Title: Have Server, Will "Virtualize": Technologists Get More from Servers through Consolidation Techniques
Abstract: IBM can help you with virtualization. So can Microsoft and Sun. And they're not alone. fact, you'd be hard-pressed in 2003 to find a hardware vendor that isn't trying to render servers more useful by engineering them to, essentially, operate as a unit to make greater use of their individual capacity. Before you take that route, you might opt for simple consolidation, which involves reducing the number of hardware devices in the organization. For instance, look hard at those 80 mail servers sitting in various spots around the globe. Do you need them all? Increasingly, say vendors, the answer is probably not. Any utility device, say, a portal or print server is a potential candidate for getting more from less. How did we get to this position? In the dot-corn era, the agenda was brisk, notes one expert. It was all about catching to competitors, tossing the new application on the web; rolling the project out quickly. The message was, don't get overly concerned with big picture issues of cost or control. these budget-conscious days, the idea of having data centers filled with tons of servers laying in wait, under-utilized, has become increasingly verboten. Even if it's the case that the server itself is comparatively affordable and getting cheaper all the time, the idea of buying yet another one on the quick and dirty looks in bad taste. (Especially when the organization's already got so many in the back-office that may only be working at 20% capacity.) Then again, it's like anything else in business. a good economy, who cares if you stay in that Four Star Hotel and order the prime rib? a bad economy, it's every nickel and dime for itself. You are bunking at Motel Six. Virtualization defined As a way to clean house, virtualization is a variant of consolidation that might require retiring a bunch of small servers in favor of a larger one that runs multiple applications and, possibly, multiple operating systems at the same time. Or, it might for designing the ability to call up idle servers on demand, making the IT environment more orderly and reducing waste in the process. To offer a contrast: grid computing involves harnessing many servers to divide work on a complex problem under the domain of one imposing application (see ABABJ Feb. 2002). One example of this is analyzing derivative trends as part of processing transactions in a trading system. Whatever the specifics, for grid to be an option, you need a problem or job that can be subdivided in into a series of specialized tasks that can be handled by each smaller server, much the way the criminals with different specialties in Ocean's Eleven formed a crew to heist the casino. To get to the point of the metaphor: Virtualization, as opposed to grid, is a way to put the previously dumb and tethered capacity of the client-server system mobile and on tap for almost any purpose. IBM frames the definition in terms of pooling various server resources in a way that masks their physical nature and boundaries from users or administrators. (That is, the person tapping away at his computer is unaware of which hardware is being used and doesn't need to care. Neither does his tech support guy.) Meanwhile, both application and operating system float free of the physical hardware and function effectively this way, something not normally possible in standard client-server configurations. a way, the model proposed by virtualization is much closer to the notion of a services-based architecture as proposed by web services (ABABJ, May 2003) in that there is loose coupling that occurs between applications and the devices they are housed in. fact, some applications can run on a grid and others, such as enterprise resource planning solutions or some enterprise customer relationship management systems absolutely require a single, large server as opposed to a grid of smaller servers to function properly. …
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 1
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