Infrastructure virtualization technology to improve data center agility

When virtualization emerged as a means of reducing costs and increasing the efficiency of data centers, the technology was abandoned as a competitive tool. Virtualization not only provides real benefits, such as cost savings, improved server performance and minimal storage requirements, but also provides the necessary flexibility for network administrators to manage data center environments. In this article, TechTarget, a special author of China, George Crump explains the flexibility of infrastructure virtualization as a data center.

Data center efficiency is a key consideration in the competitive advantage of a company, and this efficiency is sometimes expressed as "time to rating". Time to rating measures how quickly data center implementations, responses, and restores are recovered from changes. From an architectural standpoint, this means virtualization. The Storage Switzerland stack shows the type of virtualization that should be deployed and which layer is located in the environment. Each layer in the stack plays an important role in time-to rating (time to rating).

For any layer of the virtualization stack, infrastructure virtualization has a significant impact on the company's time to Capacity (time-tocapabilities). The price per server is generally not less than 1000 dollars. Infrastructure virtualization enables data centers to virtualize messaging and storage networks and to control the physical servers connected to those networks. Based on time-to capabilities, infrastructure virtualization delivers rapid deployment, change adoption, and flexible disaster recovery (DR). Vendors such as Scalent systems and Unisys have used solutions to deal with data centers, providing immediate ROI, not only cost reduction, but also reduced energy consumption.

Scalent Systems and Unisys infrastructure virtualization products enable a data center to respond to changing business requirements in real time by using different software, network, and storage access configurations or through a server that does not require physical intervention to connect through a bare-metal to connected servers. Infrastructure virtualization allows companies to reduce the number of servers, simplify management, and increase flexibility while implementing business continuity and real-time automation.

Infrastructure virtualization software is typically installed on the x86 server, logically located on the side of the data center, and inserted into the highest level switch. This software automatically discovers the related hardware. Backup mirroring for each server needs to be created on a storage Area network (SAN) or network attached storage (NAS) device. Then there is a small application installed in each server backup mirror. The physical server network then initiates the appropriate mirroring and the underlying architecture is virtualized. A typical installation, including creating a backup mirror, takes one or a day.

As noted above, infrastructure virtualization lets you create mirrors for this server in the time it takes to start the server. Also known as server reuse, this allows the administrator to simply click on a button to redeploy the server in a few minutes using a new mirror or new application. This redeployed operating system can be any type of operating system and can be deployed at any time, however, this is not limited to or requires virtualized operating systems such as VMware's servers. Because of infrastructure virtualization, the IT infrastructure has some closed bare-metal servers to spare. Rapid, efficient, and seamless redeployment or recovery when the business architecture changes. When the expansion exceeds a physical server, reaching 10 units or even on the server, the server expands beyond the deployment of an additional server. It is still a click process, and a system administrator needs to wait just for the boot time.

As an example, if you execute a new Microsoft SQL architecture request, 10 cold servers can point to 10 template images. In a matter of minutes, the 10 servers will be well deployed and ready. If you have 50 SQL Servers, you will need some more clicks and no extra time. If this example adds storage virtualization, the storage can be configured from the server. A new virtual domain appears with some of the performance of these systems. Within minutes, the entire environment will be able to move from cold servers to fully deployed systems configured for storage.

If there is a move to a request that applies to a new hardware platform, it simply needs to point the new bare metal server to the current server image and turn on the power. Conversely, maintaining the current server hardware and deploying a new storage image only includes the replication server mirroring to the new storage and assigning the mirror to the server. In both cases, the infrastructure virtualization technology seamlessly maps and distributes new messaging networks and storage networks.

Recovery time is critical in VMware environments, which run in high availability mode and are not fully protected. A failure of a VMware node means the reallocation of all virtual machines for the entire VMware architecture. Infrastructure virtualization can start a new cold server mount Esx mirroring to this server, handling all network and storage mappings when performing maintenance on the original ESX server.

The path to the original site will be lost and recovery time is important. In this case, moving an virtualized server to a virtual environment to conserve the free server resources at the disaster recovery site may be easy to accept. Use the Infrastructure virtualization tool to move the physical environment to a smaller virtual environment at the disaster recovery site, including all the correct storage area networks and LAN connections. This will not only reduce the time to restore to the Dr site, but also reduce the cost of the idle server. In fact, if the Dr site is another office in the organization, these servers can be used to test, develop, and eliminate the cost of idle servers. Infrastructure virtualization allows you to change the server mode immediately, unlike starting a server for a few minutes.

Infrastructure virtualization delivers data center management performance based on configuration, automation, failover, and virtualization:

1. Real-time server failover

2. Simplifies hardware for test architectures

3. Easy deployment and management of applications (real-time physical to virtual migrations and virtual to physical migrations, removing storage and network parameters)

4. Real-time server and related network and storage connectivity configuration

5. Data Center Power Management

6. Failover-oriented disaster recovery across the data center

7. Cycle Application Server Consolidation

8. Automate server redeployment from physical platform or physical to virtual environment

In summary, infrastructure virtualization provides the necessary flexibility and disaster recovery capabilities, as well as the challenges that these companies are prepared to meet for competitive advantage. Because you are aiming to virtualize, don't let simple cost savings and efficiencies obscure the advantages of data center flexibility and company competition that virtualization brings.