The Lack of a Virtualization End-User Rant?
In my opinion, I am learning to hate VOIP (Voice over IP). As an end-user of various technologies, mobile, virtual, media based, what-have-you, I have come to hold in considerable contempt some technologies with a passion, where others I have come to appreciate as innovative or even supportive to the potential for lifelong blissful use. So, as I noted above, one technology that I have learned to not enjoy is VOIP. VOIP is not evil; it is just, given my experience, not quite right. Good old analog phones where consistent, stable, and the sound quality was reasonable, compared to VOIP. Thus I have learned to view VOIP as horrible but necessary, meaning that as much as I don’t like using VOIP, I refuse to pay for analog, which was at times given my location and service providers as much as three (3) times more than any VOIP. My experience with VOIP is across many vendors, in many situations; so it is not a situation of a single provider or vendor had or did a poor job, but one of where they all are less than great, or should I say, less than good old analog.
So what does this have to do with virtualization? An interesting parallel that did not happen as yet, between VOIP and virtualization? For example, I hear on a routine basis people gripe about VOIP, the latest VOIP joke is the top topic at the being of conference calls, or the loud comment intended to be soft spoken when someone on a conference call is the latest victim of the echoing pop, static fuzzing, then line dead issue, that VOIP seems to suffer from more often than I would like. Where is the parallel to virtualization? Why are we not buried in a cascade of angry end-users deploring negative aspects of virtualization? I always think of the angry mob in original black and white Frankenstein movie, where the local villagers are out for blood, with pitch forks and flaming torches, to avenge the good Doctor, at the expense of the monster, when the idea of a virtualization end-user revolt comes to mind. I wonder if other technical resource people feel the same? Sure there is griping about virtualization, but it has not reached critical mass? I don’t see a flood of Google hits discussing the reversal of virtualization in Fortune 50 companies, where the volume of bad VOIP experience is growing slowly. So why does VOIP seem to have an image issue, where virtualization does not?
The easy answer one could submit is that the management above said, to the technology teams… Virtualization is going to happen or else, make it work, or we will find someone that can. Similar in tone, management above said, to the end-user population… Choice is not an option, use virtualization, deal with it, or we will find someone else that can. This is real, everyone, I have been in meetings and conference calls where these comments were made. But then again, this is the easy answer, and although true to a reasonable degree, it is not the full rationale for why we have never seen an anti-virtualization revolt of any significance.
The hard answer is that everyone, technical support or end-user alike knew virtualization makes sense, we had too much capacity and scale, that computing resources where not used effectively. But was this a fault of the technology, or the architects, project managers, design engineers? Again this is true but is it the entire answer? Management is convinced there is waste in computing, this is the new religion, and unfortunately this qualified waste, more than quantified, is extracted often by the reduction of FTE (Full Time Equivalency) in man hours. People cost too much. So enters the 100s of life cycle vendors and publishers, saying we can do more with less, meaning their application or solution suite eliminates people. Back in my MBA course days, I remember a professor smiling while saying… 80% of your business cost is people, most of the time. Is that the real answer? Reduce head count? For near 10 years, processor scaling has grown in the vertical direction, faster, more IOP based processors. But the cost curve has been near flat. So there was no logical reason not to chase the best computing platform, in reference to processors and related components, because after all no project manager wants to be responsible for implementing a slow system, right? And of course project x, y, z eliminates FTE on the end-user side! Bingo, we end up with extensive capacity, at the same time that networking and storage system performance has made some modest gains. In short, the computing industry has never done well with the idea of doing with less at the beginning versus at the end?
The slick, smooth, answer is that virtualization is cool, feels kewl, and makes management happy, no matter how effective it is. Tangible cost avoidance is a result of a good virtualization strategy and even better tactical implementation and support. But it can go wrong. What ineffective virtualization? Oh, yeah, do a bit of research, mucking up virtualization is not hard, it happens. The emphasis becomes cost saving, not customer quality, and/or the technical team that had the skills and knowledge to support strong virtualization deployment and support, is eliminated or out-sourced, so customer experience is impacted, all true, all has happened, just no one wants to acknowledge this. Imagine what a poor implementation of cloud computing is going to be like? Ha!
So, back to VOIP, yes, VOIP is doing more with less, which is a fact? No, it is providing some features at the expense of quality, with less cost. The quality is less, the performance is less, the stability and consistency is less, but, important to remember, the cost is less. Virtualization is the same idea, even cloud computing is the same basic mindset, doing more with less. What, wait, I can hear many yelling… You are wrong! Virtualization is doing more with what you already have. But is that true? I question it. Yes, having servers idling during the middle of the night was unused capacity. Yes, being able to re-provision systems on the fly, in a stateless model is nice, but is it really more effective or efficient? Would it not be more efficient to just purchase less equipment and lease less capacity up front? And achieve the same result without all the expensive virtualization components, tools, and added complexity? Oh, but this means the architecture and engineering has to get it right in the beginning? Yes!
Don’t be fooled, the end-users are not thrilled with virtualization so far; they have been pushed, threatened, and kicked into accepting the following perspective… It is just good enough computing resource model. Virtualization no matter how good the tools and procedures, requires smart, dynamic, and quality support, without this, expect to have a sinkhole in your respective technical support organization, that absorbs issues and problems, but never solves all issues or problems, so confusion then frustration builds. With VOIP it may be more visible, because VOIP is an average consumer level product. Just consider an end-user revolt against Cloud computing based on virtualization? It maybe more painful when it happens, than say the VOIP revolt? Is VOIP the, Canary in a coal mine? The warning indicator to how virtualization will be regarded in the future? Maybe, or will we all accept less overall believing we are getting more for less?
June 16th, 2009
Schorschi
Virtualization Critical Evaluation – Chapter 12
Fired up the good old iPod, old since it is an original Video iPod via iTunes, which compared to the iPod Touch, is more than obsolete, try comparing a Ford Model-T to a SmartCar, and although they seem similar in some ways they are worlds apart. The iTunes semi-randomization or shuffle playlist selected Depeche Mode, Music for the Masses, which has a number of songs that just happen to match the topic for this blog entry. For those that are not Depeche Mode fans, the song…Never Let Me Down Again…is the song I am referring to among others. This specific song always seems to come to mind when I look at general release code that something-dot-zero. What is it about 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, etc., as a concept, which always freaks me out? It is not as though .0 releases are always good, bad or ugly, is it? What is the old axiom from my business undergraduate degree days? Oh, yes… Never buy an automobile from Detroit that was made on Monday.
There are, from my perspective three (3) basic scenarios for adoption of a new architecture/solution/infrastructure. This is not rocket-science more Common Sense, versus Profit Driven, versus how should I say this… Just-Must-Have? The definitions of the three approaches are outlined below per my perspective.
