Dell Vis: Make heterogeneous data centers work in harmony

As virtualization applications become more widespread, at the same time, there are many challenges in data center management, such as virtual machine sprawl and frequent configuration changes lead to more complex management, the current virtualization deployment tools do not meet it governance and regulatory requirements, the heterogeneous environment of different vendors lack of unified and effective management, Physical and virtual resources cannot be harmonized and so on. In fact, these problems also caused by the same, including Dell, IBM, HP, VMware and other IT giants of the common concern, different manufacturers from their own perspective to propose their own solutions.

Hundreds of billions of dollars in investment support

On October 24, at the 2010 Dell Efficient Enterprise Summit in Sanya, Dell unveiled the architecture and management solution for a new generation of data centers: Virtual Integrated System (VIS, virtual Integration) for "efficient Enterprise", "Cloud migration" A new set of strategic approaches has been prepared. Vis provides an open, practical end-to-end solution that enables organizations to quickly respond to changes in the needs of their customers and employees by integrating servers, storage, networks, and software tools into a dynamically configurable pool of resources. Dell claims that VIS is the industry's first to support the heterogeneous environment of different vendors, but also the physical and virtual two types of resources to the unified management of the Dynamic Data Center architecture, "other vendors can not do this at the same time two points."

The three major components of Vis

According to the introduction, the entire VIS is actually composed of three parts, Dell Advanced infrastruture Manager (AIM, advanced infrastructure manager), Vis self-service Creator (self-service creator) and Vis Director, Which aim and Vis self-service creator have been listed, VIS director will also be launched in the next four months.

AIM provides a single management interface for both physical and virtual resources in the datacenter, which is equivalent to unifying servers, storage, networks, and workloads, enabling dynamic configuration of resources to simplify data center management and improve efficiency and flexibility. Its main functional features include fast server configuration, migration between physical and virtual machines (P2P/P2V/V2P), Server fault detection and repair, and efficient sharing of IT infrastructures.

VIS Self-Service Creator provides self-service management platforms that empower users to deploy and monitor IT resources, such as users who can automate the deployment of virtual servers and desktop load, which the IT department can use to improve response speed and achieve more effective control. Its main features include: Self-Service portal, automatic control of virtual machine spread, workload resource configuration template, access control, different vendor management interoperability and so on.

VIS Director the "command Center" of Dell's next-generation data center, which administrators can use to fully control a variety of physical and virtual resources, optimize performance and resource usage, and improve service levels. Its main contents include advanced reporting, hypothesis and trend analysis, capacity and usage reporting, cost allocation and payment schemes.

Collated from Dell related white papers, October 2010

These three modules can help organizations achieve different roles, said Jiang Jianye, senior manager of the Dell Asia Pacific and Japan regional virtualization and cloud solutions market, "when customers simply need to manage their infrastructure in a unified way, aim is preferred." When enterprise applications are more mature and need more integrated management with applications, such as allowing users to create virtual machines and load management autonomously, you can use the Vis self-service Creator. You need to use the Vis Director when you want to monitor the entire organization's architecture and resource usage, especially when it comes to predicting future it architectures and resource planning. ”

▲vis Self-Service Creator Interface Note: IT administrators can configure many common modules that authorize users to request virtual machines by selecting templates. For example, the general-purpose-rhel 5.2 x86, leased for 30-60 days, is configured with 1 CPUs, 1GB of memory, and 20GB storage space, costing about $2.5 a day.

▲ Dell Release Vis architecture

Vis will be provided to business users in the form of services, and Dell has increased its investment. Jong Yongkang, Vice President of Dell (China) company, general manager of Big China Large enterprise division, said in an interview after the meeting that in the production, research and development, hosting services, Dell in the next 10 years will be expected in China's total investment of more than 100 billion U.S. dollars. With the introduction of Vis, Dell is currently in China to build application development Center for local large and medium-sized enterprises to do customized development, is expected to reach more than 1000 people at the end of next year scale. Dell is also expanding its infrastructure Management Services team to provide it hosting and cloud services to users, working with local businesses.