Dynamic Datacenter technologies have shown significant improvement in maturity and adoption levels over the years. With the screws tightened on the IT budgets, CIOs are looking for ways to optimize their existing resource usage to meet their growing customer needs - in short they are looking for dynamic datacenter technologies (or building a private cloud). The three main pillars for building any dyanmic datacenter include - Virtualization, Auomation and Orchestration. In this post, we will discuss how the top software vendors have built solutions around the three pillars to enable the dynamic datacenter vision.
VMware:
VMware has been the undisputed leader in the virtualization space and is keen on expanding that to the Private/Public Cloud space too. So far VMware has got the most comprehensive vision to start with Dynamic Datacenter (Private Cloud) and gradually transition to Public Clouds as they start maturing. The slew of Products/partnerships that VMware has released include:
Infrastructure Virtualization : vCenter Server, vCenter CapacityIQ for fine tuning, VCE VBlocks (in partnership with Cisco and EMC)
Automation : vCenter LabManager, vCenter Lifecycle Manager
Orchestration : vCenter Orchestrator
VMware also offers Professional Services around Cloudifying your on-premise datacenter and designing strategies to adopt the Public Clouds.
Microsoft:
Microsoft, as usual, has been a late entrant to the Virtualization space and it's Hyper-V platform doesn't seem to have picked up yet - even after the R2 release. However MS has been quick to show how Hyper-V along with its rich System Center Suite can be leveraged to build your Dynamic Datacenter. The Dynamic Datacenter toolkit has the best practices to achieve this.
For MS, a lot is going to depend on the success of its Azure platform . If MS can deliver a stable and scalable Azure platform, that would speak volumes about the maturity and stability and scalability of the MS solutions. Till then - it's just Wait and Watch.
Citrix:
Citrix has gained traction over the past year with the free XenServer release and the Citrix Essentials Suite providing the automation (LabManager OEM'd from VMLogix) and orchestration ( Workflow Studio ) tools on top of the Virtualization layer. Citrix has also open sourced XenServer to attract the Cloud Service Providers. But the key area of Citrix's dominance has been Application Delivery. The Citrix Delivery Centre comprising of XenDesktop, XenApp, XenServer and Netscaler can securely and optimally deliver both Web and Desktop based applications. Citrix has also launched Virtual Appliances for its Application Delivery Controllers - Netscaler VPX - to enable flexible and automated provisioning. Will be good to see if Citrix can extend its dominance in the Application Delivery market to the Server Virtualization space too - with the Free, OpenSource XenServer.
That adds the fourth pillar to the Dynamic Datacenter story - which is Application Delivery.
The Verdict:
Based on various factors, here's the leader in each of the Dynamic Datacenter technology pieces:
Virtualization - VMware vSphere and Citrix XenServer
Though VMware would win hands down based on technology, the cost factor weights heavily in favor of XenServer. A mix of both is going to be a reality in the future.
Automation - VMLogix LabManager
The winner in this space primarily because it supports both VMware and Citrix Virtualization technologies (and MS Hyper-V too). Also has a bit of Orchestration built in it too.
Orchestration - ????
No clear winner here. Still a nascent technology and hoping some Startup can delivery some really interesting products here.
Application Delivery - Citrix Delivery Center
Citrix wins this category hands down. However some credit also goes to the F5 BIG-IP Product specifically in delivering Web Applications. But F5 still doesn't have a Virtual Appliance version of its product.
Of course, this space is set to dramatically change when VMware launches the much awaited vCloud platform. Interesting year ahead!!!
PS: All info in this post are totally my personal views only and have no bindings on my employer whoever that may be!!!
Showing posts with label VMLogix. Show all posts
Showing posts with label VMLogix. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Sunday, December 27, 2009
The Virtual Private Datacenters - Extending your datacenters to the Cloud
With Cloud being the most abused technology buzzword today, any company would fire its CTO/CIO if the company doesn't have it's Cloud Strategy laid out. The most important value prop of the Cloud has been "Moving your CapEx to OpEx" . Though the TCO and ROI calculations would indicate a full transition to the Cloud as a No-brainer decision, too many technology gaps still remain before that transition can happen, and trust me it is going to be a painfully slow and gradual transition process.
This gradual process brings us to the title of the post, "Virtual Private datacenters". Cloud providers need to offer a seamless and highly secure mechanism for extending the enterprise datacenters to the cloud. Amazon recently introduced the "Virtual Private Cloud" (VPC) last month to setup a VPN tunnel from the corporate datacenter to the cloud. I prefer calling it the Virtual Private Datacenter to drive the fact that enterprises would also need their management/monitoring/security applications to work seamlessly across the datacenter and cloud infrastructure.
The cloud adoption acceleration largely depends on the datacenter management tool vendors. Some of the early innovators who have jumped on the Cloud Bandwagon include VMLogix who have added the capability to their flagship product LabManager, to manage and provision resources on the Amazon cloud too .
Security provider Breach Security Inc recently tied up with Akamai to offer a web application security solution spanning the datacenter and the cloud .
The other area of focus has been hybrid clouds. Zeus technologies had recently announced its capability for traffic management across hybrid clouds . Though I am not a real fan of hybrid clouds (we still haven't seen any large scale adoption of hybrid virtualization environments yet!!!), there seems to be some predictions around the opportunity for 'cloud brokers' too..
