Boosting ROI with Multi Vendor Virtualization

A UBM TECHWEB WHITE PAPERAPRIL 2011

Boosting ROI with Multi-Vendor Virtualization

How a Mixed Hypervisor Environment Can Benefit Your Business

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lenny Liebmann is a writer and consultant with more than 30 years of experience in the application of informa-tion technologies to real-world business challenges.

Boosting ROI with Multi-Vendor Virtualization

Virtualization offers compelling value. With virtu-alization, IT can more flexibly allocate computing power to diverse application workloads — thereby reducing costs, optimizing performance and improv-ing responsiveness to shifts in business demand.

As they have adopted virtualization, however, data center managers have faced a problematic choice: either to rigorously maintain a highly uni-form hypervisor environment or to utilize different vendors’ virtual server platforms for different applications, as appropriate.

Some data center managers believe that a uniform environment is the best option, because it lets them keep things simple. The downside, however, is that uniformity forces IT to use the same hypervisor across the board — even when that hypervisor may be either more expensive or less robust than is necessary for a particular application. Strict uniformity can also be difficult to maintain in the real world, and it can lead to vendor lock-in.

A mixed virtualization environment, on the other hand, allows data center managers to match the right hypervisor to each application based on cost, skills and features. Unfortunately, mixed environments have typically been very complex to manage — driving up total cost of ownership.

The good news is that management of mixed virtualization environments has been greatly sim-plified, so data center managers can now choose the best hypervisor for each application — with-out paying an unacceptable “complexity tax.”

This kind of well-managed multihypervisor environment allows IT to further drive down costs, make much more extensive use of virtualization, improve agility, and minimize the allocation of staff time and effort to data center housekeeping tasks.

IT organizations embracing virtualization to build private clouds should therefore strongly consider adopting both multiple hypervisors and

the technology necessary to simplify the manage-ment of mixed hypervisor environments.

Does a single hypervisor really make sense?Data center managers have taken a variety of approaches to virtualization. Some were early adopters. Others waited a little longer for vendor offerings to mature. Some depended heavily on outside expertise to initiate their implementations. Others focused on building in-house skills.

However, as the benefits of virtualization have become clearly evident — and as vendors’ hypervisor offerings have matured — most man-agers have embraced the technology and are doing their best to take maximum advantage of its benefits.

Some data center managers believe that one way to get the most out of virtualization is to maintain a rigorous uniformity in their hypervisor implementations. By using a single vendor’s hyper-visor, these managers believe they can drive down their costs and achieve optimum results.

This belief is understandable — and may have even been somewhat valid in the earliest days of the market. The use of a single hypervisor reduces complexity. It means that IT staff has to get up to speed on only one vendor’s technology. It elimi-nates the need to keep track of which hypervisor is being used where. It simplifies administration of licensing and support contracts.

However, adopting a virtualization strategy based on the use of only one vendor’s hypervi-sor across the enterprise has several downsides, which include: Licensing costs. There are substantial dif-ferences between the cost structures for different hypervisors from different vendors. A blanket deci-sion to use only one vendor’s hypervisor eliminates the possibility of using a less expensive alternative,

By Lenny Liebmann

UBM TECHWEB WHITE PAPER | Boosting ROI with Multi-Vendor Virtualization

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such as Microsoft Hyper-V, where appropriate. As virtualization is rolled out across the enterprise, these missed opportunities for cost savings can be significant. Functional limitations. Use of a single hypervisor hamstrings IT with that single hyper-visor’s functional limitations. Some hypervisors, for example, are better suited to certain types of workloads than others. Also, some hypervisors are not able to flexibly move workloads between Intel and AMD architectures — essentially lock-ing IT into a specific brand of processor silicon. IT organizations that maintain a policy of rigorous standardization cannot overcome such limitations by using alternative hypervisor solutions. Vendor lock-in. IT organizations that com-mit to a single hypervisor wind up locked into that vendor’s virtualization platform prematurely. There is still plenty of innovation taking place in virtualiza-tion. And it’s important to keep virtualization vendors honest when it comes to contract negotiations. Companies that put all their eggs in one hypervisor basket lose almost all their negotiating leverage — because the cost and potential disruption of migrat-ing an entire virtual infrastructure from an incumbent vendor to an alternative vendor will be prohibitive. Being intentional vs. being reactive. IT organizations that plan to use a single hypervisor across the enterprise often still wind up with heterogeneous virtual serv-ers. This can happen because some group deviates from the standard for some reason — or because some acquired business has adopted another hypervisor solution. If the virtualization strategy is built on the assumption of hypervisor

“purity,” these deviations can throw a monkey wrench into the works.

