By The Bell

The multi-hypervisor fallacy

IT is at a data center crossroads. Virtualization is going to happen; organizations can choose to either deploy it strategically or tactically. Strategically virtualizing the data center transforms it into a private cloud with automated self-provisioning including metering, monitoring and chargeback. Tactically virtualizing servers incurs unnecessary inefficiencies and lost opportunities. Embracing multiple hypervisors is emblematic of the tactical approach.

The Downside of Multiple Hypervisors

Microsoft touts the ability to easily manage "all Hyper-V and VMware virtual machines" as the key differentiator of its virtualization platform. The messaging may be having an impact. A February 11, 2009 SearchServerVirtualization.com article by Alex Barrett claims, "For better or worse, an increasing number of IT managers run a mixed virtual server environment that includes VMware and Hyper-V." A September 2009 Hot Aisle reader poll showed 44% of the respondents use two or more hypervisors.

Microsoft MVP and VMware vExpert Greg Shields is a self-proclaimed multi-hypervisor advocate. I've collaborated with Greg over the years on several articles and white papers, but we disagree about mixing vSphere and Hyper-V. In a recent podcast on the subject, Greg provides a rationale for the increasing trend, "Some workloads need very high-end virtualization. Other workloads can use general-purpose virtualization and we can choose what makes sense for us from a cost perspective."

While on the surface this might seem sensible logic for an economically minded CIO, the overwhelming savings and other benefits resulting from data center virtualization make the delta in hypervisor costs insignificant in comparison. And hypervisors are not deployed in isolation; different equipment and administrative requirements can quickly negate any perceived price advantage.

Implicit in multi-hypervisor advocacy is an undertone of virtualizing servers rather than the data center. This myopic perspective limits both savings and synergies. Cisco studies, for example, show a lack of vNetwork capability results in 30% fewer servers that can be virtualized along with 30% higher administrative requirements. Network administrators have no way to monitor traffic over a vSwitch for compliance, auditing and troubleshooting purposes, and they cannot apply network and security policies that follow a VM as it live-migrates. Since only vSphere enables vNetwork capabilities, multiple hypervisors leave at least a portion of the data center running less efficiently and less secure.

Shield's January 7, 2010 SearchServerVirtualization.com commentary describes the all-important management role in a multi-hypervisor environment:

"Consider today's hypervisor playing field: On one hand, you've got high-end capabilities with high-end price tags. On the other hand, you've got general-purpose virtualization that in many cases has no price tag at all. Now, combine this with the new recognition that not every workload has the same virtual infrastructure requirements, and you can see how multi-hypervisor management tools become a brilliant play. Let's implement the right one in the right circumstances, and layer a pervasive multi-hypervisor solution over the top to manage them all from a single pane of glass."

The flaw in this argument is that even Microsoft's System Center Management Suite does a poor job of managing VMware vSphere; it is quite unlikely that smaller manufacturers will be able to create effective products. VMware focuses on optimizing resource pool management while enhancing cloud attributes ranging from agility to compliance with an arsenal of virtual infrastructure administration and automation tools.

Multi-hypervisor advocates like to point to the mixed server operating systems of a traditional data center as evidence that a heterogeneous environment can thrive. But the propensity of disjointed technologies, equipment and processes is certainly not planned – it's driven by disparate application and departmental projects. Virtualization, when deployed as the underlying platform, enables data center unification. Utilizing multiple hypervisors, on the other hand, not only perpetuates the inefficient status quo, it adds yet more islands of technology to manage and coordinate.

Transitioning a Virtualized Data Center to a Private Cloud

Microsoft says that it "…takes a broad view of management, with virtualized technologies given equal weight to their physical counterparts", and that physical machines will remain a "key part" of IT infrastructures. Organizations adhering to Microsoft's messaging tend to discover, upon reaching a certain virtualization threshold, challenges containing virtual machine sprawl and efficiently provisioning compute, network and storage resources. They continue to face the myriad inefficiencies and high costs of operating a physical environment, compounded by requirements to also manage hypervisors, VMs, hosts, vSwitches, etc.

