Infrastructure
Services
Seeing Through
the Cloud(s)
Virtualization is currently all the rage, but you
don’t have to go all the way to get important
business benefits. Here’s a look at our roadmap
for creating a unified, dynamic and cost-effective
computing infrastructure that meets today’s
business challenges, while anticipating
tomorrow’s requirements.
Virtualization is certainly not a new concept. It began with timesharing in the late 1950s and accelerated in the 1960s with IBM’s 360 mainframe family. During the 1970s, virtualization moved into the mainstream with the Digital Equipment Corp VAX/VMS minicomputer.
The concept has evolved substantially, though, and virtualization to-day goes far beyond the level of discrete systems. Virtualization now offers tremendous opportunities for IT to reduce costs throughout the data center, increase flexibility across dispersed IT infrastruc-tures and take advantage of the next great wave: cloud computing. Few CIOs today doubt the potential benefits of virtualization (see Figure 1). Most are at least exploring the concept, if not already implementing it in some areas. Who wouldn’t want to increase their data center’s flexibility, while at the same time increasing utiliza-tion, lowering costs and creating a greener IT environment? Getting there, however, is more challenging than simply creating a set of virtualized servers, storage and applications. Every busi-ness environment is different, and moving beyond some quick-hit savings requires a broad rethink of how IT really serves the busi-ness. Indeed, virtualization itself is just a means to an end: Creating a much more dynamic, unified and adaptable infrastructure that supports business goals and processes with minimum friction and maximum impact.
In this context, IT leaders should take the long view and look toward a strategic roadmap that supports a comprehensive, step-by-step approach to virtualization and beyond. Our Dynamic IT Infrastructure Maturity Mod-el, outlined below, can provide a useful framework within which to begin or acceler-ate the journey.
Why Virtualize?
Generally speaking, companies virtualize for two main reasons:
● To reduce the data center footprint, thereby improving IT efficiency and cost control. This enables enterprises to operate with fewer servers,
less raised floor space, fewer cables, higher system utilization and “greener” IT.
● To increase system flexibility and resiliency, which supports better business agility and helps reduce time to market. This enables IT to
create, archive and destroy infrastructure on-demand; deliver rapid change without sacrificing standards; enable fault-tolerant and self-healing systems; and support rapid recovery from disasters.
Fortunately, since the concept of virtualization is well established and is only new to the Intel x86 hardware platform, virtualization tools, technologies and manage-ment systems are mature, which makes it relatively easy for IT to get started and realize benefits quickly. Even companies just dipping their toes in virtualization have been able to:
● Hit cost-reduction targets for hardware, software, space, power and overhead.
● Increase system reliability, recoverability and availability. ● Respond more rapidly to changing business requirements.
Looking ahead, though, companies that focus merely on short-term gains run a great risk of missing the larger, long-term benefits of virtualization. They may also add to longer term costs if short-sighted, near-term initiatives make it harder to adapt to emerging opportunities.
For instance, best practices for machine virtualization usually assume that new hardware will be deployed to support the virtual infrastructure environment. This in-volves a capital expenditure that might make some organizations balk, even though the returns from investing in a hardware refresh to support machine virtualization are often very compelling. In other cases, companies may consider upgrading ex-isting hardware as an alternative. We’ve found that, more often than not, the cost of upgrading existing hardware is equal to and sometimes greater than the cost of purchasing new hardware. When considering ROI, the shorter life expectancy of upgraded hardware can make this option even less attractive.
Current virtualization discussions tend to focus on two or three areas: Storage, serv-ers and, perhaps, desktops. These are generally the most developed areas, but they are far from the end of the story. In fact, the advantages of virtualization, including efficiency, flexibility and reliability, are available up and down the entire IT stack. A more comprehensive view comprises four dimensions of potential virtualization: ● Machine: Virtual desktops, servers and appliances that can run
simultaneously and across physical equipment.
● Storage: Shared virtual storage “abstracted” from the underlying physical
storage infrastructure.
● Network: Distributed, virtual network hardware enabling a dynamic,
policy-based “network on demand.”
● Application: Portable, streamable applications separated from the underlying operating system.