- Common Sense – Cool your jets cadet, what many would call a late-adopter strategy. That really does describe the concept. Let someone else break their teeth on the newest release. In the case of VMware, which I would call middle of road in the quality of release code, it is Update 1 or version .0.1, which achieves the next order of magnitude, and is a reasonable bug-less state. No I am not saying VMware, Xen, or even Microsoft released horrible release code, which at times they have done, only that every code shop must at some point declare a .0 release as done, and prioritize any remaining issues for resolution in the next incremental release. In virtualization, this is significant, because of the eggs-all-in-one-basket issue with virtualization hosts. An issue on a host is always a factor times 16, 20, 24, or more, since multiple virtual instances are often impacted. It is not uncommon for some firms to let a general release, that is .0, mature, 90 or 120 days. In the case of ESX 3.0, given some nasty issues, and a major change in the ESX OS for a number of reasons, I know of one firm that waited more than 6 months to adopt a well patched ESX 3.0.1 before leaving ESX 2.5.2 after several years on 2.5.2. Yes, 2.5.2, it was stable and consistent for them, so moving to ESX 3.0 soon was not reasonable.
- Profit Driven – This is similar to an early-adapter model, with the motivation specific to the situation. There can be a situation where a given general release has features or even fixes that the older major version just does not have or will never achieve, the newest version must be leveraged. Or the situation is such that to wait for a less painful implementation is a significant opportunity cost, or even competitive advantage issue. What pain is encountered with the .0 release is deemed acceptable because a significant feature is critical to near future success? The term bleeding edge is sometimes referenced for this scenario, but that is misleading, at least from my point of view. I would define the bleeding edge as implementing production on release candidate code, rather than general release code. Microsoft at times has done this, on their internal infrastructure, for example this was done with Hyper-V, since Microsoft deemed the later versions of Hyper-V stable enough for such action before the official general release was out the door.
- Just-Must-Have – This approach is often confused with the Profit Driven approach. Management is profit driven, but there are personalities in the command structure that just want the latest and greatest, or the next wonder solution, because they can mandate it. Of course all the official communication will define the demand for action in a profit justification, the market share versus competitive feature set, buzz words inclusive. But in truth somewhere in the dark, someone just wants the latest new toy. New toys cost real money, in training, issue resolution, and mistakes, throughout the entire vertical product stream, from OEM to customer. Consider that there is always someone, somewhere, that needs the latest and greatest. Think about it, was there not someone you knew that had a High Definition (HD) television that was $10,000 or more, and there were at most a handful of television shows in HD? And how often did that wonderful HD unit fail? Was the service contract at least 10% of the total purchase cost, if not more? Now the same basic television, about 5 years later is around $600, and still HD television is not universal across the board? Thank goodness virtualization assimilation is not quite that slow!
Now, I am sure some are wondering what my strategy is? Well, let me explain it this way. Yes, I own a SmartCar. No, I did not get it right away, so I did not exhibit the Just-Must-Have approach. Although, I have a close relative that did get a SmartCar very soon after they came to the United States, and yes, they experienced some issues about 1 week after they got it. Some will say, but the SmartCar has been around in Europe for years, true, but driving in Europe is not the same as in most of the United States. So, did I exhibit the Profit-Driven approach? Yes and No. Yes, in that I decided and ordered my SmartCar when fuel costs where well over $4.00 US. No, in the sense that the SmartCar had been in the United States for about 18 months before I got mine, given that there was about a 6 month queue between order and receipt of a SmartCar. So I would say my approach was part Common-Sense, but not completely.
As for virtualization adoption, specific to .0 releases? I never recommend anything but the Common-Sense approach. This is regardless of the vendor, the situation or the environment selected. Virtualization should be stable, safe, and consistent, if not, it generates more headaches than anyone should have to deal with, never mind the endless-seeming long days, and very odd hours on the phone with vendor technical support, where we are all scratching our heads. True, I often get yelled at for this, and at times it has been at the expense of my personal standing or reputation! However, history has proven, I have been right, and the very same individuals that absolutely hated my view on virtualization adoption, with reluctant, grudging omission, noted I was after all, correct. In the course of time, those that disagreed have been mollified if not thankful for my stubborn stance on late adoption of virtualization, when it comes to .0 release implementations or infrastructure migrations to same.
Some will ask, why this topic now? That is a good question. With the recent release of vSphere 1.0 (insert polite cough here), including vCenter 4.0, ESX/ESXi 4.0, etc., moreover, Microsoft Windows 2008 R2, with some key features that support improved Hyper-V platform use and function, for example, the Clustered Shared Volume (CSV) 1.0 feature coming into its own. Not to ignore, RHEL 5.4 with KVM .83, .84, or maybe even .85, thus approaching KVM 1.0? Now seemed a reasonable.
June 9th, 2009
Schorschi
Looking way out there
Recently I attended my 25 year high school reunion. It was not an earth moving experience, but enjoyable to my surprise. Many of the friends I saw at our 10 and 20 year reunions I saw again. Although I was a bit of a geek, and an outsider to an extent, definitely not part of the in-crowd, but I was not an outcast either. I was just normal enough to be accepted by the brains and jocks. I realized returning home, later the same evening of the reunion dinner, that I was successful, that I have done well. Sure, there are always some individuals that do better and some that have done worse in life, and I have never been one to keep score, I did realize, that enough time has gone by, for the next generation to be learning how to find their own way, their own path. That we are no longer the next generation, but the past generation, it was ironic, that given that I work with the cutting edge of computing, that I am still part of the next generation, in a computing sense, if not in a chronological sense.
Of course, my thoughts turned from my personal career and the information technology industry in general. I consider myself as a strategic thinker, wanting to believe that only the best years for the industry are ahead? That robotics and man-machine-interfacing will continue. The science fiction fan in my, wants to see bionics, cybernetics, nano machines, etc. all benefit us. But I cannot in good faith, wear my rose colored glasses, any more when it comes to virtualization. Taking off said glasses allows me to look at things with an honest perspective, and what I am about to say will not make some people like me, or my views, fine, I am not here to be loved, liked, or even respected, if I am not honest. Of course this is my opinion, of course it is just my perspective, but in the past, my perspective has been accurate based on what the facts of history are or became over time. I leave the readers of this blog to call me to task, or yell back as they desire, saying I am insane or crazy, but so be it. Here goes. Let history judge:
- Xen will not survive, not because it is not good, it is, but because market share trumps all. Citrix has not owned the low cost virtualization market segment, and now with other competition maturing they are under severe threat. Xen also is not free and compared to KVM and Hyper-V is not that cheap, at least not as cheap as one would wish.