A completely virtualized data center is a key to the private cloud where standards, policy-driven management and SLAs enable streamlined IT as a service. Even organizations leisurely strolling down the virtualization path still benefit as long as they keep the big picture top of mind. They reduce or eliminate unnecessary expenditures on physical data center vestiges of servers, PDUs, air conditioners, etc. More importantly, they make architectural platform evaluations of network, compute, storage, virtualization software, disaster recovery and desktop within the context of their contribution to the private cloud end-goal.

Virtualization may not be a magic bullet technology, yet it unquestionably is revolutionizing the data center. The overwhelming response to Cisco's UCS shows that organizations understand the value of a compute platform optimized to host virtual infrastructure. The unprecedented collaboration of multiple leading manufactures on VCE vBlocks and Secure Multi-Tenancy also indicates a major shift in data center approach. The ability of IT organizations to pull together both the internal consensus and monies to purchase these cross functional solutions validates the "virtualization changes everything" mantra.

 

Author Disclaimer: I work for a leading VMware partner, but the opinions expressed in this article are my own and are not approved or endorsed by my employer.

 

 

 

 

 

Facilitating data center virtualization success with an ROI analysis

Several years ago, Pittsburgh health care facilities were trying to fight the rapid spread of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA), a deadly hospital-acquired infection. Dr. Richard Shannon, Chief of Medicine at Allegheny General Hospital, needed to purchase 100 patches at a cost of $5 each to pilot a method for slashing catheter induced infections, but couldn't get budget approval. It was only when he presented an economic analysis for hospital administrators showing that they were losing $17,000 per infection that Dr. Shannon received $500 for the patches – along with an additional $1.3 million.

Demonstrating abundant cost savings is effective in both health care and in IT. An in-depth ROI analysis helps secure the funds required for a strategic approach to data center virtualization while also assisting the virtualization champions successfully navigate the organizational resistance and politics that accompany significant change.

Why do an ROI Analysis when the Economic Advantages are Obvious?

Combining VMware vSphere with Intel's Nehalem CPUs can commonly accommodate virtualizing 100 physical servers onto six 2-CPU/96 GB hosts – including one for redundancy. Although obvious that huge savings result from 94 less servers to power, cool, maintain and periodically upgrade, an ROI analysis should always be conducted:

1. It encourages a strategic approach to virtualizing the data center, enabling a much more elegant architectural design. Traditional silos of compute, network and storage are optimized while minimizing the point solutions to manage.
2. It promotes virtualization as both a unifying platform for disparate data center technologies as well as the foundation for more effective disaster recovery, desktop computing and cloud computing services.
3. It assists in determining the feasibility of implementing a comprehensive enterprise virtualization project from the start. Regardless of deployment timeline, expenditures incompatible with with an optimized virtual infrastructure can be minimized ranging from servers to air conditioners to certain types of storage and networking equipment.
4. It reveals both costs and opportunities that might otherwise be overlooked. A health care organization, for example, capitalized on Microsoft's advantageous virtualization licensing policies to enable savings of nearly $1M in its Enterprise Agreement negotiations.
5. It provides a baseline against which the IT organization can measure the financial aspects of its virtualization success, helping to build credibility.

How Does a Data Center Virtualization (DCV) ROI Analysis Work?

ROI is the return an organization can expect to achieve on its investment over the analysis period. Expected costs are identified for operating the data center over a given number of years under two scenarios: physical and virtual. The virtualization investment is subtracted from the delta in total cost and then divided by the investment.

Figure 1 shows a savings calculation example for virtualizing 100 physical servers onto eight 2-CPU VMware vSphere hosts. It assumes a 5-year analysis period along with server growth of 10 new machines annually. Given the tough economic climate, physical servers are refreshed only once every 5 years rather than the manufacturer recommended 3 years. Maintenance contracts, following 3-year manufacturer warranty expiration, are utilized for ½ the servers at an annual cost of $1,000 each. The vSphere hosts are refreshed every three years and the new models will accommodate far more VMs than today's units. The physical servers cost $10,000 each including tax, shipping, rack space, cabling, power whips, SFPs, network switch ports, SAN switch ports, HBAs and generator and UPS slices. The vSphere hosts costs $17,000 each. A $65K budgeted PDU is no longer required.

