What do Virtualization and Cloud executives think about 2011? Find out in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
Contributed Article By Jim Puchbauer, Director of Marketing, Coyote Point Systems
2011 - Virtualization Gets A Boost From Advanced Application Delivery Controllers
Virtualization has proven its value for dramatically enhancing datacenter consolidation and significantly increasing server utilization, and in 2011 next-generation Application Delivery Controllers will interoperate with virtualization tools to provide greater control and automatically deploy server resources based on real-time demand. Coyote Point Systems has recently launched an analysis of buying and usage patterns of our customers. In the survey responses, we are finding that virtualization is a technology that is on the current IT roadmap for implementation or evaluation in over 75% of our respondents. We feel that a key capability of successful ADCs must include Virtualization awareness and optimization, and certain new capabilities are rolling into the 90% area of the most used features curve for ADCs.
A critical component to achieving the goals of virtualization is ensuring that the virtual infrastructure provide high application availability and optimal application performance. IT administrators will need to leverage new technology to make the most cost-efficient and effective traffic distribution possible.
In 2011, IT administrators will look to ensure there will always be effective use of virtual server resources. Scaling applications by automating the scaling of virtual server infrastructure has led to the virtualization-aware ADC, where advanced ADCs intelligently distribute and load balance end-user requests across multiple servers. Advanced ADCs with virtualization management capabilities will automate spinning up and shutting down virtual machines based on the real time application load. If the load increases, additional servers will be triggered to be brought online. When the load subsides, those additional servers will be automatically turned off, freeing up resources for other servers and applications. Eliminating hot spots by effectively optimizing the compute resources automatically will also eliminate the need for overprovision to handle load spikes.
Virtualization and application delivery technologies will go together to transform the economics of the datacenter in 2011 and for years to come. The fiscal impact will be in capital expense (fewer servers), and operational expenses (reduced power, cooling, management and administration).
About the Author
Jim Puchbauer is the Director of Marketing at Coyote Point Systems, a leading provider of Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) for small-to-medium size enterprises.