It’s official. Virtualization has hit the mainstream. The reason I know this is even PC magazine is now featuring stories and mentioning the aspects of how cloud computing is going to change everything. I have been reading PC mag for years, and i find it exciting that even the PC guys are talking virtualization now, and not just as it pertains to running applications on a PC, but from the perspective of the network and storage (http://www.pcmag.com/current_issue in the frontside section “Living in the cloud”) Excerpt:” Cloud computing is set to tale over the world”.
Now you need to ask yourself: “Why are we looking at Virtualization in the first place”?
The answer is virtualization provides the plumbing for a “Services Oriented Architecture” By services, I mean all the things that a COMPLETE virtualization solution needs to bring to the table to make it useful to the organization. The whole point of Virtualizing is to simplify the environment while gaining efficiencies of process and procedures to reduce overall costs. In other words, putting real meaning to the often used terms of “better ROI”, and “ Lower TCO”.
Although many datacenter and storage managers are looking for solutions such as storage virtualization to simplify operations and streamline the infrastructure, I am finding that most are having a difficult time in figuring out how to qualify the upfront expenditures of buying a virtualization solution vs. the return on investment that is needed to sell the solution up through the management chain. Many upper level managers may be strictly focused on the bottom line, and may perceive solutions that make life easier for IT operations as unimportant. What they are missing, and what operations managers are failing to communicate up the chain, is how virtualization solutions can have a significant impact on cost savings for the company.
It seems that no matter what we do, there is never enough time in the day to get everything done. Too many fires to put out, too many interruptions, too many calls and emails, too many people to meet and places to go. As a result, it becomes very difficult to be effective in what we do each day. I was talking to a colleague the other day on this very subject, and it came to me that in many of the meetings I have been attending, we are all are facing similar issues.
I have been seeing a lot of interest lately by many large companies in leveraging virtualization to reduce costs. Many have adopted hardware solutions on the compute side such as Domain based systems from Sun and HP, LPAR based systems from IBM such as the pSeries or Linux on the Mainframe, or software based solutions such as Citrix and VMware. What has been lacking is a viable low cost virtualization solution for the storage side. Well, fear not, it’s here. I think we have pulled the virtual rabbit out of the hat, and I would like feedback and opinions on something I think is pretty cool.
I just got back from speaking at the Sys-Con SOA (Services Oriented Architecture) conference in New York (http://www2.sys-con.com/soajune.cfm)
I don’t think I have ever heard a single three letter acronym mentioned so many times in a single day in my life(SOA that is). I thought ILM was hot. Nahhh, that’s totally passé. It’s as if a lightbulb went off in everyone’s head at the same time, and they just realized that creating flexible applications and IT infrastructure would be a good thing. As Homer Simpson would say, Duhhh.
So if you read my BIO, you’ll find that I have been around the storage industry for a fairly long time, wrote the SAN for dummies book, and was one of the original SAN experts on Http://www.SearchStorage.com
My hope is that this page will become a routine part of your week for perusing interesting sites looking for tidbits that may help you in your insatiable quest for storage knowledge, and maybe even give you a chuckle or two to help ease those boring or stressful days.
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