more valuable rack space and data center resources including power and cooling. They require higher staff time for troubleshooting, maintenance and repair. Along with the increased risk of server failure, the risk of extended downtime goes up as well. A 2009 Webtorials study showed that server failure was the number one cause of data center outage. This is a much more likely scenario than outage resulting from a broad-based data center disaster.

Continuing to use the original OEM versions of Windows Server can also introduce costs associated with performance, security and compatibility. And with the upcoming July 13, 2010 10-year retirement of Windows 2000 Extended Support, even basic security and other hot fixes are discontinued for this product.

While Intel has an obvious vested interest in promoting server upgrades, it claims in a 2009 study that delaying its four-year server refresh cycle by just one year would have cost $19 million. Intel teamed up with Alinean to develop a slick server refresh TCO calculator that shows the cost advantages generated from upgrading to higher performance and more energy-efficient new servers.

Infrastructure as a Service

Prior to adopting Cisco UCS, we found that it made economic sense for our hosting business to upgrade its servers every 18 months. The advantages obtained from greater virtual machine density combined with using less rack space and power more than offset the investment costs.

IT organizations can similarly build a case for replacing old servers by thinking of them as the compute resource in a private cloud architecture where infrastructure is provided as a service. The process starts with calculating true costs incorporating the relevant variables ranging from rack space to risk of downtime. This transparency enables business units and the organization as a whole to understand the high expense of maintaining antiquated physical servers. It paves the way for a more realistic server refresh policy which in turn enables a compelling ROI for implementing a vDC.

SQL Server Licensing Savings from Virtualization Calculator

Author Note: Please see my updated article on optimizing the new Microsoft SQL Server licensing for virtualization.

------

I published my 5/2/2010 article on Virtualization Savings for Microsoft Windows and SQL Server products when the next day @scottCochran informed me on Twitter that Microsoft is introducing a new SQL Server product and pricing as well as virtualization policies. Alex Barrett wrote an informative article today on SearchSQLserver.com about the changes.

Act Now for Big Savings

It's still possible to lock in the unlimited instances capabilities of SQL Server Enterprise at less than half the cost of Datacenter Edition. This is from Microsoft's 2008 SQL Server R2 Licensing Quick Reference Guide:

What is the scenario for grandfathering unlimited virtualization rights for SQL Server 2008 Enterprise?

SQL Server 2008 Enterprise licenses with Software Assurance acquired prior to the release of SQL Server 2008 R2 will be granted the right to run in unlimited VMs. This right is remains in effect as long as Software Assurance coverage remains active and until the SQL Server version that follows SQL Server 2008 R2 is generally available. If you acquire new licenses (on a new or existing contract), you will also be granted similar rights to run unlimited VMs if you acquire Software Assurance.

 

Disclaimer: While I believe the licensing logic and calculator results to be accurate, they have not been reviewed or approved by Microsoft. If I have made any errors I welcome corrective feedback.

Virtualization licensing savings for Microsoft Windows and SQL Server products

Author Update 5/5/2010. Microsoft is releasing SQL Server 2008 along including a SQL Server Datacenter Edition with unlimited access and an Enterprise Edition allowing 4 instances. Licensing costs are changing as well. Please see today's post for an interim updated SQL Server calculator.

 

Greg Shields and I co-authored a 2006 article for Redmond Magazine titled, "Can You Cash in with Virtualization Licensing?" Today's savings are far more significant as Microsoft has added beneficial products and policies while much more robust hardware and hypervisor technologies enable higher densities of virtual machines to hosts. This article provides an updated description of the virtualization licensing parameters for both Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server along with a calculator designed to determine virtualization licensing savings.

Windows Server 2008

Virtual instances of Windows Server Standard can be licensed as in the physical world on a per instance basis. Alternatively, each license of Windows Server Enterprise on a virtualization host allows four instances of Windows Server. But Windows Server Datacenter Edition, when licensed by the underlying physical CPUs of the virtualization host, allows unlimited instances of any type of Windows Server guests whether running VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer or any other hypervisor. CALs (Client Access Licenses) are not required for the Windows Server Data Center Edition licenses for the host, but are required for any guest Windows O/S applications as they are in the physical realm.

Impact for Virtualized Data Center Organizations

A virtualized data center (vDC) running over 12 instances of Windows Server generally achieves the lowest costs by licensing Windows Server Data Center Edition on a CPU basis.

In the example shown in Figure 1, we conservatively use a density ratio of 20 VMs per host, although the VMware VMmark scores indicate that most 2-CPU hosts with 96GB can run around 24 VMs. Let's assume that SampleCo runs 50 physical servers with Windows Server Standard at a street price of $719 per server (without SA) and 10 physical servers with Windows Server Enterprise at a street price of $2,334 per server for a total licensing cost of $59,290. Virtualizing the 60 physical servers onto four hosts includes one host for redundancy. Multiplying the four 2-CPU vSphere hosts by the Windows Server Datacenter Edition street price of $2,300 per CPU equals $18,400. Total licensing savings are therefore $40,890.

Figure 1: Virtualization Licensing Savings Calculator Output for MS Window Server

 

SQL Server

In a physical world, many disparate servers each running either SQL Server Standard or SQL Server Enterprise leads organizations to frequently license SQL Server by the CAL model. The relatively small number of hosts of a virtualized data center generally make the CPU licensing model preferable. Unlike Windows Server, no CALs are required when licensing SQL Server by processor.

SQL Server Standard, when licensed by processor, applies to an entire physical server or to a single virtual instance.

SQL Server Enterprise, when licensed by processor, must be licensed by the underlying physical CPUs of the server. It is also licensed by the underlying physical CPUs of a virtualization host, regardless of hypervisor, and now allows unlimited instances of any type of SQL Server guests on the physical host.

Impact for Virtualized Data Center Organizations

A vDC only running a small number of SQL Server Standard instances and no SQL Server Enterprise achieves a lower cost by continuing to license them by instance. But if the vDC has many SQL Server Standard instances or at least two CPU instances of SQL Server Enterprise, it is likely to achieve significant savings by using SQL Server Enterprise for the virtualization hosts.

The example shown in Figure 2 assumes that SampleCo runs one server (2 CPUs) of SQL Server Enterprise at a street price of $23,910 per CPU (without SA), although it is clustered with a second server also with two CPUs, therefore requiring a total of four CPU licenses. SampleCo also has 20 SQL Standard servers at a street price of $5,737 per server running non-clustered for a total physical SQL Server licensing cost of $210,380. 

With a virtualization density of 12 SQL Server VMs per 2-CPU host, all 22 servers are consolidated onto two 2-CPU hosts. Adding one more host for redundancy results in a licensing cost of $23,910 X 6 CPUs = $143,460. Total SQL Server licensing savings equate to $210,380 - $143,460 = $66,920.

Figure 2: Virtualization Licensing Savings Calculator Output for MS SQL Server

 

Virtualization License Savings Calculator (Excel version)

The virtualization license savings are just one small element in the decision of whether or not to virtualize the data center, but can further boost the ROI and possibly result in a compelling near-term cash flow reduction depending where an organization is in its Microsoft licensing refresh cycle. The calculator results emphasize the importance from a licensing perspective of choosing platform products that enable a dense VM to host CPU ratio.

 

Disclaimer: While I believe the licensing logic and calculator results to be accurate, they have not been reviewed or approved by Microsoft. If I have made any errors I welcome corrective feedback.

Why VMware reps should embrace Pano Logic to spur desktop virtualization sales

 

"We want to massively change the adoption cycle of desktop virtualization"

Bryan Cox, EVP Worldwide field Operationsfor Pano Logic

We've seen some VMware reps in certain regions across the country as being resistant to even mentioning Pano Logic. Because the zero client devices can utilize the Pano's connection broker instead of VMware View, they perceive it as a competitor. The lack of PCoIP protocol support further inflames their concern by removing what they consider to be a powerful sales driver out of the VDI equation. Since INX is both the VMware Solution Provider of the Year for the Americas and winner of the Golden Pano Award for three quarters in a row, I feel obligated to speak up about the misguided logic of this perspective.

Pano Logic Zero Client Devices

Pano Logic was founded in 2006 and is backed by Goldman Sachs, Foundation Capital and Mayfield Fund. Unlike thin clients, the Pano zero clients have no client OS, drivers, CPU, memory, local storage, moving parts, configuration or management tools or even firmware. It's a sleek little cube (in either reflective silver or black) that includes a Pano Button enabling users to reset their virtual desktops without going through an IT administrator. Pano supports native versions of Windows 7 or XP operating systems and supports most USB devices connecting to physical desktops. The Panos use about 3 watts of power.

Most thin clients were repurposed from Citrix/TS SBC devices to now handle VDI. They continue to require local or embedded operating systems along with ongoing management and configuration. Panos, on the other hand, were designed from the ground up specifically to work with VMware virtual desktops. And while it is true that Panos include a connection broker, they are also optimized to work with VMware View.

The Pano Logic Benefits for VMware

VMware vSphere now runs enterprise data centers in the world's largest organizations, but that didn't happen overnight. VMware ESX typically got its start in a test/development capacity and then slowly evolved to an enterprise solution over a number of years as organizations gained confidence in its reliability and performance.