- Hyper-V will struggle for another two years, because it is still weak. Being free only gets you so far. Microsoft will make Hyper-V successful, and as with how Microsoft all but destroyed Novell in the distributed server market, many managers in information technology do not have the balls, yes lack the balls, to not pick Microsoft.
- Life-Cycle wars, is now, and only now gaining a beachhead in the mindset of management. This is not because it has been a concept missed or ignored. But because the solutions that implement life-cycle management have been horrible. They have lacked insight and flexibility. To an extent, until some given firms have 1000s hosts, or say 5000 virtual instances, management is a nice to have, not a key requirement for many, because focusing on growing the virtualization environment, is not the same priority as managing the environment?
- Entrenchment is the ruling strategy, or retraction might be a better term. Collapse and consolidation are the only strategic plans that anyone in the corporate world seem to believe it. The current economic situation worldwide is just an excuse to accelerate what was already going to happen. Virtualization promotes consolidation, so now that firms can compress computing infrastructure just as they can reduce man power? In fact, virtualization has slowed cloud computing not encouraged it.
- KVM is going to grow and strengthen, but will only do so, as long as it is dirt cheap and, at the very same time, matures to incorporate key features that most end-users of virtualization must have, including, basic virtual instance life-cycle management, self-serve virtual instance provisioning, ease of use, transparent live migration, and some type of master image, common boot image, cloning and template functionality, and of course at some point a very lean, near embedded hypervisor as well as a strong virtual container model.
- Of course, last but not least, VMware. Well, this is actually obvious, at least to me it is. I made the point to a friend at VMware over two years ago, when Hyper-V was nothing but a bad dream on a drawing board at Microsoft. VMware just costs way to much. This view of mine was reinforced in a recent meeting with VMware, where the discussion of VMware feature set, and the associated pricing became, well, to be fair, enthusiastic to be sure. It was professional, it was honest, and it was quite clear, that VMware was not hearing us. VMware has for the last 5 or 6 years, continued to add features, failed to enhance existing features in reference to scale and scope, for enterprise clients. VMware still thinks and acts like the small customer is their strategic niche. VMware has not, in my view, learned anything from its key enterprise customers, when it comes to pricing. To be blunt, VMware increasing its pricing, now, in this economic situation, is not good, and is not going to work. Not based on the feedback I am getting. When a cheaper solution has 60 or 80 of the VMware feature set, but VMware costs even more than ever before?
- Last, we have not seen the next great quantum leap. The next great wow is still out there. Microprocessors have hit a wall; we are scaling in the horizontal faster than the vertical. Memory and storage density need a break through, we still struggle with the basic laws of physics, but sooner or later, chemical or biological computing will emerge, maybe as part of a break-through in man-machine interface design effort. But virtualization on cell phones, as cool as that is, is not good enough, just a re-packaging of what we already have.
What is new is old, why did I say this? The same basic issues for information technology still exist, getting more for less, getting higher performance for less resource commitment. In fact, the same key issues for virtualization still exist. Virtualization is still complex, yes, complex. Management of virtualization environments suffer from complexity and scaling issues. This has never changed. As the demand for larger and faster virtual instances has grown, the monitoring and maintenance of these same environments is not easier, it is harder, just the scale and scope of growth alone have far out stepped any rational expectations. In fact, the information technology industry has done this over and over. With each new reinvention of the same original concepts, gains critical mass, it happens. The move from mainframes to microcomputers, from centralized computing to distributed server computing, from the distributed server computing refactoring back in to centralized processing or consolidation, yes via virtualization to achieve cost avoidance, we create our own challenges.
This swing back and forth is normal, it cannot be avoided, we improve performance, only to realize we spending, and we reduce expense only to realize we now must have improved performance, on and on. But the days of purchasing the best of breed solution are gone, just because the best of breed is just that, is no longer defendable, welcome to a key aspect of retraction! We are going to have to settle for the Just-Good-Enough (JGE) mindset, and that puts severe pressure on VMware, and will force minor entities out of the market, so KVM, Xen, Parallels, Hyper-V, etc., will all fight for market share, below the VMware price model, offering a smaller feature set, but under cutting VMware with vengeance.
My 92 year old Grandmother is fond of saying… There is nothing new under the sun. This is either the result of 92 years of life or that she is a quite a biblical scholar, maybe both. But it is true, I hate to say it, but right now, at least in reference to strategies around virtualization, that is true.
May 14th, 2009
Schorschi
Virtualization Critical Comparison – Chapter 07
The last few entries to this blog have been focused on Kernel-Based Virtual Machine (KVM) technology with some metaphor parallels to Microsoft Hyper-V. Some may question why comments have been absent in reference to VMware? That is a good question. Well, to be honest, when grousing about KVM or Hyper-V, the actual best of breed gets a pass, for now. This will not continue, well not for long, once vSphere is out, there are bound to be a few things to discuss. Leave it to other blogs to comment on the latest buzz, the top new tricks, etc. This blog focuses on the things that from a strategic perspective are issues for virtualization.
A case in point and applicable to right now, KVM, or to be fair, the painful Virt-Manager. Having gotten a basic platform on KVM running, things are moving the right direction in the analysis of KVM. So this blog entry is going to be a bit shorter, KVM experimentation takes time, a lot of time. This has long been one of my disappointments about Linux based solutions; there is nothing quick about Linux the first time you walk down a new path to a new solution. Fighting the interface issues, the unexpected incompatibility issues, etc. Never mind digging through the tons of well intentioned documentation, but often dated material. Hate, absolutely despise, finding an article that solves one of my issues, only to get 2 pages into it, and realize it is only applicable to RedHat and not Ubuntu! To be balanced, commercial documentation is often dated as well, but at least there is someone that is paid to get it right, when it needs to be right, this not the case with open source of course. The ability to call someone and get things right, just is not possible with open source in the same way as RedHat or Microsoft.
Do not misunderstand; I enjoy digging into problematic scenarios. I am enjoying my ordeal with KVM. It reminds me when I first got an IBM PC XT, and wanted to run two monitors at the same time, months before anyone else, it reminds me when I got my Macintosh Plus, before any of my peers, and I figured out how to cross connect the XT and Mac, starting a small business as a University student, getting $22.50 an hour, when everyone else was getting $2.50, because moving data between the two systems was so new, I had the local market cornered. Dealing with KVM has that same feel. Unfortunately, I am not having the same enjoyable experience with Virt-Manager. I have been spoiled by VMware VirtualCenter, cough, vCenter. The issues with vCenter are real, the scaling and performance of vCenter plague its elegance and ease of use. Of course, vCenter regardless of its faults trumps Virt-Manager. So my expectations are out of whack, or unrealistic? Yes and no.