Expected costs over the next five years on the physical side come to $2.7M, while the virtualized data center requires only $440K, including the cost of virtualization software maintenance. This leaves projected savings (or more accurately, cost avoidance) of almost $2.3M.

Figure 1: 5-year savings/cost avoidance from virtualizing 100 servers

Figure 2 shows a sample virtualization investment including first year software maintenance fees along with storage and implementation/ training costs. The total expected investment comes to $480K vs. savings of $2.3M. The 5-year ROI is therefore ($2,270,036 - $477,018)/$477,018 = 393%. The payback period of 12.2 months measures how long it takes for the additional savings to cover the investment.

 
Figure 2: Investment Required

This simple ROI analysis doesn't factor in variables such as the time value of money, but it also doesn't consider the myriad qualitative benefits of virtualization such as high availability for all servers and potential elimination of clustering requirements; reduced staff time for tasks such as provisioning servers, patching and hardware trouble-shooting; and the potential for improved performance, security and automation. It also excludes potential benefits from incorporating disaster recovery, desktops and cloud computing services.

One of the luxuries of a data center virtualization ROI analysis is that it is generally unnecessary to quantify more than the obvious "hard" savings – at least in terms of justifying the initiative. Nonetheless, it is typically worthwhile identifying the many benefits, as well as new challenges, that virtualizing a data center entails as heightened clarity can only increase the level of success.

What about TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)?

TCO, popularized by Gartner in the late 1980s, is used to estimate the cost of a product over its lifecycle factoring in both direct and indirect acquisition and operating costs, although not savings. TCO is particularly applicable for comparing products that provide similar functionality such as network switches or thin-client terminals. The effectiveness of TCO rapidly diminishes when attempting to evaluate products pivotal to the success of alternative technology platforms.

An organization's approach to virtualization can determine which metric to use. TCO is a valid calculation, for example when comparing Cisco's UCS as simply an alternative to traditional servers. But if its faster virtual infrastructure provisioning and enhanced VI management capabilities are perceived as essential to the virtualization value proposition, then an ROI analysis – in this case quantifying the benefits, is more applicable. TCO is often a good comparison for individual products if deploying virtualization as a point solution. Approaching virtualization as an enterprise platform, though, makes an ROI analysis the only reasonable means of evaluating essential components of that solution.

Is Hyper-V a casualty of Microsoft’s innovation dearth?

Former Microsoft vice president, Dick Brass, laments in a recent New York Times article titled Microsoft's Creative Destruction that, "Microsoft has become a clumsy, uncompetitive innovator." He says, "Its products are lampooned, often unfairly but sometimes with good reason."

While some of Microsoft's applications such as Bing travel and ClearType are quite novel, the same thing cannot be said of its virtualization products. Live Migration, for example, was included in Hyper-V R2 in October of last year – six years after VMware introduced VMotion. And although Microsoft formerly insisted that its lack of memory overcommit was because customers don't want it (SearchServerVirtualization.com), virtualization.info reported that Microsoft will be including it with a future release.

The only real virtualization innovation contributed by Microsoft, if it can be called that, is giving away its enterprise hypervisor version for free. Its virtualization strategy is to try and copy as many of VMware's innovations as possible and then boast about its lower prices, albeit both misleadingly and inconsistently¹ . Its virtualization web site, for example, includes no less than seven white papers/brochures², four videos³ , multiple case studies, a "Microsoft vs. VMware Cost Comparison Calculator" and an ROI Calculator all purporting to show lower costs than VMware.

Next to price, Microsoft flaunts the fallacious advantage of its Systems Center Management Suite to manage both Microsoft and VMware products along with physical servers, telling customers, "…rather than undertaking a costly revolution, you should evolve your environment in a way that preserves and extends existing investments." This is not innovation; it's simply maintaining the Microsoft-biased status quo with broad-based management products incapable of handling the specialized requirements of an enterprise virtualized data center.