Virtualization Layer
ThinApp OS ThinApp OS App OS App OSPhysical Infrastructure
Separating the Physical Infrastructure
Exponential growth is driven by desktop applications.Transforming Your Team for Virtualization
Virtualizing your IT infrastructure, especially as you step into the higher stages of our Dynamic IT Infrastructure Maturity Model (see Figure 2), will place increased stress on your team. Managing this type of transformation requires deep skill in both technology and business process, and neither are in great supply when it comes to virtualization.
On the technology side, your team needs an in-depth understanding of:
● The new technologies and tools coming into the market.
● The interplay of physical and virtual hardware, systems, networks and applications.
● The myriad issues surrounding deployment, security, management and optimization of virtual assets. On the business side, your team needs to understand:
● How to link and optimize virtual assets and capabilities according to business need.
● How virtual capabilities impact business processes (and vice versa).
● The integration of business and technology roadmaps.
● The effective development and execution of business strategy and change.
For IT leadership, the challenge is not necessarily overhauling your team right away, but building a skills and performance roadmap that parallels the virtualization roadmap. There will be required changes in employee and partner capabilities as you move from stage to stage.
For example, as network infrastructure converges and moves into the virtual world, network administrators and virtual infrastructure adminis-trators need greater understanding and competency in each other’s ar-eas. Similarly, most security specialists are still coming up to speed on the capabilities and shortcomings of virtual infrastructure environments. Because they are literally paid to be risk-averse, they will tend to block anything they do not understand. Training them in virtual infrastructure environments, as well as involving them early on in the design and imple-mentation of your virtual environments, will be essential to success.
Considering all four dimensions is the first step toward developing a business and technology roadmap capable of gaining the full benefits of virtualization, a com-mon compute platform, cloud computing and dynamic IT infrastructure.
Building the Roadmap: A Five-Stage Maturity Model
From a strategic perspective, virtualization and cloud computing alone are big enough to suggest a full-blown transformation of how we organize and manage IT. But it’s not something that can be done all at once.
From a strategic
perspective, virtualization
and cloud computing alone
are big enough to suggest
a full-blown
transforma-tion of how we organize
and manage IT. But it’s
not something that can be
done all at once.
rapid rate of change compared with the machine and storage dimensions. It’s dif-ficult for most organizations to know the extent to which virtual components can and should replace physical components -- and what the tradeoffs might be. We can, however, plot a path toward a dynamic IT infrastructure
across all four dimensions that simplifies for IT leaders where they stand today, what the appropriate next steps might be and what the costs and benefits are as they move down the path.
In fact, “cloud” is actually only one element of the dynamic data center. Over time, most organizations will mix internal, external and hybrid clouds with other components. We sometimes refer to this dynamic environment as an IT infrastructure “stew.” The key to cre-ating a great stew is mixing the different pieces together well -- be-ing a good cook, if you will.
Critically, especially in the resource-constrained world in which most CIOs live, you can get immediate benefits every step of the way while positioning yourself for continual progress.
As shown above in Figure 2, our Dynamic IT Infrastructure Maturity Model provides a five-stage model that illustrates how companies move from initial interest in virtualization to a full-blown utility (or
cloud) infrastructure. Quite unlike today’s typical infrastructure, the highest stage of the model is built around virtual resources that can be precisely allocated to a business need, based on policy and cost justification.
Stage 1: Reaction
The first stage in the journey to dynamic IT infrastructure is basic awareness.
● Physical and virtual systems managed through common tools
● Virtualization used in development and production
environments
● Basic management tools in place
● Recognize benefits of virtual infrastructure ● Some virtualization in use in limited categories
● Aware of virtualization concepts
● Little to no use of virtualization technologies
● Virtual resources predictively allocated based on
business need
■ Resource lifecycle managed by policy and cost
Traditional Infrastructure Cloud Infrastructure Dynamic IT In fras truct ure Reaction Stage 1 Recognition Stage 2 Virtualized Stage 3 Optimized Stage 4 Utility Stage 5
Dynamic IT Infrastructure Maturity Model: Overview
Transformation in Action: A Global Communications
Company Moves to Utility Computing
The very survival, never mind growth prospects, of one of the world's largest communications companies depends on its ability to make continual, on-the-fly IT infrastructure upgrades. One misstep undercuts its ability to deliv-er broadband connectivity, content and commdeliv-erce to millions of home usdeliv-ers amid intense competition and continually rising customer expectations. Like most large communications players, this company has multiple oper-ating systems and platforms that must work together seamlessly and with the utmost reliability.