Yes, my expectations for Virt-Manager are unfair; Virt-Manager is wonderful, compared to what could be the situation, if Virt Manager did not exist. However, no, my expectations are not unreasonable, when considering that Virt-Manager should be closer to the competition, sooner than later. The interface needs some significant work to compete with SCVMM which is still not great, and vCenter. For example, the fact that you have to remove the network adapter completely from a virtual machine, to change the type of network, virtual versus bridged physical, is just not acceptable from an end-user perspective. Add and remove is not operational sanity when an edit option is obvious. To be sure, I really do want KVM and Virt-Manager to be successful. We need them to be successful. Once Microsoft and VMware do reach parity in functional feature set, only two outcomes are possible. Both are ugly for us, the humble end-users of virtualization.
- VMware survives; they own the top 10 or 20 percent of the virtualization market, which are cost elastic. Any organization that needs and demands the best overall solution that is feature rich and continues to push the edge will continue to use VMware. Silicon Graphics in post production video, for example. Or even more significant, look at Apple Computer as an example. Apple re-invents its-self over and over; this is what VMware must do. In fact, I think Apple should purchase VMware and virtualize the iPod, iPhone, moreover consider the iTouch as a generic platform in this direction, so that many different hardware devices can function as iType devices. The first generic platform along this line, which has a common end-user selectable interface, which is the same on the HD TV, the Cell Phone, the DVR, even in the automobiles, which is not on a closed network, will, mark my words, crack the BlackBerry, and the hang it up for the iPhone.
- VMware does not survive; Microsoft so dominates the virtualization landscape, that lowest common denominator virtualization platform cannot be surpassed once in place. This a proven model, why are there no new word processor applications? The barrier to the market is that critical mass cannot be achieved by anyone else other than Microsoft, simply because Microsoft is already there. This is why Sony Betamax though obviously superior, failed against VHS. However, there is one flaw in this situation for Microsoft, at least right now, for a short period of time, Linux based virtualization containers! Kernel based Virtual Containers (KVC) which does not exist as yet, but will once Sun Micro goes extinct, at least compared to what Sun has been in the past. Maybe RedHat will license Zones?
Why will KVC gain ground? Microsoft costs way too much per copy of operating system, and many fortune 500 firms are looking for ways to reduce operating system costing, licensing included. Microsoft forcing purchase of Datacenter is a panic response to how the slow of total operating system license purchases is hurting Microsoft. Microsoft is hiding the dark side of operating system downsizing under a new license strategy that will change again, and again. I will not be surprised to see Microsoft begin to lose market share to Linux in the server platform, faster than ever before. Do you not see this as well? Why is Microsoft pushing System Center so hard? Microsoft is worried. It is almost a joke, how desperate Microsoft sounds when trying to evangelize System Center, including Virtual Machine Manager, using Hyper-V as the vaguely successful crowbar to crack open the minds of CIOs to this refurbished concept. What exactly makes Microsoft think that if CIOs refuse to purchase vSphere they will instantly purchase System Center and Datacenter?
But I digress, or do I? One could say my disappointment is not KVM, but with Virt-Manager, why? Because I see Virt-Manager with its understandable but slow progress so far, as bad karma. We need the Linux based virtual containers, not Linux based virtual machines, and to achieve this, the management and ease-of-use aspect must exist sooner rather than later. I Hope the Linux community is thinking about this? Now is the time to be aggressive, when CIOs hate spending cash, cannot justify VMware or Microsoft big ticket expenses. I know for a fact, that every strategic thinker I know be they CIO, Strategic Architect, etc., just hate seeing Microsoft dominate the computing industry over and over, and real long term high expense that such a situation includes, no matter what Microsoft states today. Maybe some firms refusing to implement Vista should be a realistic indicator to the Linux community that the 1000 year era of Microsoft may be in trouble, about 30 years into the master plan? That a dynasty is posed to fall? Well, not quite yet. VMware has been unable to do it. VMware was in the best position to do so? VMware has had a great run, but has the same issue, cost. So is now is it time for Linux to live up to its highest potential at a reasonable cost? Time for Linux virtualization, KVCs, to leave the shadows, and take a place in the light?
April 14th, 2009
Schorschi
Virtualization Critical Comparison – Chapter 06
The title of this entry really gives everything away. I have not had a positive experience with my analysis of KVM. I have found KVM to be difficult to install, difficult to configure, difficult to use, and yes, frustrating. At times I enjoy using Linux, but Linux is not easy, not when you want to do something fast and quick. Many will scream that is not so, but objectively, it is true. This is where Microsoft Windows always trumps Linux, ease of install and use. And KVM is no exception. Of course Windows 2008 Core suffers from many of the issues that Linux does, in that Windows 2008 Core it is not trivial, when you have to do things sans GUI.
All I wanted to do was to have one Linux box as my remote management entity (Ubuntu Desktop with Gnome) and two virtualization hosts sans GUI, in effect a Dell 2850 and 2 Dell 2950s, of course NAS via Ubuntu based NFS as the storage back end. This seemed reasonable since I have used this same setup for VMware, Xen, and Hyper-V (using iSCSI) functional comparison in the past. But in reference to KVM, virt-manager and of course libvirt this was impossible on Ubuntu 8.1, since version virt-manager (and libvirt) integrated into Ubuntu 8.1, an unsupported configuration for remote virtual instance creation. Compile of KVM-84, since only KVM-72 is integrated into Ubuntu 8.1 is possible but throws more warnings than the highway patrol about drinking and driving on New Year’s eve. Of course there are 100s of examples of how to do all this via Google and every single one is different, and none of them worked quite right. No disrespect the respective authors; I am sure their respective setups worked, but not mine, they did not setup the way I wanted to setup.
To be fair, I did not make things easy; I used Ubuntu, which is not quite as easy to use as RedHat in some ways, and easier in others, a topic outside the scope of this blog. There is something to be said for commercial quality versus true open source, and Gentoo was even harder to get to a realistic functional level, even though it is my favorite distribution most of the time. RedHat of course, is not quite savvy with KVM, either, given that true integration is not until RedHat 5.4, and was once targeted 6.0 if memory serves. I found the communication of when and how KVM will be integrated into RHEL interesting and telling, but is a discussion for a different day. Of course I don’t have a copy of RHEL 6 or even 5.4 at hand, so Ubuntu it was. I have found Ubuntu 8.1 stable and consistent, but 9.0.4 Alpha 6 not quite where I needed it to be now, so that too impacted my experience with KVM so far.
