Contributed article by Ken Oestreich, VP, Egenera  Inc.

Infrastructure Virtualization: The Next Logical Step

2010 will be an interesting year for virtualization - but not from the perspective you're probably thinking. It will be the year of the virtual infrastructure, not of the virtual machine.

Yes, the O/S virtualization market is maturing as it transforms how servers and applications are managed. The major vendors all offer hypervisors and management to accomplish server consolidation, live migration, HA, lifecycle management, lab management, and more. And they're even offering higher-level tools for DR and cloud computing.

But outside the O/S application virtualization domain there lies the infrastructure domain - where an equally important virtualization transformation is about to happen. And you need to know about this change because it will impact how you manage datacenter infrastructure, which represents (literally) the other half of datacenter operational costs.

Datacenter infrastructure is less "sexy" and less well-understood by the mainstream - representing I/O (including addressing), networking, switching, load-balancing, and even cabling. But in 2010 you'll be seeing many productized technologies that begin to abstract and configure infrastructure systems analogously to how OS virtualization abstracts and configures virtual servers. You may already be hearing about some point-products today - under the guise of virtualized I/O, converged networking, unified computing or unified infrastructure. And there's even an "Infrastructure 2.0" working group underway to codify where these initiatives are headed.

The business values of a virtual (or converged) infrastructure are similar to those from OS virtualization - better utilization, faster and less-expensive re-configuration, fewer physical parts, and overall simplified management - a far-cry from today's routine of configuring network cards, cables, switches and the like. And therein lays the beginning of the "converged infrastructure" movement.

How will the future converged infrastructure products work? Well, just as with OS virtualization, there are core enabling elements, and then there are higher-level business functions (converged management) that they enable.

The core enabling technologies are virtual I/O and converged networking, where - in software - a single physical I/O card and cable appear to the O/S (or to the VMM) like any number of unique I/O ports and connections - for both networking (e.g. Ethernet) as well as for storage (e.g. Fiberchannel). Paired together, virtual I/O and converged networking will allow infrastructure to re-configured on-the-fly if needed, without any re-cabling. Ergo a unified/converged infrastructure.

Why will converged infrastructure be important? It will provide IT operations with functionality, flexibility and a cost-basis analogous to what O/S and applications personnel get from hypervisors. Benefits will include

• Infrastructure abstraction - allowing for logical provisioning (in software) of I/O, networks, network devices, storage connectivity and network devices.

• Infrastructure consolidation - by defining I/O in software and by using converged networking, this will greatly simplify increased utilization and configuration of the physical infrastructure.
• Dynamic networking - creating networks, multi-pathing and addressing that adapts to sizes and locations of workloads, as well as adapting to failures and bottlenecks.
• Logically-defined load balancing and security policies - IP load balancing, firewalls, etc. that can be invoked anywhere on the converged network for any processor in any location, and where IP loads can be distributed locally (or globally) on-demand
• Higher-level services such as HA and disaster-recovery - where operators can completely re-construct a datacenter topology from the server down to the network... whether or not virtualization is in place on the CPU. 

Where will we see these technologies appear first?  Most likely in Infrastructure-as-a-Service implementations (think hosting providers and cloud service providers) where O/S virtualization is used for software flexibility, and where virtualized/converged infrastructures will be in use for infrastructure flexibility.

O/S virtualization management plus converged infrastructure management will be the next chocolate + peanut butter for 2010 - an ideal pairing and the next step for datacenter virtualization.

About the author 

Ken Oestreich is VP of Product Marketing with Egenera, a frequent blogger as Fountainhead, and can also be found quipping on Twitter.

Ken Oestreich has over 20 years developing new technologies, products, and markets.  Prior to Egenera, Ken led Product Marketing at Cassatt Corp., where he helped define the market for utility computing and internal cloud computing. Previously, Ken held a number of positions while at Sun Microsystems, including business management for an incubator business unit, coordinating Java and software strategy, and driving Developer Marketing, SI/ISV partnering and partner marketing. He began at Sun developing the emerging market for middleware and network-aware web services.  Ken also helped found the Liberty Alliance, now an industry-wide 150+ company body which creates federated identity technology standards for the Internet. Prior to Sun, he held a number of marketing and sales development positions in early-stage technology and consulting companies. Ken's career began as an engineer of digital electronics controlling adaptive optics with Litton Industries. Ken holds a BSE in Electrical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from Columbia University.