A new starting point for cloud technology: virtual machine porting

Many cloud providers and WAN optimization vendors have delivered cloud services by optimizing WAN links to meet user requirements, but there are still problems with virtual machine optimizations in the public cloud, private cloud, and mixed cloud environments.

Any performance problem can affect the adoption of cloud computing by the enterprise, so cloud providers are bound to mitigate these problems, Paula Musich, senior analyst for enterprise network and security in current analytics, notes. A good starting point is to use virtual machine porting. To enable users to quickly move applications based on performance requirements and disaster recovery, cloud providers must be able to move virtual machines.

Virtual machine porting: Making cloud providers more appealing

Riverbed and VMware recently jointly announced that they will continue to work together to drive WAN optimization and speed up the migration of virtual machines in a public, private, or mixed cloud environment.

According to Riverbed, VMware Vcloud Connector combines the technology of two companies to provide data across the WAN to move and backup. At the same time to avoid the constraints on the bandwidth, as well as the network caused by high latency and packet loss.

Combining WAN optimization with the mobility of virtual machines within and between cloud environments can help providers save money for their users, Miles Kelly, senior director of the riverbed product market, said. When moving large virtual machines, WAN optimization can save time and provide performance benefits, and users can also use their existing IT infrastructure.

"With a lot of user stories, we have a deep understanding of the user's pain," he said.

In the test, Vmware-riverbed's technology effectively reduced the time it would take to transplant 12 virtual machines from 132 minutes to less than 2 minutes, Kelly said.

Silver Peak Bae also claims to have optimized the technology for porting virtual machines. At the same time, the company increased its support for the three-channel protocol to enable the virtual machine to migrate across the data center.

Virtual Acceleration Open Architecture (VXOA) 5.2 supports additional management programs, such as VMware's Vsphere,citrix Xenserver,microsoft Hyper-V and KVM, Silver Peak, vice president of product management Damon Ennis noted.

"Anyone wants to seamlessly migrate virtual machines and have applications from the East Coast Data center support and West Coast backup, which are managed by their chosen monitoring program," Ennis said.

WAN Optimization inserts wings for virtual machine transplant

Data center requirements are also growing, WAN innovation will be the next wave of cloud computing infrastructure, IDC Enterprise and Data Center network project Vice President Cindy Borovick said.

Cloud providers must develop a coordinated approach to improve the real-time allocation of large file datasets and mass small file datasets when planning to implement across multiple data centers, she said. "This will ensure that the WAN can adapt the business to cloud computing explosions." ”

Most users are implementing a mixed cloud environment, choosing infrastructure and services for test and development environments (IaaS), Riverbed Kelly said. In this competition, cloud providers must highlight their resilience and the speed of virtual machines. "If [cloud providers] can show that their environment is fast and efficient, and that they can highlight the agility of their cloud computing, it will be more appealing to users," he said.