This is not to say that Ubuntu is at fault, no, it is not. The real issue with KVM is founded in two key issues, at least two for me, even after I have a functional environment. First, KVM and Windows seem to have a love and hate relationship. This is a maturity issue if anything, and I am sure KVM will improve Windows support; it really must to take on VMware at any serious level. Of course KVM will support Linux well, that is an obvious winner. The real war between Linux and Windows has yet to happen, but it will, some day. Windows 2008 Core is just the introductive probe Microsoft has staged to target against Linux. Don’t be fooled, if Microsoft could figure out how to kill off Linux, Microsoft would. Second, I am not a fan of virt-manager or libvirt as yet. None of the basic components are as polished as I need them to be to see any rational parallel or competitive advantage that can threaten VMware vSphere. The libvirt process keeps dying on me for some reason, something that I am still trying to isolate. However, back to libvirt and virt-manager design, I am not talking about the greater feature set, that other platforms already have, including transparent migration, e.g. VMotion, but basic virtualization function. Of the three key components, KVM, virt-manager, and libvirt, I think virt-manager really is the worst; it just does not work well for me, at all. Even VMware ESX 2.0.1 would trump KVM, libvirt, and virt-manager as they exist today. How long ago was ESX 2.0.1 viable? About 5 years ago or maybe a bit less?
Serious development of KVM eclipsing QEMU has been what? About 2 years, give or take a bit? I guess I had unrealistic expectations so soon? Or is KVM losing some steam? Will RedHat dominate KVM to such an extent that it will fail the way Citrix has all but killed Xen? I reserve judgment for now. Do I need to wait for KVM, virt-manager, and libvirt to mature, at the same rate as VMware? I think not, I think RedHat and maybe IBM, among others will drive things at a faster pace. But today, right now, KVM is frustrating, due to its limitations. I really do want KVM to be successful, if for no other reason, than it will keep VMware on its toes! Something that Microsoft has not quite managed to do right so far, did I hear someone whisper System Center Virtual Machine Manager? Since VMware can be seen as the Neiman Marcus of virtualization, what does that make the KVM, virt-manager and libvirt solution, the Wal-Mart of virtualization? Not sure, I think Microsoft is really pushing to win the Wal-Mart parallel in the virtualization market. Therefore KVM will have to define its self somewhere between Wal-Mart and Neiman Marcus parallels?
March 31st, 2009
Schorschi
Virtualization Critical Comparison - Chapter 05
As I listen to the Halo original sound track, a sense of shock and ah creeps up on me, in tempo, to the music. What Halo sound track? Hey, I am a geek, get over it! But moving on to the topic at hand, I promised that I would deep dive into KVM, as I have with Hyper-V, and parallels between these two virtualization solutions, at least so far in my analysis are similar as well as not on some key points. I have by no means finished my dive into the virtualized ice supported by Hyper-V and KVM, but here is what I have in my notes so far. Expect this to change over time, as I get deeper into the ice.
- Hyper-V is not ready for the enterprise, large scale enterprise. This is not to say it cannot be made to work, but Hyper-V today is not a clear winner compared to Xen, vSphere, or even KVM.
- KVM is still difficult to install and configure when one takes into account that its implementation is not as easy as KDE across multiple distributions; I found RHEL and Ubuntu to be easier than Gentoo for example, even though Gentoo is my favorite Linux distribution. This is not to say that any of them are very hard or just easy, only that the multiple distributions make KVM standardization a bit hard, and digging through all the Google hits a pain in the posterior.
- SCVMM in my view has great potential but fails short of the mark. It is slow. It still has issues with complex Active Directory designs, and disjointed domains. It does not eliminate vCenter, only links to it. Notice I did not use the word, integrate, SCVMM does not integrate vSphere, because it just glues its-self to vSphere and makes vSphere management, with its limited scaling, look like SCVMM, yuck. I really do hate the SCVMM interface. Microsoft has bundle System Center in such a way as to target vSphere management suite, this is interesting, but very expensive no matter what Microsoft claims. Management of virtualization is where everyone thinks the money to be made is at. Idiots. Chasing dollars and not improving the total solution is just as bad as adding new features in a half-ass manner.
- KVM management, this I must admit has been struggle for me. I am not used to using a GUI in Linux, and the fact that I really have to use a GUI to be effective in management of KVM, is fine, just a bit of culture shock for me. Odd, I accept a GUI in MacOS with no worries, I work with Microsoft Windows, which I still feel is a rip-off of the original Machintosh OS, but balk at a GUI in Linux? Never liked Gnome, that may be coloring my perception.
- KVM is still immature with its support of Windows, I am attempting to run Windows 2008 R2 Beta, and having no end of issues, I suspect many of my issues are learning curve issues with KVM management tools, virt-manager, and the GUI issue as noted above. I really need to setup a Ubuntu desktop, or server with KDE, and that is the plan. Even when I reverted back to Windows 2008 proper, the issues remained, so it is a KVM issue from my perspective at the moment. It is interesting that every example of Windows running in KVM is desktop class software, Windows XP to the greatest extent, and a odd instance of Vista here and there. What does this tell you?
- Hyper-V no matter what Microsoft says is still not on par with vSphere when it comes to a clustered file system. No this is not an argument about NFS versus VMFS, even with the SCSI reservation scaling issues and such on VMFS, VMFS kicks everything else to the curb right now. Sure NFS is gaining, and may at some point own the shared IO storage space, but not right now. Clustered Shared Volumes (CSV) feature in R2 is going to be a disappointment to many. It is nothing more than NTFS with a few filter/wrapper drivers, so it is not going to win any awards.
- Some time ago, I told Microsoft to walk away from NTFS shared, and just adopt NAS, NFS and iSCSI and call it done, but Microsoft has problems listening to the customer at times. Microsoft needs to get to NAS with Hyper-V quick. Much quicker than VMware did. NFS and iSCSI, thought I am not endorsing either here, significant threats to classic fiber-channel, never mind FCoE, which is a solution looking for problem until it is finalized and officially adopted by at least a few big vendors. NetApp is yelling from the mountain top various points of how NFS scales beyond VMFS, duhe. But until everyone has 10GB dedicated storage networks, FC will always have its place, but it is threatened, no doubt.
- Hyper-V with its very immature network model, that is not even close to vSphere or Xen, is another weak point, that is going to plague Microsoft for months if not years. Microsoft needs to implement a MPIO like model for Hyper-V virtual networking. Why Microsoft did not do this in Microsoft Virtual Server, is a mystery as well, this was an obvious and clear winner for Microsoft.
- Why am I referencing the above Hyper-V issues, because KVM addresses these out of the box, in fact, the further down the rabbit hole I get, the more I see KVM not as threat to vSphere but to Hyper-V. Interesting no?
- KVM has one other significant win, it is lean and mean, it is a virtualization container model, similar in strategic approach to Solaris Zones or LDOMs, and as you all know, from my past discourse on the topic of virtualization containers, I see this as the first step to operating system instance reduction. We need to reduce the total copies of the operating system running in parallel in virtualization, now is the time, everyone!
