Most in the IT business know the basic promise of virtualization: cost savings. As much as 80% of resources in the IT infrastructure are not used. Every server, every storage unit, and every network has buffer capacity in the case it may be needed at a particular moment. Virtualization enables the creation and sharing of one single pool of resources. Resources are dynamically allocated where they are needed most. Buffers for single elements are replaced by buffers for elements of the same type. Utilization rates are increased to 80% and costs decreased markedly.
There are additional benefits beyond cost savings, such as better availability. Virtualization technology has evolved from the simple hypervisor to high-availability clustering solutions. No special application integration is needed for clustering. It means no extra steps for high availability and is provided by the underlying virtualization layer.
There is another perspective to cost savings. If it is possible to spend less and maintain performance levels, then it should be possible to maintain spending and gain performance. This makes virtualization attractive for high-end applications traditionally served by UNIX platforms. Better performance, higher availability, both at a lower cost – three arguments for moving high-end databases from old UNIX platforms to x86.
Virtualization of high-end applications sets new requirements for underlying hardware. Here are the three main points to consider:
- Performance. Server, networks and storage must be ready for consolidation of performance requirements. The ability to work with large amounts of memory is a must for servers. The ultra-high IO performance of solid state disks helps to handle most demanding read/write operations.
- Flexibility. The key for feature virtualization is to provide resources where needed and when needed. This feature can be fully exploited with proper hardware support. Servers should be able to rebalance IO channels by request and storage should respond quickly to changed performance patterns.
- Integration on all hardware components. 100% virtualization can potentially save costs and improve availability. But this won’t happen by itself and proper planning is needed for designing a solid hardware platform. The main components must be integrated and certified to work together.