While VMware View is already being utilized to virtualize some extremely large desktop environments, in general the implementation cycle will probably follow the server trend and propagate primarily as a result of smaller VDI pilots or point solutions. Pano Logic helps accelerate the implementation cycle by inexpensively and very quickly enabling virtual desktop pilots running on vSphere on the back end.

Organizational decision-makers outside of IT receive a sexy little cube with no moving parts and no fan noise that replaces their PCs. While the actual desktop, of course, is a virtual machine residing in the data center, the Pano device helps them get the concept of a virtual desktop which can significantly facilitate the initial sale. As the organization grasps the many benefits of a virtual desktop architecture, it can then implement an enterprise roll-out complete with the application virtualization, management and many other attributes of VMware View.

The Growing Virtualization Industry

VMware is in the enviable position of continuing to dominate an industry even while its primary competitor gives away its products for free. Nonetheless, as virtualization continues to rapidly expand, it is inevitable that VMware's market share will slip. By embracing contributory eco-partners such as Pano Logic, VMware reps can help maintain the majority share of a much larger pie.

Cloud computing lessons from bacterium

Synopsis: Organizations, particularly smaller organizations, may be able to utilize cloud computing to increase efficiency and decrease vulnerability.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Linus Pauling's 1975 book, Vitamin C and the Common Cold, describes a UCLA experiment incorporating two strains of bacterium. One strain could manufacture the amino acid tryptophan and the other could not. Both strains were put together in a medium containing the amino acid. The strain lacking the capability to produce tryptophan flourished while the other strain died out.

Dr. Pauling concluded that the burden of carrying machinery for producing tryptophan was enough to cause the synthesizing bacterium to be overtaken by its more efficient competition. He said that if an animal can obtain a substance as a food, "it is advantageous to the animal species to rid itself of the burden of the machinery for synthesizing it."

Businesses have a surprising amount in common with living organisms. As Michael Rothchild points out in his book, Bionomics, both organizations and organisms survive through specializing in a market niche where they can minimize competition. And they both learn, adapt, exploit and grow through consumption of information. In living organisms, this information takes the form of genetic blueprints recorded through DNA. Corporate information, on the other hand, is captured and maintained in databases.

From Mainframes to Micros

Legions of IBM salespeople ushered in the mainframe era by convincing organizations to build their electronic information systems in-house. Data processing rooms housed the equipment and databases, and MIS departments coded the applications to meet specific operational requirements. Employees accessed information via dumb terminals or simply through distribution of computer generated printed reports. While the mainframe model was efficient, it was limiting as well. Users might wait in an MIS queue for months to get a simple report created.

The PC era has turned this situation on its head. Now users can generate their own reports in Excel in minutes, but as a result of the disparate applications and data stores comprising traditional data centers, frequently have difficulty in finding and accessing information outside of their immediate sphere of influence. Unlike mainframe computing which was designed as a comprehensive stack encompassing the physical infrastructure as well as operating system and applications, the client-server model, driven by departmental level budgeting decisions, often evolved rather haphazardly over time. The resulting mishmash of equipment, applications, data stores and management processes often fail to interoperate effectively and are inevitably expensive to maintain and support.

Virtualization Unification

Deploying virtualization as a data center platform not only reduces equipment and facilities costs through consolidation, it transforms technology islands into managed pools of compute, storage and network resources. Rather than incur the expensive and time-consuming process of purchasing servers and storage to enable a new application, a department can rapidly receive preconfigured virtual machines already load-balanced, protected via fire-wall settings and set up on the correct VLAN.

This private cloud model of Infrastructure as a Service is still in its infancy, but will undoubtedly prove to be very effective for larger organizations which can easily justify the investment in new equipment and software. They also are more likely to have the qualified IT staff available to manage it. Even so, many are likely to utilize some aspects of public cloud computing such as SaaS or hosted disaster recovery.

Smaller organizations, on the other hand, will be more challenged to implement IaaS. While typically not beset with burdensome legacy equipment and software, they face a more daunting issue in the increasing competition for talented IT administrators. Small organizations may rely on one primary administrator to configure and maintain the infrastructures, virtualization platform, firewall, data base architecture and management processes. If she leaves the firm, they may have difficulty in just finding a replacement let alone bringing the new administrator up to speed.

Learning from the Bacterium

Whether small or large, the cloud computing model holds promise of increased efficiencies, scalability and support by enabling companies to outsource varying levels of their IT infrastructures. Like the tryptophan synthesizing bacterium, organizations unwilling to relinquish their internal equipment may place themselves at a competitive disadvantage.

Could Microsoft Hyper-V usage boost VMware vSphere adoption?

Smaller organizations reluctant to deploy virtualization are being enticed by the prevalence of Windows Server 2008 to experiment with Hyper-V. While many will remain with the Microsoft hypervisor, others will inevitably switch to vSphere as their virtualization initiatives move toward IT as a service, or building an internal cloud.

Read my full article on searchvmware.com, or see the lead in to it by site editor, Hannah Drake.

 

Unified Communications on Cisco UCS: The final vDC frontier

Virtualization has increasingly been unifying not only servers, storage and network, but also disaster recovery and desktops. But even as traditional PBXs have transitioned to IP communications, voice remains a silo with separate infrastructure and management from the rest of the virtualized data center. That changes on April 15 when select Cisco Unified Communications 8.0(2) applications are supported as VMware virtual machines running on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS).

Unified Communications

A Unified Communications (UC) system typically incorporates Voice over IP (VoIP) along with other capabilities such as video, conferencing, voicemail and messaging, mobile applications, customer care, TelePresence, presence and enterprise social software. The voice traffic is carried over the same switches and routers as the data network and users purchase IP phones that plug into the network and run off of the UC system. Organizations can use a private data network such as MPLS or, potentially, the Internet although this can lead to varying quality.

The primary cost savings from UC typically are related to eliminating a parallel network of circuits required to support traditional Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) voice along with reduced maintenance and service fees as well as providing flexibility and ease for growth. Additionally, in a PBX-based system a user's identity for the phone system stays with the phone jack, meaning that a technician is required to make changes such as moves between offices. With UC, the identity stays with the phone so users just plug in their phone at the new location and are up and running.

A UC system typically includes multiple physical servers and gateways for managing calls, voice mail, mobility and other applications. Still other servers are required for redundancy. Prior to the technological innovations introduced in VMware vSphere 4, the high intolerance for latency precluded enterprise virtualization of UC and other real-time applications.

In the past two months, both Siemens and Mitel have announced virtualized UC solutions that take advantage of the real-time performance enhancements of vSphere. Cisco is following suit, albeit with a very cautious "crawl, walk, run" approach. IP Telephony, Messaging, Presence, Mobility, Customer Care, and Network Management Suite will be supported on VMware ESXi 4 with Cisco UCS half-width B-200 blades. Support on Unified Computing System C210-series will follow in phases, and support for virtualizing the remaining UC products is on the roadmap.

Virtualized Unified Communications Benefits

The benefits of virtualizing UC parallel those of virtualizing data servers. Server consolidation itself, of course, leads to significant less expense in hardware, rack space, maintenance, cabling, network ports, power and cooling. But it also enables UC to leverage the HA capabilities of vSphere rather than requiring redundant hardware and application level failover capabilities, as well as vSphere Site Recovery Manager to continuously replicate UC virtual machines to a disaster recovery site where they are nearly instantly up and running in the event of data center failure.

Seattle University is piloting Cisco Communications Manager, Unity and Mobility servers running as VMs on its UCS. "We've been interested for some time in implementing Unified Communications," said Mark Kawakami, Network Services Manager at SunGard Higher Education supporting Seattle University. "It will enable us to eliminate 14 server racks across the campus and the requirement to run two sets of copper for both network and phone, end the support of 4,000 phones and do away with our $160,000 analog phone system annual maintenance contract. The reduced costs and increased reliability and agility we achieve from deploying UC on UCS made the solution overwhelmingly compelling."

Other organizations are similarly intrigued with the prospect of running either existing VoIP or new UC implementations on UCS due to the significant CAPEX and OPEX savings. For example, a physical Cisco MCS UC server lists for $24,000 while a UCS half-width blade lists for $13,000 − $15,000 depending upon configuration. Of course, much larger cost reductions result from consolidating UC virtual machines onto the UCS blades.

While virtualized UC still requires separate management from Unified Communications Systems Manager (UCSM) or VMware vCenter, it slashes the number of servers to administer. It does necessitate administrative competency in VMware virtualization including provisioning, upgrading, monitoring and patching of virtual infrastructure.

Cisco UC on UCS General Parameters

1. Cisco UC applications supported in a virtual environment include: Unified Communications Manager 8.0(2), Unified contact Manager Express 8.0(2), Cisco Unified Presence 8.0(1), Cisco Unity 7.0(2), Cisco Unity Connection 8.0(2)
2. The only hypervisor supported initially is VMware vSphere ESXi4 which includes more of the real-time enhancements required for UC than ESX. Any other hypervisor versions, products or vendors are not supported.
3. Bare-mental/physical/non-virtualized installs are not supported.
4. Dedicated CPU/RAM/Storage is required for the VMs, oversubscription is not yet supported
5. VMware supported SAN storage is required.
6. 1-4 Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM) VMs per server dependent on model, with MCS 7845 parity per VM (7.5K users)
7. Application co-residency TBD – goal is "mix and match".
8. Only "Basic" features supported (e.g. copy VM, restart VM, HA, SRM), "Advanced" features are deferred to future versions (e.g. VMotion, snapshots, DRM, templates, DPM, etc.)
9. The hardware BIOS, firmware and drivers are managed by UCS and VMware, not by CUCM.
10. The boot order is controlled by the VMware virtual machine's BIOS instead of by the CUCM Application.

