Solutions
Virtualization
Virtualization can enable the greatest return on the network investment. Done properly and the result will be fewer machines requiring less real estate, less electricity and less hands-on maintenance. That means a lowered total cost of ownership that begets more savings. As the 10G core gives way to 40G and 100G, virtualization scales very nicely and as bandwidth consumption rises to meet availability, virtual machines can be configured to provision applications nearest the concentration of users, ensuring maximum performance under the heaviest network load.
However, virtualization must be deployed, configured and maintained with the utmost fidelity, or any productivity gains and savings will be lost. Without adequate resources or commitment, other approaches might be more viable. Virtualization without solid orchestration will bring chaos.
It has become an adaptive computing architecture that now encompasses servers, networks, storage and desktop or mobile clients. Virtualization began as a way to lower IT computing costs but has grown into a solution that maximizes an organization’s efficiency and flexibility. It has become the basis for organizations that need to enhance agility.
Both public and private sectors must be prepared to adapt quickly to unpredictable events. This requires an architecture where the business model is abstracted from the computing model, allowing resources from the pool to meet new requirements dynamically.
At its most basic, virtualization enables a single physical environment, such as a data center, to appear and operate as though it were several different environments. Imagine a server that can create 10 more with each operating 10 different operating systems, riding on 10 different VLANs, all in the same physical device.
Virtualization is at the core of this agile architecture. Key IT areas where virtualization has played a valuable role include:
Operating System Virtualization – Represents the most common form and universally understood definition of Virtualization, the virtual machine. A Virtual Machine tends to be a full implementation of a standard operating system such as Windows or Linux. More than one Virtual Machine can execute simultaneously on the same physical hardware and each instance is managed by its own Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).
Storage Virtualization – Offered in two forms, File Virtualization and Block Virtualization, Storage Virtualization provides an abstraction layer that separates the actual physical storage of information from how it appears to an application or user. Most file virtualization technologies sit in front of the file system. When a user or application requests access to a file, there is no need to know if that file is local - or if the file is stored on a shared remote server. Block virtualization allows a fully distributed storage network to appear to be a single physical device.
Network Virtualization – A bit more ambiguous in concept, an example of Network Virtualization would be a Virtual LAN (VLAN). A VLAN supports a network of computers that behave as if they are connected to the same wire even though they may actually be physically located on different segments of a LAN. One of the biggest advantages of VLANs is that when a computer is physically moved to another location, it can stay on the same VLAN without any hardware reconfiguration.
Hardware Virtualization – Similar in concept to Operating System Virtualization, Hardware Virtualization breaks up pieces and locations of physical hardware into individually separate components. Symmetric and asymmetric multiprocessing are examples of hardware virtualization. Another example is “slicing” where a percentage of a given system is dedicated to performing specific computational tasks. An example of such a task could be compute intensive algorithms such as encryption.
The LEVERAGE Advantage
Virtualization offers the possibility to make IT very efficient with resource allocation; but IT Virtualization must be tied to an explicit understanding of performance availability and other service level requirements. To guarantee success, LEVERAGE will begin an IT Virtualization implementation project only when all customer requirements are clearly defined. Focusing on our customer’s specific needs, we thoughtfully select proven technologies from our trusted partners to include in the project. The result of this process is a virtual architecture that lays the foundations for IT agility going forward.
