What do Virtualization and Cloud executives think about 2012? Find out in this VMblog.com series exclusive.
2012 Prediction: I/O Virtualization provides agility to solve tough virtualization
projects
Contributed
Article by John Meadows, Director, NextIO
In 2011, IT departments have been
asked to continually do more with less:
deploy on-demand clouds and enterprise wide VDI, virtualize mission
critical applications, upgrade to 10GbE, and implement ever more complex tiered
storage solutions. At the same time, IT
budgets have remained flat or even decreased.
Architects are realizing that current hardware designs are inefficient
at deploying I/O resources to keep up with the agility and reliability required
for virtual desktop and cloud deployments.
Current designs are both expensive (have you priced a 10GbE uplift
lately?!?) and inflexible. Much like
server virtualization 8 to 10 years ago, I/O virtualization is a disruptive
technology that improves reliability, consolidation, and flexibility, while
ultimately lowering IT costs.
What do I expect with regards to I/O
virtualization in 2012? Read on:
I/O virtualization provides
the key to cloud agility
I think we can agree that for many
enterprises the easy stuff has been virtualized. Now admins are tackling much harder problems:
-
Virtualizing database servers and
mission critical and high performance apps
-
VDI, which has been evaluated to
death over the last 3 to 4 years, must now be deployed in production. End users are sensitive to the performance of
their desktop apps and IT staff will hear about any deficiencies.
-
Internal customers are no longer
satisfied with the "one size fits all" VM templates deployed in the cloud - don't
box me in!
To keep up, IT staff will have no
choice but to invest heavily in their current architectures or look to new
technologies such as I/O virtualization.
Much like server architecture before
virtualization, currently I/O resources are inefficiently deployed, inflexible,
and expensive, generally with a lot of excess capacity. I/O virtualization is the separation of I/O
(Ethernet, Fiber Channel, FCoE, etc.) from the compute resources (CPU and Memory)
so that the I/O resources can be consolidated, managed, and deployed most
effectively.
I/O virtualization provides both
cost savings and flexibility, with the agility to match I/O resources to
workload requirements with the same ease as provisioning servers. The hardware limitation of the host is
removed so that staff can easily scale I/O up or down according to the VM
workload (as well as bill customers for the I/O resources consumed). In addition, GPUs and SSDs can be added for
specific high demand workloads.
Eliminate vendor lock-in and reduce
hardware costs
Proprietary architectures such as blade
chassis' or interconnect fabric can be very effective for certain
virtualization projects, but that effectiveness comes at a price. Many enterprises will be looking for ways to
match the flexibility of their hardware architecture to the flexibility of
their cloud services. This includes
technologies that scale up easily and cheaply, accommodate a variety of
vendors, and do not force them to make long term bets on the viability of
certain architectures to meet their processing needs 4 or 5 years out.
While third party cloud providers
are stepping in to provide scalable resources on an as-needed basis, I/O
virtualization provides much needed flexibility and cost savings for dedicated
environments. I/O virtualization is
based on industry standards such as PCIe so that it can accommodate compute
nodes from a variety of vendors - pick your server according to availability,
cost, and performance, not on a blade chassis purchased years ago. IT staff can easily deploy new technologies
to take advantage of cost savings or performance improvements. I/O virtualization provides a cost effective
way to deploy 10GbE or Fiber Channel in the datacenter.
In 2012, IOV will help enterprises
tackle some of their more difficult virtualization projects.
###
About the Author
John Meadows knows his virtualization by working
with hundreds and hundreds of VMware architects, engineers, and administrators
while first working as Director of Sales at Hyper9 (a virtualization management
company acquired earlier in the year by Solarwinds) and now, as Director of
vNET sales at NextIO. NextIO provides rack-level IO consolidation and
virtualization solutions that maximize value, productivity and efficiencies of
complex server IO. Our innovative architecture is based upon industry standard
PCIe switching technology. By separating the compute from the IO we create
pools of server IO resources at the rack level that can be shared, virtualized
or dynamically allocated across servers within the rack. Data center managers
benefit from lower TCO and increased time to revenue. For more information, visit www.nextio.com.