For further information, see Cisco DocWiki

The multi-hypervisor fallacy

IT is at a data center crossroads. Virtualization is going to happen; organizations can choose to either deploy it strategically or tactically. Strategically virtualizing the data center transforms it into a private cloud with automated self-provisioning including metering, monitoring and chargeback. Tactically virtualizing servers incurs unnecessary inefficiencies and lost opportunities. Embracing multiple hypervisors is emblematic of the tactical approach.

The Downside of Multiple Hypervisors

Microsoft touts the ability to easily manage "all Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines" as the key differentiator of its virtualization platform. The messaging may be having an impact. A February 11, 2009 SearchServerVirtualization.com article by Alex Barrett claims, "For better or worse, an increasing number of IT managers run a mixed virtual server environment that includes VMware and Hyper-V." A September 2009 Hot Aisle reader poll showed 44% of the respondents use two or more hypervisors.

Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert Greg Shields is a self-proclaimed multi-hypervisor advocate. I've collaborated with Greg over the years on several articles and white papers, but we disagree about mixing vSphere and Hyper-V. In a recent podcast on the subject, Greg provides a rationale for the increasing trend, "Some workloads need very high-end virtualization. Other workloads can use general-purpose virtualization and we can choose what makes sense for us from a cost perspective."

While on the surface this might seem sensible logic for an economically minded CIO, the overwhelming savings and other benefits resulting from data center virtualization make the delta in hypervisor costs insignificant in comparison. And hypervisors are not deployed in isolation; different equipment and administrative requirements can quickly negate any perceived price advantage.

Implicit in multi-hypervisor advocacy is an undertone of virtualizing servers rather than the data center. This myopic perspective limits both savings and synergies. Cisco studies, for example, show a lack of vNetwork capability results in 30% fewer servers that can be virtualized along with 30% higher administrative requirements. Network administrators have no way to monitor traffic over a vSwitch for compliance, auditing and troubleshooting purposes, and they cannot apply network and security policies that follow a VM as it live-migrates. Since only vSphere enables vNetwork capabilities, multiple hypervisors leave at least a portion of the data center running less efficiently and less secure.

Shield's January 7, 2010 SearchServerVirtualization.com commentary describes the all-important management role in a multi-hypervisor environment:

"Consider today's hypervisor playing field: On one hand, you've got high-end capabilities with high-end price tags. On the other hand, you've got general-purpose virtualization that in many cases has no price tag at all. Now, combine this with the new recognition that not every workload has the same virtual infrastructure requirements, and you can see how multi-hypervisor management tools become a brilliant play. Let's implement the right one in the right circumstances, and layer a pervasive multi-hypervisor solution over the top to manage them all from a single pane of glass."

The flaw in this argument is that even Microsoft's System Center Management Suite does a poor job of managing VMware vSphere; it is quite unlikely that smaller manufacturers will be able to create effective products. VMware focuses on optimizing resource pool management while enhancing cloud attributes ranging from agility to compliance with an arsenal of virtual infrastructure administration and automation tools.

Multi-hypervisor advocates like to point to the mixed server operating systems of a traditional data center as evidence that a heterogeneous environment can thrive. But the propensity of disjointed technologies, equipment and processes is certainly not planned – it's driven by disparate application and departmental projects. Virtualization, when deployed as the underlying platform, enables data center unification. Utilizing multiple hypervisors, on the other hand, not only perpetuates the inefficient status quo, it adds yet more islands of technology to manage and coordinate.

Transitioning a Virtualized Data Center to a Private Cloud

Microsoft says that it "…takes a broad view of management, with virtualized technologies given equal weight to their physical counterparts", and that physical machines will remain a "key part" of IT infrastructures. Organizations adhering to Microsoft's messaging tend to discover, upon reaching a certain virtualization threshold, challenges containing virtual machine sprawl and efficiently provisioning compute, network and storage resources. They continue to face the myriad inefficiencies and high costs of operating a physical environment, compounded by requirements to also manage hypervisors, VMs, hosts, vSwitches, etc.

A completely virtualized data center is a key to the private cloud where standards, policy-driven management and SLAs enable streamlined IT as a service. Even organizations leisurely strolling down the virtualization path still benefit as long as they keep the big picture top of mind. They reduce or eliminate unnecessary expenditures on physical data center vestiges of servers, PDUs, air conditioners, etc. More importantly, they make architectural platform evaluations of network, compute, storage, virtualization software, disaster recovery and desktop within the context of their contribution to the private cloud end-goal.

Virtualization may not be a magic bullet technology, yet it unquestionably is revolutionizing the data center. The overwhelming response to Cisco's UCS shows that organizations understand the value of a compute platform optimized to host virtual infrastructure. The unprecedented collaboration of multiple leading manufactures on VCE vBlocks and Secure Multi-Tenancy also indicates a major shift in data center approach. The ability of IT organizations to pull together both the internal consensus and monies to purchase these cross functional solutions validates the "virtualization changes everything" mantra.

 

Author Disclaimer: I work for a leading VMware partner, but the opinions expressed in this article are my own and are not approved or endorsed by my employer.

 

 

 

 

 

Facilitating data center virtualization success with an ROI analysis

Several years ago, Pittsburgh health care facilities were trying to fight the rapid spread of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), a deadly hospital-acquired infection. Dr. Richard Shannon, Chief of Medicine at Allegheny General Hospital, needed to purchase 100 patches at a cost of $5 each to pilot a method for slashing catheter induced infections, but couldn't get budget approval. It was only when he presented an economic analysis for hospital administrators showing that they were losing $17,000 per infection that Dr. Shannon received $500 for the patches – along with an additional $1.3 million.

Demonstrating abundant cost savings is effective in both health care and in IT. An in-depth ROI analysis helps secure the funds required for a strategic approach to data center virtualization while also assisting the virtualization champions successfully navigate the organizational resistance and politics that accompany significant change.

Why do an ROI Analysis when the Economic Advantages are Obvious?

Combining VMware vSphere with Intel's Nehalem CPUs can commonly accommodate virtualizing 100 physical servers onto six 2-CPU/96 GB hosts – including one for redundancy. Although obvious that huge savings result from 94 less servers to power, cool, maintain and periodically upgrade, an ROI analysis should always be conducted:

1. It encourages a strategic approach to virtualizing the data center, enabling a much more elegant architectural design. Traditional silos of compute, network and storage are optimized while minimizing the point solutions to manage.
2. It promotes virtualization as both a unifying platform for disparate data center technologies as well as the foundation for more effective disaster recovery, desktop computing and cloud computing services.
3. It assists in determining the feasibility of implementing a comprehensive enterprise virtualization project from the start. Regardless of deployment timeline, expenditures incompatible with with an optimized virtual infrastructure can be minimized ranging from servers to air conditioners to certain types of storage and networking equipment.
4. It reveals both costs and opportunities that might otherwise be overlooked. A health care organization, for example, capitalized on Microsoft's advantageous virtualization licensing policies to enable savings of nearly $1M in its Enterprise Agreement negotiations.
5. It provides a baseline against which the IT organization can measure the financial aspects of its virtualization success, helping to build credibility.

How Does a Data Center Virtualization (DCV) ROI Analysis Work?

ROI is the return an organization can expect to achieve on its investment over the analysis period. Expected costs are identified for operating the data center over a given number of years under two scenarios: physical and virtual. The virtualization investment is subtracted from the delta in total cost and then divided by the investment.

Figure 1 shows a savings calculation example for virtualizing 100 physical servers onto eight 2-CPU VMware vSphere hosts. It assumes a 5-year analysis period along with server growth of 10 new machines annually. Given the tough economic climate, physical servers are refreshed only once every 5 years rather than the manufacturer recommended 3 years. Maintenance contracts, following 3-year manufacturer warranty expiration, are utilized for ½ the servers at an annual cost of $1,000 each. The vSphere hosts are refreshed every three years and the new models will accommodate far more VMs than today's units. The physical servers cost $10,000 each including tax, shipping, rack space, cabling, power whips, SFPs, network switch ports, SAN switch ports, HBAs and generator and UPS slices. The vSphere hosts costs $17,000 each. A $65K budgeted PDU is no longer required.

Expected costs over the next five years on the physical side come to $2.7M, while the virtualized data center requires only $440K, including the cost of virtualization software maintenance. This leaves projected savings (or more accurately, cost avoidance) of almost $2.3M.

Figure 1: 5-year savings/cost avoidance from virtualizing 100 servers

Figure 2 shows a sample virtualization investment including first year software maintenance fees along with storage and implementation/ training costs. The total expected investment comes to $480K vs. savings of $2.3M. The 5-year ROI is therefore ($2,270,036 - $477,018)/$477,018 = 393%. The payback period of 12.2 months measures how long it takes for the additional savings to cover the investment.

