Waident Technology Solutions

VMware

 Virtualization - Is it ready for prime time?

Yes it is. That is if you use VMware Infrastructure 3 as your virtualization platform. We currently support VMware technologies, with a client in the financial services market, who does over a billion dollar of transactions annually, with rock solid results.

Virtualization is finally ready to work its way into the corporate IT departments’ arsenal of tools for production environment. Leaving the confines of the development and testing only environments, IT departments can now leverage all of the advantages of virtualization for the enterprise by using the VMware Infrastructure 3 platform.

VMware may be a new paradigm for some, but approaching the utilization of server hardware, allowing for greater flexibility while making available a host of advanced options beyond the traditional one operating system per physical server setup, just make sense. Most basically, VMware allows you to have multiple independent operating systems running simultaneously on a single piece of server hardware. Essentially, you install VMware (the host) on your server hardware and then install Windows or Linux (the guest) operating systems on top of VMware.

There are a multitude of advantages to this kind of setup
  • Downsize infrastructure hardware needs - save space while greatly reducing heat and noise.
  • Business Continuity - you can replicate the entire server, including the operating system itself, off site rather than just the data.
  • VMotion – the ability to move running servers real-time from one VMware host to another.
  • Snapshots and Cloning - allows for a much faster and robust way to handle server updates and upgrades.
  • High availability, clustering, and load balancing.
  • Convertor tool for easily migrating physical servers to VMware guests (the tool even allows you to convert live running servers on the fly).

One of the most exciting features of the VMware platform is their VMotion program set. VMotion allows for the real-time moving of VMware guest servers from one VMware host server to another. For example, if I need to do a software update to a VMware host server which is running 3 Microsoft Windows 2003 VMware guest’s running Exchange 2003. SQL 2005, and file sharing, In just seconds I can VMotion them one by one to another VMware host server while they are running with no impact on performance or any downtime.

VMware is not all perfect however. The need for a separate dedicated hardware to run the licensing and console software (what’s up with not being able to run these on VMware itself??) and the relatively painful Linux oriented software updates is another ears that could be worked on. These issues however are relatively minor compared to the depth of the platform.

I have used several virtualization platforms throughout the years with mixed success; up until VMware Infrastructure 3 offering that is. VMware has the only offering with the necessary tools and features to implement into a production environment. I highly recommend that if you have never looked at virtualizing your server hardware, it might be time to take a look at what VMware can do for you

 June 2007
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