I am slowly coming to the realization that vSphere may be irrelevant, based on cost, and Hyper-V and KVM will drive right at each other, Xen is always road kill, not because it is wrong or weak, but because it has not momentum behind it. KVM has something that VMware has lost, and Hyper-V is trying to gain…Energy! No, Passion. When you read about what developers are doing in KVM, and how they discuss issues, there is emotional if not a spiritual aspect to their oration. Excitement and motivation in their words, and this is critical to the future success of KVM. I perceive the significance of this having once been a down and dirty developer in my college days. It is not the high caffeine loading, or the potential profits, that drive developers, it is the bragging rights around the water cooler, cough, the instance messaging groups or dig-it or even tweeter, about the latest kewl trick that is rad if not sick, that was added to KVM, which has everyone jumping online to download KVM. The Linux architecture fans are just itching to nail Microsoft, and as a freebie kick VMware at the same time. I will continue with my deep dive of KVM and comparison to Hyper-V, and I expect my perceptions to change or surprise maybe re-affirmed? But I am distracted.
Changing Gears for a Moment…
About 40 or so people, some very close friends that are now unemployed, all in the IT industry, that I have worked with for years if not decades and knew will, in a work association context, have been let go, laid off, etc. This weights upon my thoughts often now days. The aspect of this current economic situation that saddens me is this, the pain I see in others, in the looks on faces, the words left unsaid, living through the economic instability cut lose in the wind if you will, through absolutely no fault of their own. It is difficult for me to endure. Life is not fair, to be sure, not even life in the IT industry. Nor do I blame those that make these ugly decisions; it is a thankless situation for all. Decisions have to be made.
But still, some of these people, friends or otherwise, I know for a fact, where ranked very high in their respective organizations, provided excellent service to their respective employers for decades, where often recognized and rewarded, and still the axe came with merciless speed and disregard of achievement, skill or even talent. It begs the question…what criteria is used for deciding who is left standing, and who falls to the axe? Moreover, I ask…how many times does the axe fall, before any given firm loses competitive advantage? How many times does axe fall, before any given firm loses talent and thus knowledge that is gone forever?
What is the true definition of profitability and strength of a firm? What drives strategic success? Tactical results of course. It is skilled and talented people, in-house, that do real work. Retaining those that make your respective firm profitable is strategic and tactical, the people that work where the rubber meets the road, not management, not directors of the board, of course not the investors, and dear God, not even CEOs. How many talented people can a firm retain, if it let the top 10%, no, top 5% of its management structure go?
Furthermore, is it not ironic, that we call it in-house resources and out-sourced resources? Of course, the most straight forward descriptor to the opposite term for in-house, the true antigram to the term in-housed resources, is well, honestly, is out-housed resources? But I guess out-housing does not have that positive executive level ring or spin to it, now does it? But it does have a certain a semantic parallel, right?
March 19th, 2009
Schorschi
Well, life often throws one a curve now and then. And for me, this is true it seems as well. In just 2009, I have a close family member struggling with cancer, a close family member struggling with heart disease, and lost my favorite pet to old age, my first real pet, Gunter, his full name was Lord Gunter of Fair Winds Kennels. He was a dachshund like no other, a strong fierce spirit, for the past 18 years, never accepted the word or command, compromise. What else could go wrong, I don’t need more stress? Little did I know! Family is one thing, but I have friends struggling as well.
Last week, in one day, I realized I had gotten notification via various methods of more than 10 people I knew, most very well, were laid off. This brings my personal head count to well over 25 in recent months. Most of these 10 or so, I worked with or for many years. No, I am not going to explain specifics of what business segment, or scope I work in, or what areas the respective, recently unemployed, once worked in. That is taboo. As anyone knows, I don’t discuss specifics of or to my blog readers, nor do I discuss specifics about my real-career. What? You ask? This blog is not a job; it is fun, not quite a hobby, but something other than work. But I will say this, I am an engineer, a system integrated, and solution evaluator, so you can gather I have a large scope of friends in the IT field. My friends, yes, friends, at ToutVirtual included!
I am sure everyone understands the current economic situation we are in, specifically the IT industry. As major clients entrench, and new initiative funds dry up, what is the impact to us? What is the impact to virtualization in general? Well that is the interesting thing. Now is the time when virtualization should be going nuts. Firms that never wanted to do virtualization or saw minimum benefit, may be changing their collective minds? No? I wonder? What if the impact of the current crisis is too hard, too bad, too much for virtualization? This is an opportunity but also a threat. How so?
Yes, virtualization saves money. If done right, it should hands down. But it comes at a cost that is not always understood well, or acknowledged up front. With virtualization, your environment is more complex, your technical resources have to be on the ball, and know what they are doing. After all, if they take down one virtual host, and you lose 10, 20, whatever virtual instances in one shot? Right? So it can cost you in unexpected ways if you are not serious about virtualization and support it well. Pre-provision of virtual hosts makes sense; you need that achieve speed to market, right? But that is a capital cost that is not realized or recovered immediately. Your virtual clients may not be ready to use your virtual hosts and associated virtual instances at the same time you bring them online. What if your growth rate has all but died? You have virtual hosts that are under utilized? Ouch. To be sure these issues and more are understood by now, by most that are using virtualization or planning to do so. So what is the point? The point is, do you still really need to virtualize? Or virtualize more than you have?
Yes, but what type of virtualization? I think the current situation is going to push application virtualization into the lime light. I think operating system isolation is going to suffer for it. I think that as corporations look at costs from a strategic perspective, we will see a major push to eliminate multiple operating systems, from environments. For example, do I really need Solaris, Linux and Windows as server platforms? Of course not, many will say. This places emphasis on frameworks, and co-hosts if instances, in SQL, IIS, Oracle, Apache, etc., will reduce operating system sales, and hardware sales, just when hardware sales are hurting in general because of virtualization? Nuts. In fact, cloud computing if done right, will reduce operating system sales, and virtualization sales! It only makes sense, if doing more with less is the goal, operating system isolation virtualization is going to take a hit sooner rather than later.
Yes, we will see more layoffs and downsizing, we will see more friends let go or gone from the world we work in. We are on a downward spiral, still. And our own success nails us, to be sure, because the goal of IT is to reduce personal, flat-out. To do more with less is our super ordinate goal. Never mind the economic cascade and customer entrenchment. Unfortunately, this means that as the front office is downsized so is the back office, and IT is a big part of the back office. Do I see dark days ahead? Yes. What does this mean to me, from a personal perspective? Do I believe I will be out of work? That is a loaded question. But I will say this, as a knowledgeable individual in most things virtual? No, at least not right now. Knowing VMware, Hyper-V, and to some reasonable extent Xen, and soon, KVM? I think I have my bases covered for Hypervisor based virtualization. Time to move to cloud computing?