 
Figure 2: Investment Required

This simple ROI analysis doesn't factor in variables such as the time value of money, but it also doesn't consider the myriad qualitative benefits of virtualization such as high availability for all servers and potential elimination of clustering requirements; reduced staff time for tasks such as provisioning servers, patching and hardware trouble-shooting; and the potential for improved performance, security and automation. It also excludes potential benefits from incorporating disaster recovery, desktops and cloud computing services.

One of the luxuries of a data center virtualization ROI analysis is that it is generally unnecessary to quantify more than the obvious "hard" savings – at least in terms of justifying the initiative. Nonetheless, it is typically worthwhile identifying the many benefits, as well as new challenges, that virtualizing a data center entails as heightened clarity can only increase the level of success.

What about TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)?

TCO, popularized by Gartner in the late 1980s, is used to estimate the cost of a product over its lifecycle factoring in both direct and indirect acquisition and operating costs, although not savings. TCO is particularly applicable for comparing products that provide similar functionality such as network switches or thin-client terminals. The effectiveness of TCO rapidly diminishes when attempting to evaluate products pivotal to the success of alternative technology platforms.

An organization's approach to virtualization can determine which metric to use. TCO is a valid calculation, for example when comparing Cisco's UCS as simply an alternative to traditional servers. But if its faster virtual infrastructure provisioning and enhanced VI management capabilities are perceived as essential to the virtualization value proposition, then an ROI analysis – in this case quantifying the benefits, is more applicable. TCO is often a good comparison for individual products if deploying virtualization as a point solution. Approaching virtualization as an enterprise platform, though, makes an ROI analysis the only reasonable means of evaluating essential components of that solution.

Is Hyper-V a casualty of Microsoft’s innovation dearth?

Former Microsoft vice president, Dick Brass, laments in a recent New York Times article titled Microsoft's Creative Destruction that, "Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator." He says, "Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason."

While some of Microsoft's applications such as Bing travel and ClearType are quite novel, the same thing cannot be said of its virtualization products. Live Migration, for example, was included in Hyper-V R2 in October of last year – six years after VMware introduced VMotion. And although Microsoft formerly insisted that its lack of memory overcommit was because customers don't want it (SearchServerVirtualization.com), virtualization.info reported that Microsoft will be including it with a future release.

The only real virtualization innovation contributed by Microsoft, if it can be called that, is giving away its enterprise hypervisor version for free. Its virtualization strategy is to try and copy as many of VMware's innovations as possible and then boast about its lower prices, albeit both misleadingly and inconsistently¹ . Its virtualization web site, for example, includes no less than seven white papers/brochures², four videos³ , multiple case studies, a "Microsoft vs. VMware Cost Comparison Calculator" and an ROI Calculator all purporting to show lower costs than VMware.

Next to price, Microsoft flaunts the fallacious advantage of its Systems Center Management Suite to manage both Microsoft and VMware products along with physical servers, telling customers, "…rather than undertaking a costly revolution, you should evolve your environment in a way that preserves and extends existing investments." This is not innovation; it's simply maintaining the Microsoft-biased status quo with broad-based management products incapable of handling the specialized requirements of an enterprise virtualized data center.

Dick Brass maintains that Microsoft's marketing, "has been inept for years." Along with disingenuous price comparisons, it emphasizes a supposed VMware 'tax' asserting that, "With VMware, you need four layers to virtualize...But with Microsoft, virtualization is built directly into Windows…so you only need three layers: the hardware, the operating system and the applications." This isn't inept marketing, it is intentional misinformation unworthy of an organization of Microsoft's caliber.

VMware's Strategic Innovation a Competitive Advantage

After three years of development encompassing over 3 million engineering hours, VMware vSphere debuted last May to tremendous customer and media acclaim. Infoworld, eWeek and SearchServerVirtualization.com all recently bestowed vSphere with their highest awards. It also won the prestigious Wall Street Journal 2009 Technology Innovation Award for software. But a competitive data center platform with superior capabilities and efficiencies is anathema to Microsoft and doubtlessly behind its frantic price-based messaging.

Unlike many industry pioneers that were outflanked by Microsoft before fully realizing the formidability of their foe, VMware's top executives including CEO Paul Maritz, formerly held senior positions there. They understand very well the exceptional capabilities of the software giant – and that maintaining VMware's industry leadership requires long-term strategic planning and continuous technology innovation. This puts Microsoft at a disadvantage that even giving away its virtualization product for free cannot overcome. As Cisco CEO John Chambers said, "If you're reacting to what a competitor does, you're looking out the rearview mirror. You're three to five years behind."

My first real exposure to the workings of the Microsoft organization came in the mid-1990s when my company at the time was a high profile Lotus Notes partner. A couple of Microsoft personnel visited in order to recruit us to sell Exchange, and they told me that employees meeting with Gates and Ballmer were prohibited from discussing their successes. The Microsoft leaders wanted to hear about problems so that they could solve them. I thought this was a remarkable way to run a business and indicative of a truly great company. I can see why Dick Brass is dismayed.

 

¹Contradictory price comparisons on Microsoft's virtualization web site

Microsoft web site: "VMware is six times more expensive than Microsoft"

Microsoft video: "A cost comparison between Microsoft and VMware: Approximately 1/3^rd the Cost"

Microsoft White Paper: "VMware typically costs three to five times more than Microsoft solutions."

²Microsoft white papers comparing costs with VMware

How Customers are Cutting Costs and Building Value with Microsoft Virtualization

Why Companies Switch from VMware to Microsoft Virtualization Whitepaper

Business Comparison Brochure: VMware and Microsoft

Technical Comparison Brochure: VMware and Microsoft

Debunking VMware's Top 10 Virtualization Myths

Comparing Virtualization Technologies of Microsoft and VMware

Virtualization Reality: Why Microsoft Virtualization Solutions Deliver Value When Compared to VMware

³Microsoft videos comparing costs with VMware

Top Facts VMware Does Not Want You to Know About Microsoft Hyper-V

Microsoft Virtualization Without Taxation

Microsoft Myth busters – Top Ten VMware Myths

A cost comparison between Microsoft and VMware

 

Author Disclaimer: I work for a leading VMware partner, but the opinions expressed in this article are my own and are not approved or endorsed by my employer.

The ABCs of VDI: user perception = reality

In the late 1990s, my company at the time focused on designing and deploying server-based computing (SBC) solutions using Citrix MetaFrame. One of our earlier implementations, at a small school district, included a classroom pilot with 25 Wyse WinTerms as well as 5 legacy PCs kept on hand to run the applications incompatible with Terminal Services. The teacher used one of these PCs, and her keyboard happened to break during the pilot. We plugged in a new keyboard which worked fine, and then plugged her old keyboard into a different unit to show that it was indeed broken. But she went around to all of the other teachers telling them, "Don't install Citrix in your classroom, it breaks keyboards." The project died.

Challenges with VDI

VDI utilizes a very different technology than SBC, but both host desktops on a central server farm controlled by the IT staff. Users become wary as they see the "personal" part of their PCs diminish. They tend to not like change – even when it's positive, and organizations that implement a VDI environment without careful consideration of how it will impact user perceptions do so at their peril.

Virtualizing desktops would be much easier if they could all be persistent. A persistent virtual desktop retains the user's profile and My Documents on a separate user data disk, enabling a very close approximation of the physical version. Maintaining separate operating systems and applications for each user, however, consumes expensive data center storage resources. Administrative operations such as patching and upgrades need to take place for each persistent image. The tie between the persistent profile and the underlying operating system makes tasks such as migrating users from Windows XP to Windows 7 very difficult.

The combination of inefficient resource utilization and management complexity can quickly negate the economic advantages otherwise enabled by a VDI environment, making the persistent virtual desktop model impractical for most situations. Organizations instead typically utilize non-persistent virtual desktops. Users, upon log-in, are assigned a virtual machine from a resource pool that utilizes Windows Roaming Profiles to establish personalized settings. But Roaming Profiles brings its own set of problems resulting from attempts to update user profiles from different sessions. And as user profiles grow, download times increase, network traffic becomes congested and profile corruption becomes much more likely.

VDI manufacturers have been furiously working to resolve the personalization problem. Citrix, for example, purchased a company called Sepago and now integrates the technology as Citrix Profile Manager. VMware announced its licensing of RTO's Profile Manager last year which will be integrated into an upcoming version of View. LiquidWare Labs recently added ProfileUnity to its portfolio. Newcomers Atlantis and Unidesk approach the personalization challenge using containers. AppSense originated the profile management category over ten years ago and continues to lead the industry with innovations such as an ability to manage hybrid environments consisting of virtual, physical and RDS (Terminal Services) architectures.

The Exploding VDI Industry

VDI started as a grass roots initiative around 2005 when VMware noticed its customers configuring desktop operating systems and applications as virtual machines on their ESX Hosts. Someone at VMware recognized the potential huge opportunity and coined the term, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. An industry was born.