Hoping to see Virtual Private Datacenter technology really taking off in 2010 and watch this space for more posts around cloud technologies and strategies for enterprises to plan their migration to the cloud.
This gradual process brings us to the title of the post, "Virtual Private datacenters". Cloud providers need to offer a seamless and highly secure mechanism for extending the enterprise datacenters to the cloud. Amazon recently introduced the "Virtual Private Cloud" (VPC) last month to setup a VPN tunnel from the corporate datacenter to the cloud. I prefer calling it the Virtual Private Datacenter to drive the fact that enterprises would also need their management/monitoring/security applications to work seamlessly across the datacenter and cloud infrastructure.
The cloud adoption acceleration largely depends on the datacenter management tool vendors. Some of the early innovators who have jumped on the Cloud Bandwagon include VMLogix who have added the capability to their flagship product LabManager, to manage and provision resources on the Amazon cloud too .
Security provider Breach Security Inc recently tied up with Akamai to offer a web application security solution spanning the datacenter and the cloud .
The other area of focus has been hybrid clouds. Zeus technologies had recently announced its capability for traffic management across hybrid clouds . Though I am not a real fan of hybrid clouds (we still haven't seen any large scale adoption of hybrid virtualization environments yet!!!), there seems to be some predictions around the opportunity for 'cloud brokers' too..
Hoping to see Virtual Private Datacenter technology really taking off in 2010 and watch this space for more posts around cloud technologies and strategies for enterprises to plan their migration to the cloud.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Hypervisor Storage Integration - Is Citrix leading the Game?
Had posted in my previous post on the feature comparison between XenServer and ESX.
Apart from those, storage integration has been one area where Citrix has been leading the game. XenServer 5.0 has built in integration with NetApp and EqualLogic storage arrays. This enables XenServer to leverage the storage features like Snapshotting, Fast clone and thin provisioning.
Though this might not have a serious performance implications for normal workloads, this integration makes XenServer more suitable for disk intensive workloads and for apps like VDI and LabManager. Both VDI and Labmanager rely extensively on the fast clone and snapshot features. Offloading these functions to the storage should give users noticeable I/O performance enhancements and also free up CPU cycles on the Server. I am not aware of XenApp using the fast clone technology like VMWare View Manager does, but Citrix Labmanager (OEMd from VMLogix) extensively uses this feature and should be interesting to note the performance differences between VMLogix Labmanager on ESX and on XenServer with NetApp storage.
Citrix has gone another step further by introducing the new product - Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) for both XenServer and Hyper-V. This product integrates with the leading storage vendors and provides the capabilities to carve out LUNs on the arrays on demand and present them to the hypervisors. This should fill the gap with the non-availability of Cluster file system in Hyper-V. Being a 1.0 product, it seems to lack functionalities in terms of the no. of storage vendors it supports and also support for Zoning of the FC switches. But this definitely is an interesting product to watch out for.
In my view VSM should boost the virtualization of I/O intensive production apps. By mapping storage LUNs straight to the VMs, you can provide the same performance and reliability to the VMs as that of physical machines. By automating and integrating storage provisioning with the hypervisor tools, Citrix has given the flexibility to quickly provision the VMs On Demand.
VMWare is definitely not lagging far behind. VMWare has announced the vStorage framework for integrating drivers and features specific to storage vendors into ESX 4.0. Should be interesting to watch if VMWare can come out with a broader vendor support and more features compared to Citrix in vStorage.
Let's wait and watch.
Apart from those, storage integration has been one area where Citrix has been leading the game. XenServer 5.0 has built in integration with NetApp and EqualLogic storage arrays. This enables XenServer to leverage the storage features like Snapshotting, Fast clone and thin provisioning.
Though this might not have a serious performance implications for normal workloads, this integration makes XenServer more suitable for disk intensive workloads and for apps like VDI and LabManager. Both VDI and Labmanager rely extensively on the fast clone and snapshot features. Offloading these functions to the storage should give users noticeable I/O performance enhancements and also free up CPU cycles on the Server. I am not aware of XenApp using the fast clone technology like VMWare View Manager does, but Citrix Labmanager (OEMd from VMLogix) extensively uses this feature and should be interesting to note the performance differences between VMLogix Labmanager on ESX and on XenServer with NetApp storage.
Citrix has gone another step further by introducing the new product - Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) for both XenServer and Hyper-V. This product integrates with the leading storage vendors and provides the capabilities to carve out LUNs on the arrays on demand and present them to the hypervisors. This should fill the gap with the non-availability of Cluster file system in Hyper-V. Being a 1.0 product, it seems to lack functionalities in terms of the no. of storage vendors it supports and also support for Zoning of the FC switches. But this definitely is an interesting product to watch out for.
In my view VSM should boost the virtualization of I/O intensive production apps. By mapping storage LUNs straight to the VMs, you can provide the same performance and reliability to the VMs as that of physical machines. By automating and integrating storage provisioning with the hypervisor tools, Citrix has given the flexibility to quickly provision the VMs On Demand.
VMWare is definitely not lagging far behind. VMWare has announced the vStorage framework for integrating drivers and features specific to storage vendors into ESX 4.0. Should be interesting to watch if VMWare can come out with a broader vendor support and more features compared to Citrix in vStorage.
Let's wait and watch.
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