Yes, I even established an iSCSI and NFS test appliances based on Ubuntu in the home office so I can brush up my skills for Microsoft Fail-Over Clustering, yes, for Hyper-V, as well as improve my overall storage engineering skills as applicable to VMware vSphere, not withstanding Xen and emerging KVM. Never hurts to broaden the skill set. It was quite interesting to setup NFS on Windows 2008 (since having NFS on Windows 2003 up for years), also iSCSI target on Windows 2003 (that was interesting), and then compare these to Ubuntu server variants for NFS server and iSCSI target server. I plan to outline my observations on these efforts over the next few months, documenting what I did and how I did it, as my way of helping others develop their skill sets on tight budget.
Oh, now that I think about it, I need to freshen up the old resume as well. After all, around here, things are nuts!
February 24th, 2009
Schorschi
VirtualIQ suite of products now adds support for leading virtualization platform from Citrix
Carlsbad, Calif. – February 23, 2009 – ToutVirtual, an emerging leader in virtualization intelligence, optimization and performance-management software for virtual computing infrastructures, today announced that its VirtualIQ suite of products now also support all editions of Citrix® XenServer. With the certification under Citrix Ready, VirtualIQ is now certified to manage XenServer environments and heterogeneous environments that include XenServer.
The VirtualIQ suite of products is designed to support virtual server room operations through three stages of virtualization – design, deploy, and deliver stages – helping users make correct decisions for virtualization optimization along the way. For instance, in the design stage, the issues are physical-to-virtual (P-V) migration, calculating ROI, platform selection, how to decide which applications get consolidated on which hosts, resource optimization, and so forth. In the deploy stage, the challenges are managing available server capacity, controlling virtual server sprawl, performance optimization, and resource dependency just to name a few. In the deliver stage, the hurdles are managing heterogeneous virtual environments, service-delivery optimization, policy-based actions like spinning a new virtual machine, and more.
The suite of products allows users to compare how various virtualization platforms, such as XenServer, perform running different applications, such as XenApp and XenDesktop, and then provides visibility and policy-based control in managing the XenServer-based environment. The VirtualIQ suite of products supports multiple virtualization platforms – not just Citrix – for an apple-to-apple comparison and provides all essential decision-making data in a single, integrated web console that is simple to install and use. ToutVirtual is partnering with Citrix under the Citrix Ready Program, which showcases and recommends solutions demonstrating compatibility with Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure.
VirtualIQ products provide Citrix customers key benefits including:
“We are pleased to work with ToutVirtual in defining best practices for managing virtualization processes,” said Simon Crosby, chief technology officer for the Virtualization and Management Division, Citrix Systems. “ToutVirtual’s VirtualIQ products enable our XenServer customers to better assess and optimize applications for their environments, assisting them in making the right planning decisions.”
“ToutVirtual is pleased to strengthen its relationship with Citrix,” said Vipul Pabari, chief technology officer for ToutVirtual. “VirtualIQ with XenServer enables Citrix channel partners and users to optimize each stage of virtualization. Best practices highlighting automation are a necessity in managing virtual infrastructures, which is why we developed policy-based ‘Crawl-Walk-Run’ automation methodology. Whether the user is just getting started in the design phase, or further along in deployment, or delivering advanced services, the VirtualIQ suite of products is simple and cost effective.”
Pricing, Availability and Platforms Supported
More information about the VirtualIQ suite of products is available at:
http://www.toutvirtual.com/downloads/downloads.php
Channel partners interested in joining the ToutVirtual reseller program should go to
http://www.toutvirtual.com/company/reseller.php?ctype=new
February 23rd, 2009
Administrator
Know What Virtualization Is, But What Is Next – Chapter 15
As some of you may know, from reading this blog, I tend to be rather critical of virtualization implementations that are, well, what is the correct term… Slipshod? Consider the following scenario, if you would… Major company implements virtualization, same company saves a lot of costs upfront, less hardware purchased, less shared storage allocated (that can not be leveraged by virtualization better), better utilization of resources geographically, both human and machine. Elimination of cost, or avoidance of cost are the new buzz words around the management water cooler. Maybe even a few nice bonuses happened to float down to the dark shadows in the trenches, where the real work is done, the last few years. But senior management is already focused on utility computing, or cloud computing, they see virtualization as just another platform to be leveraged, the era of the floating datacenter is upon us! So what happens? Reduction of staff with incomplete planning, transfer of knowledge is weak, new personal that have no real experience or understanding of virtualization, which is a very complex animal, are now forced into a technology that is more demanding and harder to deal with, yes, virtualization is not easy to support nor manage. If you don’t understand this, you don’t really know virtualization.
Think this is not possible? Look again, I suspect it is already happening or, yuck, happened to you already, in your organization. Life cycle management is the big deal, right now, but is not the true specter, what is the true shadow over virtualization, in a strategic sense; it is how easy management sees virtualization as a commodity, a cog, and nothing more. Meaning management thinks, virtualization is like a simple operating system, the classic… been there, done that, ignorance. They forget that virtualization is a strategic platform, that it must be implemented well, supported well, designed well, and most important, planned for very well. This is easy to forget when considering cloud computing. Still think this is not happening to you? Even VMware has prompted this, in their rush to make cloud computing the new wave of profitability, to starve off Hyper-V. ESXi as a free component is worthless, if you don’t purchase all the toys! The name convention VMware just now adopted, says it all, vSphere, including vNetwork, vStorage, and vCenter. VMware is thinking strategic not tactical, true, but is your respective information technology management forgetting that virtualization is a true and significant increase in complexity? Strategic planning ignores the details, tactical planning and implementation tends to ignore the big picture, so which is it that you are struggling with in your organization? If not both?
Several years go, with my clients I started talking about a task-force mind-set, cross discipline technical teams, where storage, network, and operating system teams must integrate and have a common command structure, to prioritize goals. From a strategic perspective this makes obvious sense. But at a tactical level, it is expensive, because you are dedicating personnel, often your brightest and best skilled and talented people, to focus only on virtualization infrastructure. The devil in the details, tactical objectives, to support the strategic opportunity, thus be prepared for things like VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), VMware Fault-Tolerance (FT), better leveraging of VMware High-Availability (HA) and VMware Dynamic Resource Sharing (DRS), which at the time where about two (2) or so years in the future!