For these and other reasons, a single-hyper-visor strategy may not make the most economic or operational sense for your company — even though rigorously uniform virtualization can seem like a reasonable approach.

The rationale for a mixed hypervisor environmentBased on the potential downsides of a virtualiza-tion strategy predicated upon a single hypervisor, a strong argument can be made for an intention-ally heterogeneous approach. Key points in this argument include: Optimized alignment of hypervi-sor capabilities and costs with application requirements. As noted earlier, one hypervisor may make sense for certain applications and/or use of multiple types of processor silicon — while another may not. By granting themselves the free-dom to make choices that are appropriate for each situation, IT organizations can better align hypervisor capabilities and costs with applica-tion requirements. This helps optimize application performance and scalability while preventing unnecessary spending. Near-term and long-term flexibility. Understanding and deploying multiple vendors’ hypervisors ensures maximum near-term and long-term flexibility. If one vendor pulls ahead of the competition in terms of technology, pricing or service, simply adjust the hypervisor “mix” accord-ingly. If an enterprise acquires a new business, the acquired company’s virtual servers can be accom-modated regardless of which specific hypervisor is used — instead of having to bear the cost and disruption of a massive migration to the corporate standard. And organizations that plan for hypervi-sor heterogeneity are in a better position to adopt some entirely new vendor’s hypervisor if its value proposition is sufficiently attractive.

Application Application Application Application Application

Hypervisor

B

Hypervisor

B

Hypervisor

A

Hypervisor

B

Hypervisor

C

IT organizations that are free to choose the most appropriate hypervisor for each situation can better align capabilities and costs with application requirements.

It’s important to keep virtualization vendors

honest when it comes to contract negotiations. Companies

that put all their eggs in one hypervisor basket lose their

negotiating leverage.


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Broader use of virtualization. By preserving the freedom to use more economical hypervisors where appropriate, enterprises can roll out virtu-alization much more broadly without breaking the budget or endangering performance, availability or other service-level standards. Hypervisor flex-ibility can help enterprises employ virtualization

for 70 to 90 percent of servers — a big improve-ment over the 20 to 30 percent threshold that’s typical today. This broader use of virtualization can significantly improve the efficiency of IT operations as a whole. It can also drive down TCO for virtual servers through far greater economies of scale.

Of course, a mixed hypervisor environment also introduces the following issues: • Insulating IT operations staff from the complexities

inherent in managing multiple vendors’ hypervisors• Enabling your current IT operations staff to man-

age a larger number of virtual systems• Easing the migration of applications and services

between different hypervisors• Defining and executing a rational policy for the

use of each hypervisor.If these issues are not addressed, the advan-

tages of a mixed hypervisor environment are likely to be offset by higher operational costs, slower operational response times and an increased potential for operational error. If, on the other hand, these issues are properly addressed, IT orga-nizations can fully realize the benefits of a mixed hypervisor environment — and thereby boost the total business value returned by overall investment in virtualization.

Managing mixed environments with Dell Virtual Integrated System (VIS) architectureDell has responded to evolving data center needs with the Dell Virtual Integrated System architecture — an open, capable and affordable set of solutions for streamlining management of complex, multihypervisor computing environments.

With the Dell VIS architecture, data center managers can administer their heterogeneous com-puting, storage and networking assets as a single, common resource “cloud” that can be dynamically

allocated as necessary to meet the needs of the business. Just as important, this administration can be streamlined and automated to minimize TCO and ensure rapid, intelligent responsiveness to changing allocation requirements.

The Dell VIS architecture comprises three key modular components:• Dell Advanced Infrastructure Manager

(AIM) simplifies data center management by enabling administrators to allocate server, stor-age and network resources against application workloads with point-and-click ease. Because AIM supports multiple hypervisors and insulates administrators from the underlying complexity of heterogeneous hardware and virtualization layers, it greatly simplifies dynamic re-allocation of both physical and virtual IT resources.