The increasing familiarity of IT staffs with server virtualization frequently emboldens them with the confidence to deploy a VDI solution; applying to the desktop the lessons learned from their server virtualization efforts. This approach inevitably leads to trouble when expanded to an enterprise initiative. Wildly varying usage patterns, for example, can quickly oversubscribe memory and disk IOPs – creating widespread havoc among users. Anti-virus scanning configured for a traditional physical environment can quickly bring VDI performance to its knees.

Gartner's March 2009 press release predicts exponentially increasing VDI sales of $65B by 2013, up from only $1.4B last year. The number of VDI disasters will skyrocket as well.

A Strategic Approach to Desktop Virtualization

Desktop virtualization demands a strategic approach incorporating the prerequisite assessment, planning, pilots and managed execution required for a successful enterprise project. Objectives, including projected costs and savings, should be identified prior to starting the design. The planning and proof-of-concept phases can then be initiated within the context of providing a virtual desktop architecture optimized to meet the organization's objectives. The architecture requirements largely determine the VDI components such as hypervisor platform, application virtualization, client devices, storage architecture, back-end virtualization infrastructure and many, many other considerations.

A key objective for a VDI implementation should be to provide a very positive user experience from the beginning pilot up through the production roll-out. Carefully planned deployments can generate a buzz among users, leading to an enthusiastic acceptance of virtual desktops. The appropriate personalization technology is one of the important elements enabling this success.

 

 

Microsoft licensing for VDI made really simple

The Microsoft licensing required for VDI is called VECD (Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop – formerly Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop) and it replaces the need for either Windows 7 or Terminal Server (RDS). It is licensed only by physical end-point device and costs (list) $23 per PC or laptop per year if the organization has Software Assurance for the device (VECD for SA), or $110 per thin-client or zero-client device per year and per PC or laptop if not covered by Software Assurance (just VECD).

Additionally:

• Since VECD is licensed per device, multiple employees can use the same device without incurring extra licensing cost. This works out great for a training lab or for a factory floor where multiple users access a smaller number of devices.
• VECD includes home right use for primary users.
• A VECD license for a contractor accessing the VDI environment with her own device also applies to a replacement contractor as long as each only brings in one unique device.

Don’t believe any statistics you don’t make up yourself

 

"40% of all companies that experience a major disaster will go out of business if they cannot gain access to their data within 24 hours." 

Gartner (as reported on Rackspace's Web site)

This disconcerting statistic is widely referenced in promotional materials and presentations not only by Rackspace, but also by Double-Take, EMC, VMware, Frontline Data Services and many others. I've quoted it frequently in my own presentations over the years to emphasize the importance of utilizing virtualization to enable much faster data center recovery than is possible in the physical world. The only problem is that Gartner never said it.

The first reference I can find to the actual source is in a 2006 Citrix white paper, Avian Flu and the Opportunity to Get Ready, which attributed it to a survey by Eagle Rock Alliance. But the survey, 2001 Cost of Downtime, never reported the "40%" statistic. It simply asked the question of its 163 respondents, "At what point is the survival of your company at risk?" Thirty-nine percent reported a time-frame of 24 hours or less. The white paper apparently rounded this up to 40% and translated it into the percentage of companies that go out of business if they lose access to their data for over 24 hours. The statistic was then attributed to Gartner by someone else and now has become  disaster recovery folklore.

 

Thanks to Rick Tanner of LabCorp who diligently researched the "Gartner" statistic after attending my presentation at the CIO Forum in Raleigh last month.

VMware and Citrix both seek to upgrade XenApp customers to VDI

VMware and Citrix are both eager to upgrade Citrix XenApp customers to their respective VDI solutions. Former Citrix distributor, Alternative Technology Group of Arrow ECS (AltTech), with support from VMware, announced this morning its "Virtual Desktop Trade-in Program." As with Citrix's Trade-Up program, the Trade-In offer expires June 30, 2010. It offers XenApp customers a free upgrade to VMware View 4 Premier, but with an innovative twist that converts a normal CapEx budget expense into OpEx. Customers just make 36 monthly payments equivalent to the the Subscription Advantage costs they had been paying to Citrix.

Upgrading to View 4

The AltTech program originated with President & COO Bill Botti. AltTech was a prominent and specialized Citrix distributor for 13 years until Citrix terminated its relationship with all distributors other than Ingram Micro in 2008 (A rough chronology of events leading to the program is listed below). Botti was looking for a way to accelerate the growth of VMware View using existing Citrix Subscription Advantage expense each year to fund the project. In addition to aggressive pricing from VMware and aggressive financing from Arrow ECS Leasing Services, Botti wanted to make the migration planning easy. AltTech worked with Lakeside Software to use its SysTrack VMP (Virtual Machine Planner) to enable the analysis necessary to develop a clear migration plan.

AltTech estimates that XenApp customers spend on average around $75 per concurrent user per year in Subscription Advantage licensing to remain current. XenApp customers can instead spend the equivalent in monthly payments, without any cost for financing, over a three-year period and will receive a free VMware View 4 Premier license (also licensed by concurrent user). View 4 Premier includes the back-end vSphere Enterprise Plus licensing as well as ThinApp for application virtualization. The program, which requires customer credit approval, includes 3 years of basic Subscription and Support on the View 4 Premier licenses.

In order to assist with the conversion, customers will receive a free physical PC infrastructure assessment with SysTrack VMP from Lakeside Software. SysTrack VMP provides an integrated tool suite that provides assessment, capacity planning, virtualization modeling, predictive analysis, migration planning, storage throughput, space planning, power planning, firewall and latency analysis, user and application behavior analysis, pooled desktop / image planning, and application virtualization compatibility analysis.

Citrix Trade-up Program

Citrix's own recently announced trade-up programs seeks to migrate customers from XenApp to XenDesktop 4. Customers who upgrade all of their XenApp licenses at once receive either two XenDesktop user or device based license for every one XenApp concurrent license they trade-up. The trade-up includes 12 months of Subscription Advantage on XenDesktop 4.

Citrix's declining XenApp licensing revenues and increasing Subscription Advantage revenues give it a particularly strong interest in persuading customers to migrate to its VDI solution. But while XenDesktop tends to get great reviews (see InfoWorld's 2010 Technology of the Year Awards), analysts say that it runs a distant second to VMware in market share. VMware's dominance in the data center gives it an advantage with organizations wishing to run both their server and desktop virtual machines with the same platform and management console.

Zoaring Popularity of VDI 

The Enterprise and Platinum editions of XenDesktop now include XenApp. Although XenApp's Terminal Server legacy extends back to 1995, it never quite made it into the mainstream as a widespread desktop replacement. VDI, on the other hand, continues to generate extraordinary buzz and awareness. Whether View or XenDesktop, VDI is generally perceived as superior to the Terminal Services (now RDS) based model because of the elimination of concerns about session lock-downs, application incompatibilities and a different look and feel.

One of the big appeals of the virtual desktop model to IT administrators is its simplicity – it's just Windows running in a VM. It doesn't require specialists who know how to manipulate applications, dive into printing intricacies and work with registry hacks.

AltTech's Botti stated about the program, "I am excited about working closely with VMware, Lakeside Software, and Arrow financing and services, to provide a comprehensive way for users of Citrix XenApp to migrate to a full VMware View implementation. Providing the assessment, migration planning and financing to make this a nearly cost neutral process for the end user creates exciting new sales opportunities for our resellers."

 

Rough Chronology Behind AltTech's Virtual Desktop Trade-in Program

 

Alternative Technology founded	1986
Citrix founded	1989
Citrix WinFrame ships	1995
Alternative Technology signs distribution agreement with Citrix	1995
Citrix signs distribution agreement with Ingram-Micro	1996
VMware founded	1998
Bill Botti joins Alternative Technology as president & COO	2002
VMware coins VDI term	2005/2006
Alternative Technology signs distribution agreement with VMware	August 8, 2006
Citrix purchases XenSource	October 22, 2007
VMware ships 1st version of VDI: VDM 2.0.	February 1, 2008
Citrix ships XenDesktop VDI	May 20, 2008
Citrix discontinues distribution agreement with Alternative Technology	August 29, 2008
Citrix announces "Open Door" targeted to VMware customers	August 14, 2009
Alternative Technology Group of Arrow ECS announces Virtual Desk Trade-in program targeted to Citrix customers	January 11, 2010

Microsoft’s attempt to commoditize virtualization

"If I were VMware, I would be looking to lower my prices."

Laura DiDio, an analyst with ITIC. Reuters, July 6, 2009.

 

Both financial and industry analysts have berated VMware over the past 18 months for refusing to reduce prices despite Microsoft's commoditization of the hypervisor. VMware instead bumped the price of vSphere Enterprise Plus when it debuted last May, and yet continues to dominate the virtualization industry. The vast savings enabled from virtualizing a production data center make any delta in hypervisor costs a rounding error. Virtualization as a feature of the operating system is less than compelling to those organizations committed to an enterprise virtualization strategy. "Good enough" is not good enough.

I'm Not Cool Enough to be a VMware Person

A BrandPapers article defines commodities as, "…largely undifferentiated products that offer little or no perceived differences between competitive offerings." Maturing markets are more susceptible to commoditization which is signified by a uniform pricing level reflecting not much more than the marginal cost of production. Light bulbs, generic pharmaceuticals, mousetraps, computer RAM and coffee shop wireless service are some examples.