Dick Brass maintains that Microsoft's marketing, "has been inept for years." Along with disingenuous price comparisons, it emphasizes a supposed VMware 'tax' asserting that, "With VMware, you need four layers to virtualize...But with Microsoft, virtualization is built directly into Windows…so you only need three layers: the hardware, the operating system and the applications." This isn't inept marketing, it is intentional misinformation unworthy of an organization of Microsoft's caliber.

VMware's Strategic Innovation a Competitive Advantage

After three years of development encompassing over 3 million engineering hours, VMware vSphere debuted last May to tremendous customer and media acclaim. Infoworld, eWeek and SearchServerVirtualization.com all recently bestowed vSphere with their highest awards. It also won the prestigious Wall Street Journal 2009 Technology Innovation Award for software. But a competitive data center platform with superior capabilities and efficiencies is anathema to Microsoft and doubtlessly behind its frantic price-based messaging.

Unlike many industry pioneers that were outflanked by Microsoft before fully realizing the formidability of their foe, VMware's top executives including CEO Paul Maritz, formerly held senior positions there. They understand very well the exceptional capabilities of the software giant – and that maintaining VMware's industry leadership requires long-term strategic planning and continuous technology innovation. This puts Microsoft at a disadvantage that even giving away its virtualization product for free cannot overcome. As Cisco CEO John Chambers said, "If you're reacting to what a competitor does, you're looking out the rearview mirror. You're three to five years behind."

My first real exposure to the workings of the Microsoft organization came in the mid-1990s when my company at the time was a high profile Lotus Notes partner. A couple of Microsoft personnel visited in order to recruit us to sell Exchange, and they told me that employees meeting with Gates and Ballmer were prohibited from discussing their successes. The Microsoft leaders wanted to hear about problems so that they could solve them. I thought this was a remarkable way to run a business and indicative of a truly great company. I can see why Dick Brass is dismayed.

 

¹Contradictory price comparisons on Microsoft's virtualization web site

Microsoft web site: "VMware is six times more expensive than Microsoft"

Microsoft video: "A cost comparison between Microsoft and VMware: Approximately 1/3^rd the Cost"

Microsoft White Paper: "VMware typically costs three to five times more than Microsoft solutions."

²Microsoft white papers comparing costs with VMware

How Customers are Cutting Costs and Building Value with Microsoft Virtualization

Why Companies Switch from VMware to Microsoft Virtualization Whitepaper

Business Comparison Brochure: VMware and Microsoft

Technical Comparison Brochure: VMware and Microsoft

Debunking VMware's Top 10 Virtualization Myths

Comparing Virtualization Technologies of Microsoft and VMware

Virtualization Reality: Why Microsoft Virtualization Solutions Deliver Value When Compared to VMware

³Microsoft videos comparing costs with VMware

Top Facts VMware Does Not Want You to Know About Microsoft Hyper-V

Microsoft Virtualization Without Taxation

Microsoft Myth busters – Top Ten VMware Myths

A cost comparison between Microsoft and VMware

 

Author Disclaimer: I work for a leading VMware partner, but the opinions expressed in this article are my own and are not approved or endorsed by my employer.

The ABCs of VDI: user perception = reality

In the late 1990s, my company at the time focused on designing and deploying server-based computing (SBC) solutions using Citrix MetaFrame. One of our earlier implementations, at a small school district, included a classroom pilot with 25 Wyse WinTerms as well as 5 legacy PCs kept on hand to run the applications incompatible with Terminal Services. The teacher used one of these PCs, and her keyboard happened to break during the pilot. We plugged in a new keyboard which worked fine, and then plugged her old keyboard into a different unit to show that it was indeed broken. But she went around to all of the other teachers telling them, "Don't install Citrix in your classroom, it breaks keyboards." The project died.

Challenges with VDI

VDI utilizes a very different technology than SBC, but both host desktops on a central server farm controlled by the IT staff. Users become wary as they see the "personal" part of their PCs diminish. They tend to not like change – even when it's positive, and organizations that implement a VDI environment without careful consideration of how it will impact user perceptions do so at their peril.