Was I successful? No. Nor were others I know. A peer of mine, in a different firm, but one that I am on good speaking terms with, that has also looked at virtualization from a strategic perspective, but only seen tactical implementation efforts, said to me just yesterday… Why don’t we have an enhanced storage infrastructure? Why don’t we use HA and DRS better, why don’t we have everything in place to use SRM today? I replied, well, everyone wanted to do it, but we never got funding, and migrating physical-to-virtual (P2V) was where all the cost savings has been, or straight-to-virtualization (S2V). So, it just never happened in the last four (4) years. First, the technology was not there to allow for it, so for two (2) years, we have waited for the technology to appear, well, for the integration of technologies to be fair. For the last two (2) years, we have just enjoyed the cost savings, ignoring the strategic advantage. Yes, the tactical cost savings should have supported as a funding initiative the infrastructure enhancements required to prepare for the new toys, no doubt. His reply was, and accurate I think… Great, so now with the economic issues we have today, we have no options, on strategic infrastructure, nothing in place to let us use the greater, if not best, features of virtualization, yet invented? What a slipshod plan.
I could do nothing but smile. I saw this coming more than three (3) years ago. My management and his, agreed, something should be done, we were right, but neither management structure acted, as the savings rolled in, as millions were saved, nothing was channeled to the future needs of virtualization. Our respective plans were stamped tactical, not strategic. So, given the economic down-turn, right now, when we really need to save more, than ever before, and the tools to allow for this are there, they now exist, to make even greater savings possible! Are any of us in a position to do so? Did we have strategic plans that were several years forward looking? No, well, only on paper, since no one wanted to invest in the future? So I ask you, again, is your virtualization plan stamped tactical or strategic?
February 4th, 2009
Schorschi
Virtualization Critical Comparison – Chapter 04
I have been spending a lot of time with XenServer 5, Hyper-V 2008, and of course VMware vSphere, over the last month or so. I expect I will continue to do this through March 2009. I planned to spend some serious time with KVM, but have not as yet had the time or resources to do so, yet. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have not been surprised by what I have seen and learned. My expectations have been met, things are improving in general, but maybe not as fast as I would prefer. No, don’t misunderstand me, I realize things take time. What I am saying is that I expected more from everyone, in comparison to everyone else, when new features would be added, not if. That everyone would steal more ideas from each other, and get these features started sooner than they have, in their respective platforms years ago, rather than in the coming year or so. For example, VMware now seriously is working towards imaging, or Microsoft now seriously working towards transparent migration. In both examples, VMware and Microsoft could have achieved these features years ago.
Here is my explanation of the key strategic issue per platform now, as a concept, not a specific feature comparison or analysis:
- At least the way I see Xen, given what I have researched and experienced so far. Xen seems to be dying. RedHat does not seem to know how to spell the world Xen, interesting since after all they were significant to the development and enhancement of Xen. I not sure why this is the case, Xen is a good platform, even if it does lack the features that make it a true enterprise solution, say compared to VMware. RedHat can not control the destiny of Xen, given Citrix being in the picture, so RedHat moving to KVM seems logical. However, Citrix I fear in light of Hyper-V, can not continue with Xen either.
- Microsoft, which should be called the Godzilla of virtualization, is just about ready to pop-up and trash everyone and everything that is not Microsoft. Of course, Hyper-V, yes, wonderful Hyper-V, well, it is a threat to everyone, but System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) is a pain to install, a pain to use, and worse, it appears to me, to be very slow, slower than vCenter, which is significant. SCVMM is a pain to interpret, above all else, every single time SCVMM reports an issue it fails to explain it well, whatever the issue is. I love the…Host Needs Attention generic warning…most often this appears when an individual host needs a few hot-fixes applied, but now where in the SCVMM interface are the individual hot-fixes itemized? And of course SCVMM does not integrate into Microsoft Update, so you have no clue what the real specific hot-fixes issues are, if in fact the issue is missing hot-fixes. How many firms are going to purchase SCVMM or Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) for Hyper-V? Not many. SCVMM and/or MOM are not inexpensive.
- KVM, as I said above, I have not spent enough time with KVM yet to have a detailed list of the good, the bad, and the ugly for KVM. However, as the late comer to this world of virtualization as we know it today, it has a very complex set of features and options that it must achieve to compete with VMware, and to some degree Hyper-V and Xen. The KVM open source heritage with support from IBM is a good thing, but can it really survive? Only time will tell.
- VMware of course is King Kong. Mature, stable, feature set deep and wide, most of the time there is obvious intelligence behind the design. But dang it, it costs too much. Given the current economic down turn, this is more significant than ever. I have read three (3) different proposals, in the last 10 days, from different enterprise architects from various places, that want to walk away from VMware, today, just because Hyper-V exists, and the single justification is, total cost, Never mind, that Hyper-V on clustering is horrible to setup and difficult to manage. That Hyper-V has some impossible single-point-of-failure-issues. Nevermind that supporting Hyper-V will be expensive given real and instance out-of-the-box limitations. VMware is in the clouds, discussing vSphere and its wonders. But are they watching the back door? ESXi free or not, is useless to anyone that has any significant scale of virtualization to implement and support. Any serious enterprise must have vCenter at a minimum. This makes Hyper-V look easy to implement at a strategic level, because it is just part of Windows 2008. Wrong. Hyper-V is an operational nightmare at a tactical level. Worse, if a firm is not going to purchase SCVMM or MOM, they of course will not be purchasing much if anything in or from vSphere. So where does that leave VMware?
At this point, I am sure most of you, are saying…What does any of this have to do with the title of this blog entry? I will elucidate. Well, the bears are gone; the bulls own the market right now, this economic situation, is innovation-to-support-expansion (ISE) death. True, I may have misled everyone, by referencing Bears, but…Lions, Tigers, and Bulls…Has no ring to it either. As for the Lions, they are the enterprise customers; they put up a good image, talk big, but behind the scenes, are doing little or nothing, everything is status quo, which is not good for any hypervisor vendor. Lions often have multi-year, enterprise licensing, so they will just continue as they have, using the product mix already licensed to continue in a tactical mindset. Thus the ISE projects are dropping off the RADAR like bugs flying too close to a zapper! The Tigers are the interesting aspect, they are the loners, singular, mavericks that will purchase what, when, and how they want, but over all, do not represent sufficient market share or scope to support the robust and extensive virtualization vendor industry.
I expect that the virtualization technology and related companies, especially the remaining 3rd party solution providers, for the most part will go the way of the Dot-Com firms collapse about 2000, we will see flood of failures, mergers, buy outs, etc., beyond the purchases that VMware has already made the last two (2) years. My view is that this chaos will last for about 9 or so months, with the avalanche hitting about June 2009, and thus going into 2010. This means that as Hyper-V starts to major in 2011, VMware will be in difficult situation. I would not be surprised, to see the greater hypervisor oriented virtualization market consolidate as well, to just two (2) firms, VMware and Microsoft. Leaving us, with King Kong, and Godzilla? Was there not a cult classic movie by that title in the 1960s? Yes, Kingu Kongu Tai Gojira. But I was always a Wizard of Oz fan, so I am sticking with Lions, Tigers, and Bulls, cough, Bears.
January 28th, 2009
Schorschi
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