Microsoft knows a lot about commodities. It spends hundreds of millions of dollars defending its Windows brand against open source products. But it also takes the commoditization side as it did in 1996 by bundling Internet Explorer 3.0 as part of Windows 95 in order to crush Netscape. More recently, Microsoft launched a series of "laptop finder" commercials geared toward convincing would-be Mac purchasers that they pay an extra $500 for a logo. The Microsoft sponsored Endpoint Technology Associates white paper, What Price Cool?, claims that they pay an "Apple tax".

Particularly threatened by VMware's data center stronghold, Microsoft has been waging a vigorous campaign for the past year and a half alleging that not just basic hypervisors, but virtualization itself is essentially a commodity, stating "Virtualization is simply a role within the Windows operating environment." It misleadingly claims that an extra virtualization layer results in a "VMware tax". Its web site stresses the supposedly lower cost of Hyper-V virtualization including white papers, brochures, videos, charts, price-oriented case studies and a Microsoft vs. VMware Cost Comparison Calculator. Even the output of the Microsoft Virtualization ROI Calculator is 50% devoted to a cost comparison against VMware.

Other than price, Microsoft differentiates its virtualization solution by promoting the ability of Systems Manager Server Management Suite DataCenter (SMDS) to manage a heterogeneous environment incorporating multiple hypervisors and physical servers. This is only an attribute, however, in an organization approaching virtualization from a tactical, rather than strategic, perspective.

Hyper-V continues to rapidly improve as a product, and while not yet recommended by Burton Group for production environments, undoubtedly will be before long. Hyper-V R2 now includes the live migration feature ESX has had since 2003, but still lacks capabilities necessary for enterprise data center virtualization such as vNetwork. Cisco says this lapse results in the virtualization of 30% fewer servers while necessitating 30% more administrative time spent on the virtual network.

Evolutionary Approach to Virtualization

Microsoft has a vested interest in maintaining the large Windows-centric architecture common in most data centers and advocates a slow and limited approach to virtualization. Its white paper titled Microsoft Virtualization Delivers More Capabilities, Better Value than VMware states "…rather than undertaking a costly revolution, you should evolve your environment in a way that preserves and extends existing investments." In Microsoft's view, "physical machines…will continue to remain a key part of your infrastructure, as well as all the Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines."

The obvious disadvantage of a tactical, evolutionary approach to virtualization is the prolonging of high costs and inefficiencies along with unnecessary risk. A more insidious drawback is that layering virtualization onto an existing physical infrastructure inevitably leads to inefficiencies in the integration of compute, storage, network, backup and disaster recovery. The overall complexity of the data center increases along with the objects to manage which now include not only a physical architecture, but also virtualization hosts, virtual machines, hypervisors, virtual switches, virtual network adapters, virtual storage arrays, virtual back-ups, etc.

Achieving data center virtualization through an evolutionary process is also a difficult task. This was evidenced by Microsoft's Technical Case Study released early last year showing only a 50% internal data center virtualization rate with an expectation of "virtualizing at least 80% of new servers".

Why Adopt an Enterprise Virtualization Strategy?

The economics of virtualization tend to be extraordinary – it's not uncommon for an SMB organization virtualizing only 100 servers to realize millions of dollars in savings with an investment payback in fewer than 12 months. Larger organizations often have much higher savings and even shorter payback periods.

Virtualizing not just servers, but the entire data center provides a platform to unify technologies, equipment and processes. Desktop and disaster recovery silos become integrated components of a virtual infrastructure which in turn serves as the foundation for a comprehensive cloud computing strategy. Availability, recoverability, manageability, security and even performance can be improved beyond what is practical in the physical world.

VMware continues to thrive despite Microsoft's commoditization onslaught in part because of its enterprise virtualization features such as vNetworking, Fault Tolerance, Storage vMotion and Host Profiles. It has by far the most complete set of management and automation tools for a virtual infrastructure ranging from software development to disaster recovery to virtual machine lifecycle management. vSphere also includes published APIs that allow the leading manufacturers in security, storage and network to integrate their products directly into the hypervisor – resulting in still more efficient, scalable and secure environments.

Despite these many unique attributes, VMware's most compelling differentiator may be its astounding reliability. Unlike Hyper-V, it offers data center stability, performance and security that is independent from the bloat, reliability and patching issues of a general-purpose operating system. Even Redmond Magazine, "The Independent Voice of the Microsoft IT Community" gave its 2008 Editors Choice award for the most reliable IT technology to VMware ESX (the IBM mainframe came in #2).

The Importance of a Virtualization Focus

Microsoft's diversity in operating systems and other products gives it the financial leverage to offer virtualization as a free feature of Windows Server, but also detracts from an enterprise focus. Its home page, for example, mentions not a word about Hyper-V and instead promotes products such as Windows 7, Zune HD, Internet Explorer 8 and Office 2010.

VMware's corporate DNA is completely focused on virtualization as a strategic platform along with its role in enabling cloud computing. Its many years of experience and multiple levels of partner education and certification further differentiate its value from a commodity play. Denton County, Texas, for example, recently switched from a Hyper-V pilot to VMware vSphere for a complete virtualization deployment in part because of concerns about the lack of ISV support for Hyper-V. The county also found it difficult to find consultants with significant experience virtualizing data centers with Hyper-V.

Virtualization is a Lot More than Servers

In discussing VMware last July, Microsoft COO Kevin Turner stated, "We're a tremendous high-value, low-cost, high-volume software provider. That's our strategy, and that's what we're driving in this environment." This strategy has enabled Microsoft to become one of the most successful companies of all time and an incredible force in many different arenas. The enterprise virtualization market, though, is still young. Gartner says that only 16% of workloads run on virtual machines (eWeek 10/21/2009). A high-volume, low-cost product is far less important than the most reliable, secure and scalable solution.

A CIO advocating a data center transformation from physical to virtual may well put her job on the line. If successful, her organization will quickly realize huge savings along with other very significant benefits. It is imperative to choose the platform that best enables a complete, fast and successful transition. It is no time for compromise.

 

Author Disclosure: I work for a professional services company which is also a leading VMware partner, although we strive to provide the best virtualization solution for our clients.

Cisco UCS vs. HP Matrix: strategic vs. tactical approach to virtualization

"Revolutionary. Cutting edge. State of the art. These words and phrases are bandied around for so very many products in the IT field that they become useless, bland, expected. The truth is that truly revolutionary products are few and far between. That said, Cisco's Unified Computing System fits the bill."

Paul Venezia, ComputerWorld. November 10, 2009.

 

Following months of rumors about its "project California", Cisco made a big production last March in unveiling the Unified Computing System as transformative to the data center and "…as important to the industry as the personal computer was in the early '80s." Top executives from industry leaders such as Intel, EMC, VMware, Microsoft, Red Hat and others participated in the fanfare along with customers, partners and analysts. Cisco CEO, John Chambers, said, "This new Unified Computing System brings together the concepts of compute, network, virtualization and storage in a way that we think isn't just a product announcement, but we think is the future on which others will build".

Thirty-five days later, HP issued a press release announcing the HP Matrix with an obvious attempted jab at Cisco, "…the industry's first all-in-one software, server, storage and networking platform that allows customers to get the benefits of a converged system without a 'rip and replace' strategy for all their existing data center investments." HP's Web site and partner communications continue, albeit without much substance, to aggressively position Cisco UCS as inferior to Matrix.

An updated perspective is enabled by the several months that have now passed since both products began shipping. The overwhelming popularity, elegance, reliability and ease of deployment of UCS evidence the three years of investment Cisco made in developing an optimized virtualization platform. The complexity, limitations and lack of much excitement around Matrix, on the other hand, bear out a rushed repackaging of existing HP products in response to the Cisco announcement.

A Difference in Business Philosophy

Cisco approaches markets in terms of long-term architectural strategies rather than from the perspective of individual products or even product categories. Cisco foresaw the coming pervasiveness of data center virtualization and made partnership overtures to both HP and IBM years ago to to develop a more comprehensive computing architecture (Light Reading 12/9/2009). After being turned down by the server manufacturers, Cisco decided to undertake the effort on its own.

According to the Cisco book published early this year titled, Project California: A Data Center Virtualization Server, UCS is, "one of the largest endeavors ever attempted by Cisco". The Cisco-funded startup, Nuova, developed UCS under the leadership of VMware co-founder and former CTO, Ed Bugnion, to engineer a virtualization hosting platform for unifying the traditional data center functional silos of servers, storage and networking. Cisco UCS incorporates myriad innovations in architecture, performance, unified fabric and management.

The initial HP Matrix press release appears to be the first public mention of the product; it is hard to imagine that it resulted from a long-term data center strategy. The HP-sponsored April, 2009 IDC white paper, HP BladeSystem Matrix: Enabling Adaptive Infrastructure, says "HP is not introducing any brand-new technologies". Matrix not only lacks innovation, it feels like a work in progress. Even the "adaptive infrastructure" messaging used to introduce Matrix last April appears to have been replaced by "dynamic infrastructure".