Looking to take maximum advantage of virtual and cloud capabilities for its IT infrastructure, the company is working with us to design and imple-ment a dynamic IT infrastructure environimple-ment, including:
● A partner-hosted external cloud for limited micro-development.
● An internal cloud for heavier internal development, QA testing, performance and production environments.
● Enterprise monitoring and management linking the internal and external clouds.
It's a very ambitious project, taking them from Stage 1 and pushing toward Stage 4 and, in some cases, Stage 5 of our Dynamic IT Infrastructure Ma-turity Model in just a few months. The company has received substantial benefits even before the implementation is complete, including:
● Reduction of the physical data center footprint by more than 75% compared with corresponding physical infrastructure. A
production environment designed to serve up to one million end users can be housed in only 14 standard data center racks, including the networking and storage components.
● Core infrastructure that lays the groundwork, enabling a future ability to quickly and seamlessly migrate applications from external to internal clouds and back, as required.
● Increased reliability and simplified application development requirements.
● Ability to perform hardware refresh independently of application refresh, in most cases with no downtime.
Perhaps most telling, the implementation team has been able to make fun-damental changes in the application architecture midstream, with literally no impact on the physical infrastructure. In fact, they have done so several times, and have been pleasantly surprised at how such fundamental design changes had no impact on the physical infrastructure design at all.
Companies at Stage 3
can realize substantial
benefits throughout the
infrastructure with cost
savings, additional capability,
reduced physical and energy
footprints, and increased
business agility and
resiliency.
Here, IT organizations are aware of the potential benefits of virtualization but have not yet taken advantage of them, or they have just begun to experiment at the margins with a few systems or servers. End users and developers are more resistant than intrigued, fearing the changes that virtualization may require.
At this stage, storage is provisioned manually and allocated based on escalated need. Additional storage is provisioned at the last min-ute, often at a premium price by using Tier 1 versus less expensive Tier 2 or Tier 3 storage. Networks are deployed or changed manu-ally as well, and applications are installed on individual systems. The infrastructure works, but it is relatively expensive, and change does not come easily.
Stage 2: Recognition
As companies begin to realize the initial benefits with their first forays into virtualization, they start to look for opportunities more broadly across the infrastructure.
Machine and storage virtualization are still the primary focus; these technologies are more mature and more easily available for pilot projects and evaluation. But some companies start to look at ap-plications and the network as well, and begin to pave the way for more substantial trials.
At this stage, many organizations focus on virtualizing production and non-mission-critical applications to minimize the perceived risk that accompanies any substantial change in the way computing is done. From a systems management perspective, virtual systems are considered to be new, special-case systems that must be accounted for differently from their physical counterparts.
As they mature through this stage, some companies may begin to configure net-work components manually for better support of virtual machines, and start to document application packaging standards to enable testing of application package sequencing.
Stage 3: Virtualized
At Stage 3, companies are more fully committed to virtualization, and have integrat-ed virtual tools, systems and applications into both development and production en-vironments across the infrastructure. Along with more regular use of virtualization in all four dimensions, they have management tools and processes in place to map physical and virtual assets to business policies and requirements.
Also, companies have broken the dependence between their systems and the un-derlying physical hardware. For example, storage is now platform independent and can be deployed and utilized much more efficiently across the business. Network management tools recognize physical and virtual components, with documented processes to manage both types of components in an integrated fashion.
Companies at Stage 3 can realize substantial benefits throughout the infrastruc-ture with cost savings, additional capability, reduced physical and energy footprints, and increased business agility and resiliency.