• Dell VIS Self-Service Creator is a Web-based portal that speeds deployment of workloads by automating the provisioning of necessary resources. It empowers authorized users to select and activate those resources from a defined catalog — while allowing IT to define a set of standardized processes and policies that govern workload provisioning. It thus drives down costs and ensures control, even as it enables new services and applications to be activated in a matter of minutes.

• Dell VIS Director functions as the IT intelligence hub for the virtual environment, giving adminis-trators the ability to automate performance and capacity management across their virtual data center resources. It provides a holistic view of virtual dependencies and enables quick identi-fication and resolution of problems. It includes advanced reporting, system-verified trusted alarms, continuous self-learning, visualization of resource consumption, and trend analysis capabilities that administrators need to proac-tively optimize availability, performance and data center economics.

By taking advantage of these Dell VIS archi-tecture capabilities, data center managers can gain a variety of valuable capabilities, including: Unified management of multiple hyper-visors. Because Dell VIS architecture supports heterogeneous infrastructures with multiple vendors’ hypervisor environments, it enables IT organizations to mix and match comput-ing resources as appropriate. So data center managers can flexibly utilize a combination of Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESX and Citrix XenServer as part of a single “private cloud” environment — without driving up management complexity or costs.

If key challenges are addressed, IT organi-

zations can fully realize the benefits of a mixed hypervisor

environment — and thereby boost the total business value

returned by overall investment in virtualization.


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Policy-based hypervisor governance. Data center managers can ensure the appropriate use of different hypervisors by defining policies for their deployment. For example, Microsoft Hyper-V could be specified for all Microsoft applications (such as Exchange, SQL Server and SharePoint). Consistent life-cycle workflow processes. Dell VIS architecture helps combat virtual server “sprawl” and rogue implementations by enforc-ing a consistent set of life-cycle workflows from resource request and approval through resource retirement. The consistency of these processes is

especially important as personnel turns over and staff responsibilities change. Extending virtualization to remote and branch offices. Dell AIM abstracts workloads from server hardware, enabling technicians to easily add, move and change workloads running on both physical and virtual machines (as well as connectivity to the network and storage) within the span of a reboot. This allows virtualization to be readily extended to locations where there may not be any skilled technical staff. The extension of virtualization significantly reduces operation

DELL AIM AND MICROSOFT SYSTEM CENTER Another advantage of Dell VIS architecture is the complementary nature and convenient inte-gration between Dell AIM and Microsoft System Center. While Dell AIM addresses all aspects of virtualization at the hardware level — including provisioning of processor, memory, storage and network resources — Microsoft System Center gives IT the command and control it needs over the use of those resources from the virtual fabric to the application level.

Application-level management can be particularly important when it comes to optimizing performance and scalability of services with high variability in demand (such as customer-facing database access), where it may be necessary to map specific application functions (such as SQL queries) to a defined set of virtualized processing resources.

Dell AIM and Microsoft System Center make it easier to coordinate these two interdependent aspects of successful virtualization by providing shared naming of resource and services — and by giving technicians the ability to “click-through” target resources and services from one manage-ment screen to another. This streamlines virtualization management workflows and reduces the opportunity for operator error, while giving IT the complete control over resource allocation that is necessary to best meet the rapidly changing needs of the business.

The AIM/Microsoft System Center combination enables IT organizations to effectively man-age even highly complex mixed hypervisor environments from a single point across the physical, virtual and application layers — allowing them to overcome limitations in staff headcount, experience and skill sets. As a result, companies of all kinds can better serve the needs of their business and achieve greater virtualization ROI.

The combination of Dell VIS, Microsoft System Center and Hyper-V enables IT to effectively

manage complex hypervisor environments across the physical, virtual and application layers.

Dell AIM and Microsoft System Center

Dell Delivery Center

Dell VIS Self-Service Creator Dell VIS Director

Microsoft System Center

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V

Dell Advanced Infrastructure Manager

Dell OpenManage

Compute Network Storage

and infrastructure costs across remote and branch offices. Integration with existing toolkits. Dell VIS architecture supports imaging processes such as Microsoft Windows Imaging (WIM), Linux Kickstart, SUSE Linux AutoYaST, and hypervisor cloning. It also provides out-of-the-box plug-ins for integration with image distribution tools from vendors such as BMC Software, CA Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Citrix. This enables IT organizations to take advantage of its capabilities without swapping out existing investments — and to better automate deployment and management of virtual desktops.