HP Matrix – Time to Swallow the Red Pill

The HP BladeSystem Matrix Starter Kit includes the HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosure, HP VirtualConnect Flex-10 Ethernet modules, HP Virtual 8GB 24-Port Fibre Channel Modules, an HP Proliant BL460C (commonly referred to as the CMS – or Central Management Server) and 16 HP Insight Software packages. It also includes optional HP storage.

HP BladeSystem Matrix Starter Kit

• HP 10000 G2 Series rack
• HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosure
• HP Proliant BL460c commonly referred to as the CMS (Central Management Server)
• HP Virtual Connect Flex-10 Ethernet modules
• HP Virtual 8Gb 24-Port Fibre Channel modules
• HP StorageWorks 4400 Enterprise Virtual Array Starter Kit (optional)
• Infrastructure Operating Environment licenses (Insight software)
• Onsite BladeSystem Matrix Starter Kit Implementation service
• 14 existing HP Insight software and 2 new packages
  • HP Insight Software (IS) DVD - Integrated Installer 3.10
  • New HP Insight Recovery 1.00
  • New HP Insight Orchestration 1.0.2
  • HP Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM) 5.3.1
  • HP Insight Dynamics - VSE (ID-VSE) A4.1.2
  • HP Insight Power Manager (IPM) 2.0
  • Management Information Base (MIBs) 8.20
  • Performance Management Pack (PMP) 5.2.2
  • HP Insight Rapid Deployment software (RDP) 3.83.16 and 3.83.17
  • Remote Support Software Manager (RSSWM) 5.21
  • HP Insight Server Migration software for ProLiant (SMP)3.70
  • System Management Homepage (SMH) 3.00
  • HP Version Control Repository Manager (VCRM) 2.2.0
  • HP Virtual Connect Enterprise Manager (VCEM) 1.32
  • HP Virtual Machine Management (VMM) 3.7.1
  • WMI Mapper 2.60

HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosure

The version of the HP BladeSystem c7000 enclosure tested with, and certified for, Matrix runs only on single phase power which can cause some older data centers to require modification. Seven full height and a single half-height or 15 half-height device bays are available for populating with server blades although the first blade in the enclosure is reserved for the required CMS.

Central Management Server (CMS)

The Central Management Server is the brain of all operations and runs the Insight software. No fault tolerance or clustering and little to no redundancy results in a scenario of maintaining all eggs in one basket. The CMS requires either Windows Server 2003 R2 or SP2 / Windows Server 2008 R1. A failed CMS requires significant effort to restore it back on line. An unrecoverable CMS requires an on-site visit from an HP Engineering Services engineer along with a minimum one-week engagement to get the OS back on line.

Virtual Connect

A primary component of the HP BladeSystems Matrix, the Virtual Connect Flex10 module, provides some of the stateless capabilities that UCS enables along with a reduced cabling requirement. It has some negatives as well. For example, to move profiles between all the matrix-managed enclosures (chasses), all enclosures must be identical with the same number of VC modules in each enclosure, the same number of uplink cables all plugged to the same port numbers and with the same VLAN configuration an all enclosures. One enclosure cannot have more bandwidth requirements than other enclosures. Only four enclosures can be added to a single VC domain. Two chasses, each its own VC domain (the default), cannot be merged into one domain. One must be selected as the master and the other wiped out and then added to the existing domain.

Most importantly, the nature of Virtual Connect is to set up trunked ports between the core switch and VC modules for passing all VLAN traffic. This allows server teams to create additional LAN and SAN networks inside a VC domain and gives the server administrators control of the edge network. From a virtualized data center perspective, however, this scenario is disadvantageous in that it detracts from the networking team's responsibility for applying consistent network operations, policies and troubleshooting procedures. It is contrary to the joint efforts of Cisco and VMware in developing the VN-Link technology that enables the network team to effectively take back control of the vSwitch environment.

Insight Software

The HP Insight Software that comes packaged with Matrix is a collection of 14 pre-existing software packages and only 2 new packages. Page 8 of the HP BladeSystems Matrix Compatibility Chart shows the currently supported Managed node operating systems. Customers are locked into a small number that can be deployed, managed and controlled.

As the 33-page Insight Software Installation checklist guide shows, operating systems and databases are very limited. For example, Footnote 1 of Table 2.2 on page 11 warns that, "ID – VSE, VCEM, IO, and HP IR do not support CMS installation to 64-bit Windows Server 2008." Insight Orchestration requires Internet Explorer 6.0 SP3. CMS requires Microsoft SQL Server.

Overall Matrix options are quite limited as well. VMware vSphere, for instance, is supported in technology preview only. Matrix CMS only supports up to 250 logical servers whether they be physical or virtual servers (search for "250" on the HP BladeSystem Matrix Overview). While it is possible to combine multiple CMS units in order to reach an upper limit of 1,000 logical/physical servers, they are not clustered and do not share information. Server profiles cannot be moved from one CMS to another. This limits the Matrix as a solution to smaller organizations not wishing to utilize VDI, although VDI is impractical in any case since Matrix lacks automated provisioning support for desktop operating systems.

HP Matrix Implementation Service

Setting up all of the HP Matrix hardware and software is, not unexpectedly, very complex. A June 17, 2009 Infoworld review says, "The setup and initial configuration of the Matrix product is not for the faint of heart." The Matrix includes a mandatory two-week Onsite BladeSystem Matrix Starter Kit Implementation Service performed by a HP-Certified Matrix Professional from HP Engineering Services. But two weeks is still a short window for many organizations attempting to bring in all of the storage, network and server team players who need to provide input for the set-up – making implementations particularly challenging.

A customer cannot perform the Matrix install without a certified HP BladeSystems Matrix Engineer. HP also highly recommends HP Education Services for customer training and education along with Additional Technical Services. Matrix is QA/QC certified to only support a strict firmware, driver and server BIOS level. HP recommends that customers not update these components without first contacting the HP Matrix support line to ensure these updates will not negatively affect the overall Matrix infrastructure.

 

Cisco UCS vs. HP Matrix Matrix

	Cisco UCS	HP Matrix
Enterprise scalability	40 chasses, 320 blades – tens of thousands of VMs	250 total logical servers. Can combine up to 4 CMS to reach 1,000 logical servers, but no clustering or information sharing. Server profiles cannot be moved from one CMS to another
Redundancy	All components redundant	Central Management Server has no fault tolerance or clustering and little or no redundancy.
Memory	96GB Half Width Blade and 384GB Full Width Blade (8GB DIMMs)	With HP BL490C half-height blades : 144 GB w/8 GB DIMMs, 192 w/16 GB DIMMs 1 With HP BL685c (AMD) blades: 256 GB
"Closed" Architecture Limitations	Cisco UCS requires Cisco servers, CNAs and Fabric Interconnects for optimal performance	Requires one of the following specific HP ProLiant blades: HP ProLiant BL260c, HP ProLiant BL280c, HP ProLiant BL460c, HP ProLiant BL465c, HP ProLiant BL490c, HP ProLiant BL495c, HP ProLiant BL680c or HP ProLiant BL685c.2
vNIC & vHBA Support	Up to 128 each with Palo Adapter (56 vNICs per half-slot server today)	LAN – Ethernet 16 x 10 Gb downlinks to server ports SAN – Fiber 16 X 8 Gb 2/4/8Gb auto negotiating server ports
OS Support for Management Software	None required	Windows Server® 2008, Enterprise Edition 32 bit Windows Server® 2003, Enterprise Edition R2/SP2: 32 bit
Database Support for Management Software	None required	Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP2, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP2
Hypervisor Support	Supports any X86-based hypervisor. Particular advantages from tight integration with vSphere	VMware ESX Server 3.5.0 Update 4 VMware ESX Server 4.0 (pilot & test environments only) Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V (though not yet supported by Insight Recovery)
Guest OS Support (server)	Any	Windows Server® 2008, Datacenter Edition 32 bit and x64 Windows Server® 2008 Hyper-V, Datacenter1 x64 Windows Server® 2003, Enterprise Edition R2/SP2: 32 bit R2/SP2: x64 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 43 Update 7: 32 bit Update 7: AMD64 and Intel® EM64T Red Hat Enterprise Linux 53 Update 3: 32 bit Update 3: AMD64 and Intel® EM64T SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 103 SP2: 32 bit SP2: AMD64 and Intel® EM64T
Guest OS Support (VDI)	Any	None (No Matrix automated provisioning support )
3rd party development	XML-based API	None
QOS	Yes	None
Minimum cables required per chassis (inc. FC & redundancy)	2	6
Maximum cables potentially needed per chassis (inc. FC & redundancy)	8	34
FCoE	Yes	No
Ability to deliver native network and storage performance to VMs via hypervisor bypass	Yes	No
Network traffic monitoring & application of live-migration aware network and security policies	Cisco VN-Link / Nexus 1000V	None
Mfg. Support	1-Year	3-Year
Search.twitter.com hits: 12/15/09 – 12/22/09 in English [-ROIdude (my Matrix/UCS inquiries)]	54	12

¹The HP BL490c half-height blades support up to 144 GB with 8 GB DIMMs, or 192 GB with 16 GB DIMMs. They utilize 3 DIMMs per channel meaning that with over 96GB, the entire memory bus speed drops to 800 MHz. Additionally, the BL 490s have no RAID controllers and the SSD Hard drives are not hot-pluggable. Cisco UCS, on the other hand, uses a patented Cisco Extended Memory Technology which enables up to 384 GB on a full-width Intel Nehalem-based blade without sacrificing performance or requiring very expensive 16 GB DIMMs.