Virtualizing desktops would be much easier if they could all be persistent. A persistent virtual desktop retains the user's profile and My Documents on a separate user data disk, enabling a very close approximation of the physical version. Maintaining separate operating systems and applications for each user, however, consumes expensive data center storage resources. Administrative operations such as patching and upgrades need to take place for each persistent image. The tie between the persistent profile and the underlying operating system makes tasks such as migrating users from Windows XP to Windows 7 very difficult.

The combination of inefficient resource utilization and management complexity can quickly negate the economic advantages otherwise enabled by a VDI environment, making the persistent virtual desktop model impractical for most situations. Organizations instead typically utilize non-persistent virtual desktops. Users, upon log-in, are assigned a virtual machine from a resource pool that utilizes Windows Roaming Profiles to establish personalized settings. But Roaming Profiles brings its own set of problems resulting from attempts to update user profiles from different sessions. And as user profiles grow, download times increase, network traffic becomes congested and profile corruption becomes much more likely.

VDI manufacturers have been furiously working to resolve the personalization problem. Citrix, for example, purchased a company called Sepago and now integrates the technology as Citrix Profile Manager. VMware announced its licensing of RTO's Profile Manager last year which will be integrated into an upcoming version of View. LiquidWare Labs recently added ProfileUnity to its portfolio. Newcomers Atlantis and Unidesk approach the personalization challenge using containers. AppSense originated the profile management category over ten years ago and continues to lead the industry with innovations such as an ability to manage hybrid environments consisting of virtual, physical and RDS (Terminal Services) architectures.

The Exploding VDI Industry

VDI started as a grass roots initiative around 2005 when VMware noticed its customers configuring desktop operating systems and applications as virtual machines on their ESX Hosts. Someone at VMware recognized the potential huge opportunity and coined the term, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. An industry was born.

The increasing familiarity of IT staffs with server virtualization frequently emboldens them with the confidence to deploy a VDI solution; applying to the desktop the lessons learned from their server virtualization efforts. This approach inevitably leads to trouble when expanded to an enterprise initiative. Wildly varying usage patterns, for example, can quickly oversubscribe memory and disk IOPs – creating widespread havoc among users. Anti-virus scanning configured for a traditional physical environment can quickly bring VDI performance to its knees.

Gartner's March 2009 press release predicts exponentially increasing VDI sales of $65B by 2013, up from only $1.4B last year. The number of VDI disasters will skyrocket as well.

A Strategic Approach to Desktop Virtualization

Desktop virtualization demands a strategic approach incorporating the prerequisite assessment, planning, pilots and managed execution required for a successful enterprise project. Objectives, including projected costs and savings, should be identified prior to starting the design. The planning and proof-of-concept phases can then be initiated within the context of providing a virtual desktop architecture optimized to meet the organization's objectives. The architecture requirements largely determine the VDI components such as hypervisor platform, application virtualization, client devices, storage architecture, back-end virtualization infrastructure and many, many other considerations.

A key objective for a VDI implementation should be to provide a very positive user experience from the beginning pilot up through the production roll-out. Carefully planned deployments can generate a buzz among users, leading to an enthusiastic acceptance of virtual desktops. The appropriate personalization technology is one of the important elements enabling this success.

 

 

Microsoft licensing for VDI made really simple

The Microsoft licensing required for VDI is called VECD (Virtual Enterprise Centralized Desktop – formerly Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktop) and it replaces the need for either Windows 7 or Terminal Server (RDS). It is licensed only by physical end-point device and costs (list) $23 per PC or laptop per year if the organization has Software Assurance for the device (VECD for SA), or $110 per thin-client or zero-client device per year and per PC or laptop if not covered by Software Assurance (just VECD).

Additionally:

• Since VECD is licensed per device, multiple employees can use the same device without incurring extra licensing cost. This works out great for a training lab or for a factory floor where multiple users access a smaller number of devices.
• VECD includes home right use for primary users.
• A VECD license for a contractor accessing the VDI environment with her own device also applies to a replacement contractor as long as each only brings in one unique device.