Stage 4: Optimized
Once companies have made a systematic move to virtualization, as in Stage 3, they have laid a foundation for a more complete transformation of IT infrastructure and an optimized approach, with multiple virtualization technologies working together. The transition from Stage 3 to Stage 4 is among the most difficult for an organiza-tion to make. Note that while organizaorganiza-tions at the lower stages can certainly use external cloud computing services, they will tend to do so in much the same way that any outsourced data center service is used. There is no mature connection from an IT service delivery and operations management perspective that seamless-ly ties this external environment to their internal environment. The change is not unlike the difference between the first and second U.S. Olympic Basketball “Dream Teams” from 2004 and 2008. Essentially, moving from Stage 3 to Stage 4 is the equivalent of making the transition from having five star basketball players with matching uniforms running up and down the court to having five star players actually playing together on the court with an intimate understanding of their collective potential when playing as a team.
Likewise, the various technology and service components of virtu-alization at this stage are designed to leverage each other’s capa-bilities synergistically. Each has a part to play in enabling the others to go further. For example, virtual network components provide a common framework upon which the data and storage networks can operate seamlessly. This network convergence greatly simplifies the physical components of the data center network and eliminates the need for a separate storage network architecture. Components in the data center at this stage are managed in the same way, regard-less of whether they are actually physical or virtual in nature. This ”optimized” stage assumes that organizations have a “virtual first,” if not a “virtual only,” policy, with proactive deployment of virtual assets across the infrastructure to meet service level agree-ments (SLAs) and new business requireagree-ments. Common standards and processes maximize efficiency and simplify new deployments. Resources are allocated dynamically based on standard and new policies.
The results include additional savings, reduced overhead, greater consistency and faster response to changing requirements. IT at this stage truly becomes a dynamic enabler and contributor to business efficiency, agility and innovation.
Stage 5: Utility
Through Stage 4, companies typically rely entirely or mainly on internal resources for IT. But the rise of cloud computing services -- wherein companies can take ad-vantage of external virtualized resources over the Internet, as well as their own internal assets -- adds another element entirely. Organizations operating at Stage 5 leverage a combination of proven technology and highly optimized, mature IT service management processes and methodology. This enables them to manage external cloud resources in ways that are as seamless and effective as how internal IT infrastructure is managed.
In such a hybrid
environment, virtualized
systems and applications
are moved between
public and private
sections of the cloud
predictively and securely,
with allocations based on
business need, user
Software as a service (SaaS) over the Internet is the most prominent example of cloud computing, but infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) are also coming to the fore. With cloud computing, companies can tap public-ly available resources that are more easipublic-ly scalable, deployed automaticalpublic-ly, priced according to consumption and purchased more affordably than internal resources (see “Next Generation Services In a Reset Economy,” page 23). An ecosystem of cloud-based providers is growing quickly, with the more well-known cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft seeing increased competition from both small- and large- scale alternatives providing a variety of services.
Companies may not want to rely entirely on public cloud services due to perceived and actual security and compliance shortcomings, as well as cost concerns. If the scale of the compute need in question is large enough, public cloud offerings actu-ally become less cost-efficient.
Drawing a comparison to air travel, there comes a time when it is more cost-effective to buy your own airplane and fly yourself where you want to go than to purchase a large number of airline tickets. Organizations facing this challenge can create private cloud environments with internal resources and integrate them with public cloud services to create a unified cloud environment. In such a hybrid environment, virtualized systems and applications are moved between public and private sections of the cloud predictively and securely, with allocations based on business need, user profiles, managed risk and enterprise cost efficiency. Again, a highly optimized and mature IT service management capability is a prerequisite for taking full advantage of a hybrid environment. The result is an infrastructure that provides maximum flex-ibility, efficiency and security.
Moving Down the Path
For IT leaders interested in virtualization, there are two fundamental questions to answer:
● How much of the infrastructure should you or can you virtualize (i.e., which of the four dimensions should you explore and when)?
● How far should you go in each dimension?
The answers are unique to every organization and will likely change over time as business needs change, technology continues to evolve and virtualization skills ad-vance.
The general direction, however, will not change. As the bar keeps rising on IT to be more efficient, flexible and supportive of rapid business innovation, moving closer to the utility model will become standard practice. Leveraging our Dynamic IT Infra-structure Maturity Model can help you advance as expeditiously as possible.
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