² While the c7000 will work with any HP ProLiant blade, Matrix only works with the blade models listed.

 

Cisco UCS – Revolutionizing Data Center Virtualization

Much has been written describing Cisco UCS both in this blog and in many other publications – obviating the need to go into details. At a high level, UCS is the culmination of years of development within Cisco/Nuova while also reflecting its close partnership with VMware. UCS was designed from the ground up as an optimized hosting platform for a virtualized data center. It integrates tightly with vSphere 4 to deliver an enterprise hosting platform enabling even the largest organizations to feel comfortable about virtualizing their data centers.

Despite its significant technology advances, Cisco UCS is surprisingly simple to install (HealthITGuy's Blog 11/25/2009 How Long Does it Take to Add UCS?). It utilizes only two (redundant) switches per 40 chasses and includes a common GUI making it easy for the server, network and storage teams to coordinate their efforts – yet be guided by role-based and resource-based management policies.

While Cisco UCS had already been running at IT infrastructure provider Savvis and other beta customers at the time of its announcement this past March, it appears that the first implementation of HP Matrix was at Stein Mart in the late summer. A December 9, 2009 BusinessWeek article reports that over 100 companies now are using UCS, and I suspect this is a quite conservative number. HP has not published Matrix sales figures, but supposedly a lack of qualified HP implementation engineering resources limit deployments to only a couple a month. If true, this means that Matrix production systems are likely somewhere in the 12 – 15 unit range.

Cisco UCS is a truly enterprise-class virtualization platform that, unlike traditional servers built for the physical world, is inspiring IT organizations with the confidence to embrace a completely virtualized data center strategy. This is not by accident. At Cisco's December 8, 2009 Financial Analyst Conference, Chambers said, "If you're reacting to what a competitor does, you're looking out the rearview mirror. You're three to five years behind." HP Matrix has a long way to go.

 

Author Disclosure: I work for a professional services company which is also a leading Cisco partner. I researched this article carefully, but welcome any corrective feedback.

  Author Note: 07/27/2010:  Part II now on-line at:  http://www.bythebell.com/2010/07/cisco-ucs-vs-hp-bladesystem-matrix-an-update.html

   

Array-based backup advantages in a VMware virtual infrastructure

Eric Seibert wrote an excellent comparison earlier this week on searchdatabackup.com reviewing disk-to-disk backup applications for VMware: Veeam, Vizioncore, PHD Virtual and VMware VDR. As beneficial as these products can be, however, they have a disadvantage when competing against array manufacturer products such as NetApp's SMVI that are specifically designed for backing up virtual infrastructure.

The primary challenge faced by software backup solutions is their inability to offload impact from hosts, a capability that becomes imperative as VM consolidation ratios increase. Applications relying on host CPU cycles and disk IO to facilitate backup compete for those shared resources with the production workload. 

Most software backup tools rely on checksums of the entire VMDK to determine what data has changed and needs to be backed up – often a very IO intensive process that can even cause production applications to fail due to the resulting increased disk latency. According to Siebert's table, VMware VDR and Veaam take advantage of the vSphere vStorage APIs to utilize change block tracking. With the exception of Veeam running on a VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) server utilizing change block tracking (CBT), software backup products require data deduplication, compressions and reads to transverse an ESX host − impacting the shared resources. And Veeam still requires a "copy-out" which produces far more IO than array-based snapshots.

Array-based data protection produces point-in-time copies without being IO intensive; it does not require walking the entire block set/file system/file structure every time a backup/replication occurs. Backup data can go directly to disk or tape without traversing the ESX hosts. Backups and restores consequently complete very quickly, and backups can take place more frequently throughout the day. NetApp's SMVI has yet another benefit in that it utilizes less storage since the footprint is deduped on both the production and backup datasets.

Utilizing different processes to protect and recover data for virtual machines, NAS content and any remaining physical servers – complicates not only backup, but also disaster recovery scenarios. Array-based solutions reduce complexity by eliminating the requirement to manage different replication schemes. Some of the array-based products further enhance disaster recovery by combining replication with VMware's Site Recovery Manager (SRM) to enable automated data center failover in the event of disaster.

The software backup manufacturers continue to add efficiencies and will undoubtedly increasingly take advantage of the vSphere vStorage API features to scale their products. Still, an off-board application/appliance will always be challenged to match the intelligence and efficiency of the storage array that owns the blocks (under VMFS) or file system (NFS). Array based data protection offers integrated backup and disaster recovery solutions that are both low maintenance and unified across the environment.

 

Russel Callen, INX Sr. Consulting Engineer, was a major contributor to this article.

Addressing concerns about the “newness” of Cisco UCS

Despite Cisco's recent entry into the "compute" data center sector, John Chambers said during the 10/24/2009 quarter earnings call that the UCS is experiencing, "…solid market reception with a very good initial ramp and order pipeline." As the first optimized hosting platform for a virtualized data center, Cisco Unified Computing System has generated tremendous industry buzz with many organizations eager to acquire it. Not unexpectedly, others are more cautious about moving to this new type of virtualization architecture. The following are some common IT staff concerns and how IT leaders can address them.

 

We know who to call when our Dell/IBM/HP servers break – our server team isn't used to the Cisco support model.

Virtualization changes everything. Server failure is no longer a crisis, or really even an inconvenience. Virtual machines simply move over to another host based upon preconfigured resource and proximity settings and, as software, quickly reboot – and users are back in business. Mission critical applications utilize vSphere's Fault Tolerance to migrate to another host without any session disruption at all. Cisco UCS includes exceptional redundancy within each chassis as well as between chasses. If a blade should break, it can simply be serviced when convenient. Additionally, Cisco provides outstanding support as validated by J.D. Power and Associates for the last three years in a row.

We don't need the fancy UCS capabilities of server profiles and stateless computing. VMware's High Availability, VMotion and DRS work just fine for us.

Service profiles and stateless computing may not be needed, but they sure are nice to have. If a blade should fail, a replacement blade can be configured in minutes through simply applying the desired service profile. Servers that must remain physical for regulatory or political reasons can still be rapidly recovered in the event of blade failure – the associated service profile is simply moved to a blade in a common sparing pool. Similarly, storage associated with a physical server can be replicated between Unified Computing Systems at different data centers, enabling very fast recovery in the event of a disaster. Server profiles also enable exceptionally fast provisioning as Cisco demonstrated by migrating over 150 of its servers to virtual machines in less than eight hours.

We are already taking on risk through virtualizing, and we are hesitant to add more risk with another new technology, Cisco UCS. What is the incentive?

A 2009 Webtorials study showed that server failure was the number one cause of outage, followed by human error. Virtualization, through high availability and vSphere Fault Tolerance, enables such fast recoverability that server failure is no longer an operational risk. The ability to provide all testing, patching and upgrades in a virtual sandbox lowers the risk of a production roll-out. Cisco Unified Computing System further reduces the human error component by utilizing a common GUI to assist coordination between the server, storage and network teams. The enterprise class performance and extended memory capabilities of UCS provide assurance for hosting even the most significant Tier 1 applications as virtual machines. Slashed cabling, switch requirements and lower on-going operating expenses provide further incentives for using Cisco UCS rather than traditional servers.

How do we know that Cisco is really committed to this new area?

Cisco has made a massive investment, perhaps a "bet-the-company" investment, in the UCS platform as part of its overall commitment to the data center. Cisco Unified Computing System is not simply a commodity server rolled off a factory belt; it is the culmination of an extraordinary effort and vision over several years to provide an optimized hosting platform for virtualized data centers. Cisco has risked disrupting its relationship with some of its biggest partners by entering this arena. Cisco's recently announced Acadia partnership with EMC and VMware further demonstrates its commitment to UCS and the virtualization space.

We are under-staffed, and we just don't have the spare time to learn how to configure and manage Cisco UCS.

UCS, like many new technologies, requires an initial investment in training in order to reap the huge rewards of reduced IT staff and resource requirements. UCS does not change the server, storage and network tasks, but helps simplify and coordinate them. Initial reports from the field show a very well thought-out, and not so intimidating, product.

We want to see other reference accounts in our area in our field. We don't want to be pioneers with arrows in our backs.

The UCS B-Series just started shipping within the past few months. While success stories are already starting to appear, it will take time to create and publish industry-specific references.

 

Cisco UCS C-Series

I recently tweeted a mnemonic tip to help keep the Cisco UCS series straight: B-Series stands for "Blades", and C-Series stands for "Can't believe Cisco Makes Servers". While tongue-in-cheek, I nevertheless was somewhat perplexed about why Cisco would enter the commodity market with a rack-mounted server, albeit one with significantly enhanced memory and performance capabilities. One reason may be that the product roadmap calls for C-Series to be managed by the same Cisco UCSM software that manages the B-Series. Organizations can purchase the C-Series today rather than standard servers yet preserve their investment once they make the full commitment to the B-Series virtualized hosting platform.