When Virtualization will mean "Management"

It's been awhile since I last blogged.  Have been busy at a new job, where I'm handling the marketing launch of our new integrated storage management product.  Surprisingly, though, it was my team leader who insisted that blogging needs to be something where you, "see an article and you write about it then".  So I'm following that advice.

I just read a CNET story, "Enterprise storage gets interesting again", which quoted a VM storage company exec as saying, "100 percent virtual deployment is a when, not an if, at this point. In the virtualized datacenters 20 years from today, all aspects of computing will be virtualized, including servers, networks and storage."  It's tough to argue this.  Analysts and consultants are putting server virtualization adoption at anywhere from 20% to 80% depending on the research and whether they were measuring systems, workloads or companies. The trend towards "virtualization as the default" is something we continue to hear from customers. 

The downside, however, is the complexity.  According to one survey, "...only about half of around 200 respondents find virtualized systems easier to manage or help them meet their SLAs."   Virtualization has become another complex layer of 3rd party management added on top of the physical IT resources in the data center.  It has spawned its own type of administrators (i.e. "VM Admins") as well as management frameworks.  And, if you really love complexity, you can even add on an additional "Cloud" layer of management (director software, portal, API, licenses, etc.), to further abstract, your abstracted management! 

Before I'm accused of being some Ludite, let me say that server virtualization has been a good trend. Similar to storage virtualization, network virtualization... heck, memory virtualization. I mean, when was the last time you had to specify which module or page of RAM to use for your application?   Virtualization shields the end-user from the details -- and dare I say complexity -- of the underlying physical resource.  And as a result, typically scalability, utilization and availability are improved.

So I agree that virtualization "is a when, not an if".  But the "when" will remain a long way off until the complexity is addressed. What is needed is for server virtualization to become part of the server management, not yet another thing to install, license and manage.  Just like how Storage arrays present volumes externally, while masking the internal complexity of cache memory, RAID levels, tiering, etc., servers will have to quickly get onto this same evolutionary path.  The "when" of prevalent server virtualization will arrive when the virtualization is embedded within the server hardware itself.

Cloud Fabrics

My recent absence from this blog was a result of work-related dynamics as well as involvement in another blog effort, EthernetFabric.com.  I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone seeking info on how the new generation of Ethernet switch products create savings and new capabilities within the data center.  And, not surprisingly, form an intelligent foundation for virtualized and cloud infrastructures.

On that note, one of the things I wrote recently was a position piece on "Cloud Fabrics" or in other words the network infrastructure required to support a dynamic cloud environment.  Here are the key elements:

1. Provide security to the resident applications, users and resources, including network access protection, user authentication, data in flight encryption, data at rest encryption, and logging;

2. Provide the data transport availability needed to ensure continuous packet delivery between the user and the cloud resource, through continuity capabilities such as link trunking and automatic failover;

3. As much as possible outside of the physical effects of distance-imposed latency, make a connection between users, applications and distance resources perform comparably to a traditional local connection through the use of data compression, acceleration, de-duplication, QoS and advanced routing capabilities; and

4. Provide transparency and control for the data traversing between users, applications and resources, through enabling management, monitoring and compliance capabilities that track data flows to the packet level, while also preserving the service-level context.

Let me know what you think of this "Cloud Fabric" concept.  I feel there's a lot of this already encompassed within the Ethernet Fabric efforts in the industry, whether Brocade VDX , Juniper QFabric, Cisco Unified Fabric or Arista Cloud Networking, to name a few.  But there are still missing on not-quite-integrated aspects of security, availability, acceleration/optimization, and especially management.  It's an exciting work-in-progress to watch -- how the vendor solutions are evolving to meet emerging customer needs.  I expect we'll continue to see more pieces of the puzzle from Spring industry events, more product announcements and the inevitable M&A activity.  Enjoy the ride.

2011 Cloud Predictions

Happy new year to fellow Cloud technologists, vendors, capitalists and enthusiasts!  There are almost too many Cloud year-in-review and Predictions to keep track of, and I apologize for adding yet another to the list, but these three predictions were inspired by a variety of sources, including smart work colleagues, respected industry voices and random online sources.  I've tried to give credit where it's due.  I look forward to sharing another very exciting year in the cloud community with you.

1.   Cloud becomes the default IT platform – We’re seeing growth estimates of 20-30% for public cloud offerings, and anywhere from 10-15% of IT spending being redirected to the cloud, so it should be a safe bet that Cloud will continue to grow in 2011.  But 2011may be the tipping point where for most companies, IT Project leaders will have to start considering a cloud option for every new project, and perhaps will be required to present the more demanding business case for On-Premise deployment versus the default of using Amazon, Azure or a SaaS provider.

2.   Hybrid cloud becomes the key battlefield – For now, most investment has been clearly either internal ‘private’ cloud or external SaaS, PaaS or IaaS, and never the twain shall meet.  IT teams in 2011 will have an epiphany that it all needs to connect together, whether because of performance, compliance or manageability.  Expect to see wide adoption of heterogeneous cloud management tools, continued investment and growth in the WAN optimization and cloud gateway space, as well as the convergence of SAN/LAN/WAN capabilities within underlying networking gear.

3.   Cloud M&A Peaks – Fueled by a low growth environment and cheap capital, we can expect to see a number of acquisitions across the IT landscape, including mega deals like Oracle buying Salesforce.com and/or CSC, IBM buying NetApp, HP buying SAP.  And specific Cloud-related deals will also rise, with vendors filling networking and capabilities gaps, such as Cisco buying Riverbed, Dell buying Brocade, and Cloud management tools like Rightscale, Abiquo and Joyent being snapped up and folded into the IT management suites of IBM and HP.

Special thanks to: Brook Reams http://brook.reams.me/, Datapipe http://www.datapipe.com/, IDC www.idc.com, Channel Buzz Canada http://www.channelbuzz.ca