The business benefits of a well- managed multi-vendor private cloudThe demands being placed on IT infrastruc-ture and personnel continue to escalate at a pace that exceeds any increases in IT budget. A well-managed mixed hypervisor environment is therefore highly desirable because of how it can help stretch the budget to better meet the needs of the business.

The cost savings delivered by such an environ-ment include: Lower cost of hypervisor licenses. The ability to use lower-cost hypervisors, such as Microsoft Hyper-V, wherever they are appropriate substantially reduces the overall hypervisor licens-ing budget. More efficient use of physical processing capacity. By enabling more extensive use of vir-tualization, a mixed hypervisor environment leads to maximum utilization of hardware resources — even in remote and branch offices.

More efficient use of staff time and skills. More-streamlined/automated manage-ment of the private cloud means lower overall TCO for the computing infrastruc-ture — and the ability to allocate more staff resources to other critical tasks. Greater econo-mies o f s c a l e . Common manage-ment of a larger set of virtualized computing

resources results in economies of scale that drive further reductions of the overall infrastructure TCO. Long-term freedom to pursue savings. Avoiding hypervisor vendor lock-in makes it pos-sible to pursue better value from virtualization


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With Dell VIS architecture and Microsoft System Center, IT organizations can substantially reduce virtualization licensing and ownership costs — while reaping even more of virtualization’s potential benefits.

Single HypervisorEnviroment

Multilple Hypervisorswith Fragmented Management

Multiple Hypervisorswith Dell VIS Architecture

and Microsoft System Center

Total ROI (Economic benefits minus all costs)

Management Costs

Licensing Costs

HYPER-V AND MICROSOFT SYSTEM CENTER

Microsoft Hyper-V, which is included with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 OS at no additional cost, enables organizations to take advantage of Microsoft platforms already in place — a cost saver in terms of software and IT personnel expenses — to help extend vir-tualization. Hyper-V can be used to virtualize tier-1 applications such as SQL Server, Office SharePoint Server and Exchange Server to lower total cost of ownership, increase scal-ability and maintain performance.Because Hyper-V is built into Windows Server 2008 R2, it provides features such as live migration and clustering without additional cost, and it enables existing IT staff resources to manage hypervisors. Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 comes with enhanced ben-efits like Dynamic Memory and RemoteFX, which enable advanced memory functions, improved virtual machine density, and many other performance enhancements.Introducing Hyper-V into an existing data center infrastructure enables rapid expan-sion of virtualization and sets a cost-effective foundation for a private cloud infrastructure. Hyper-V and other hypervisors can happily coexist in the same environment, especially with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Dell VIS in the mix.


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ABOUT DELL AND MICROSOFT

Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services they value.

A leading global systems and services company uniquely enabled by its direct business model, Dell is

No. 33 on the Fortune 500 list of America’s largest companies. For more information, visit www.dell.com or to

communicate directly with Dell via a variety of online channels, go to http://www.dell.com/conversations.

To get Dell news directly, visit http://www.dell.com/RSS.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (NASDAQ: “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services, and

solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft virtualization provides

a completely virtualized infrastructure for the enterprise, from the data center to desktop to the cloud.

vendors as their pricing structures evolve over time — driving down future costs. The increased value delivered by such an environment includes: Nimble response to changing business needs. As virtualization is implemented more broadly, responses to business needs (for new services, additional capacity, better performance and so on) become faster and easier. Better governance, compliance and security. A single, automated and well-defined process for managing the life cycle of virtual servers and desktops puts IT in control of the private cloud and helps mitigate risks associated with inadequately governed IT infrastructure.

Long-term freedom to pursue inno-vation. Avoiding hypervisor lock-in makes it possible to pursue new functional capabilities from virtualization vendors as they continue to innovate over time, enhancing future IT service delivery.

The bottom line is that this combination of substantial cost savings and greatly increased business value can significantly boost virtualiza-tion ROI in both the near and the long term. The ability to manage multiple hypervisors in a unified, streamlined manner is therefore a critical competitive advantage in today’s technology-dependent marketplace. ◆

Technology

Boosting ROI with Multi Vendor Virtualization