The datacentre is undergoing considerable change, with
more organisations starting to deploy technologies that consolidate
their computing resources, bringing cost savings and
efficiencies.
Philip Dawson, vice-president enterprise systems at analyst firm
Gartner, said server consolidation was still a dominant aspect of a
lot of IT projects, but it is being superseded by server
virtualisation.
Gartner believes virtualisation will become the most disruptive
PC technology in a decade, because it allows multiple operating
systems to run simultaneously on a single machine, effectively
decoupling software from hardware.
Server virtualisation allows the IT manager to lower operational
costs by running multiple enterprise applications on one server, or
perhaps combining test and production environments on a single
box.
As a result the technology has the potential to help IT
departments maximise their use of existing equipment.
The popularity of VMWare's ESX Server, and rising interest in
Microsoft's Virtual Server, indicate the mainstream growth of
virtualisation technology.
However, Dawson warned, "At the moment, virtualisation is
over-hyped and overpriced. People must see how they can use it, but
next year the market will dilute, with products such as hardware
virtualisation at the chip level and open source software from XEN
becoming a stronger alternative to VMWare. The Longhorn hypervisor
[virtualisation management software] will also move closer, putting
pressure on VMware to go into the virtualisation management space
along the lines of VMotion."
VMWare is planning to develop Linux and Solaris x86 operating
systems in future releases of its virtual infrastructure products
that are optimised to run in a virtual environment.
Microsoft is planning to release Virtual Server 2005 R2 this
quarter, offering increased operational efficiency in server
consolidation, application re-hosting, disaster recovery and
software test and development. Microsoft will follow R2 with a
product in 2006 offering greater support for the forthcoming
Windows Vista.
One element of virtualisation that will enhance the datacentre
is the concept of logical partitioning in server hardware, through
technologies such as Intel's VT (Virtualisation Technology) and
AMD's Pacifica.
This will allow each processor core to run multiple operating
systems and applications independently of each other, potentially
lowering datacentre comp- uting costs.
One element that is still lacking is an open standard for
hypervisors - the software that manages operating systems and
hardware resources in a virtualised environment. However, suppliers
including AMD, BEA Systems, BMC Software, Cisco, CA, Dell, HP, IBM,
Intel, Novell, and Red Hat are collaborating over hypervisor
standards.
Another issue users face is licensing. Chris Ingle, group
consultant systems group at analyst firm IDC, said,"At the moment,
users get the cost and the confusion. Work still needs to be done
on licensing."
Enterprise grid technology is an application of virtualisation
that spreads application processing over tens, hundreds or
thousands of PCs to make efficient use of their resources.
Grids are used by many scientific organisations, including
nuclear physics lab Cern, which has a server farm of 8,000 Linux
machines, carrying out simultaneous calculations. But will
datacentre grids ever move beyond scientific computing?
Clive Longbottom, service director at analyst firm Quocirca,
said grid computing is gaining broad acceptance because of the
effectiveness and efficiencies that can be obtained from it.
Quocirca's recent Grid Index survey, commissioned by Oracle,
found growing demand for the technology.
The main driver for users to deploy grid technology is to make
better use of existing IT assets. According to Quocirca, businesses
typically only achieve 29% utilisation on their IT assets.
Steve Boniwell, independent consultant and director of the HP
User Group, said large organisations were adopting enterprise
grids, but warned, "If you want to do it properly, partner up with
a big player like IBM, Sun, HP, or a specialist in the Linux
area".
Another area where the datacentre has changed this year is the
mainstream adoption of 64-bit processing through Intel's Itanium
and AMD's Opteron server processors. The technology allows
applications to run faster by accessing larger chunks of processor
memory.
Although 64-bit datacentre platforms are not new, and Risc
architectures such as Sun's Ultrasparc or IBM's Power processor
have boasted 64-bit for some time, Intel and AMD have made the
technology more widely available.
64-bit computing started becoming popular when both Windows and
Enterprise Linux operating systems supported it. Microsoft has said
it will optimise a number of applications for x64, its hybrid
32/64-bit operating system. These will include Exchange Server 12,
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, Windows Server Longhorn, Small
Business Server and Microsoft's infrastructure product for mid-size
businesses, code-named Centro.
In October, nautical equipment manufacturer Kelvin Hughes became
one of the first UK firms to implement an enterprise resource
planning system based on 64-bit Itanium running the Linux operating
system.
The system, run by four IT staff, supports 350 users at 11 sites
in six countries. The company decided to use Linux because it did
not require as much downtime for patching as other operating
systems. Also, the enhanced performance of 64-bit systems was
expected to improve productivity and support growth.
With the emergence of low-cost 64-bit and hybrid 32/64-bit
hardware, multicore processors and server virtualisation, the trend
of server consolidation is set to continue through 2006.
See
How to build practical grid apps
Server sales on the rise
Gartner figures show that users worldwide are investing in both
32-bit and 64-bit servers, with purchases rising sharply between
the third quarters of 2004 and 2005.
The three major suppliers, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and IBM saw
sales rise, and 28% of x86 servers in use now come from HP, said
Gartner.
As for Risc and Itanium Unix servers, organisations bought the
largest number from Sun, followed by IBM and then HP.
Windows and Linux-based servers and server blades all saw
stronger adoption over the past year, according to analyst firm
IDC, but the number of Unix servers shipped declined overall in Q3
2005, compared with Q3 2004, said IDC.
Case study: AutoTrader grids
In November, magazine and website AutoTrader started to use
computing grids to support a rapid expansion of its online motor
exchange operations without the need for major capital investment
in new enterprise servers. AutoTrader said that if it had not
invested in grid technologies, it would have been forced into a
Unix server upgrade, which would have meant a capital investment of
more than £1m. Its grid runs Oracle Database 10g and Real
Application Clusters on Sun v40z Opteron servers running Red Hat
3AS.