So why is this a great time for virtualization projects? Simply because the ROI on virtualizing your datacenter can be less than a year, saving you money on your bottom line THIS budget year! Depending on the size of your datacenter, and your new server refresh cycle, you may be able to repurpose this year's budget to a virtualization project and actually decrease your bottom line.

I know, that sounds almost impossible, but let me show you how it works. Assuming that you have a datacenter that is populated with ... say 50 servers. They can be a mix of Windows, Linux, or other x86-based hosts. Another assumption is that of the 50 servers, you are retaining them 4 years, and replacing them on a regular cycle, at probably 12 new servers per year. After memory, drives, etc, you are looking at probably $5,000 each for a ballpark number of $60k per year for new server purchases.

If you were to virtualize your datacenter with VMware, you should be able to migrate 40 of your existing servers to VMs as part of the project. In an ideal world, we could virtualize them all. However there may be a few servers that require unsupported expansion cards, are being outsourced, or are true ‘high performers' that are not suitable virtualization candidates. A conservative estimate would be that we could support 40 virtual machines within a 3 host ESX infrastructure. It would be very feasible to re-purpose an existing server as your Virtual Center management server. Therefore, rather than purchase 12 new servers for this year, you would only require 3 new servers.

VMware's VI3 infrastructure requires shared network storage to fully utilize the feature set. Assuming that you don't have a SAN in your datacenter, you would need to purchase one for this solution. You can purchase a 4TB Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN for less than $25,000. Also, the VMware software itself can be purchased as a bundle for around $20,000 as well for 3 ESX hosts and Virtual Center. Now you have all of the pieces you need to virtualize your datacenter.

OK, strap in tight because here comes the math that you are all waiting to see.

So you are asking yourself "You said I could SAVE money, not break even. I don't see any difference between this project and what I am already spending." Here are a few points that allow you to save money that aren't shown above.

1) You will now be supporting 14 servers and an iSCSI SAN in your datacenter instead of 50 servers. There is a significant drop in Power, cooling, rack space, KVM and network ports required in your datacenter now. You will see direct savings on your datacenter operational budget over the course of the year, somewhere in the area of 10%-30% reduction in utility bills. There may also be ‘green initiatives' in your state that will pay you rebates for reducing your electrical footprint in the datacenter.

2) Server maintenance and upkeep costs will drop. As you no longer need to support your physical servers after they come off warranty, you will save on hardware maintenance both this year and in future budget cycles.

3) Server and Service downtime. Once your datacenter is virtualized, you will see a dramatic increase in server uptime and performance based on VMware's HA and DRS clustering features. By optimizing VM performance and load across the cluster, you will see better uptime by proactively migrating hosts to available hosts in the event of both planned and unplanned downtime for your ESX hosts.

4) Administrative costs reduced. By virtualizing your datacenter, you significantly reduce the need for overtime or on-call expenses. Virtual Servers and host management can be done remotely, reducing administrative overhead. Additionally, as you decrease hardware dependencies, you reduce the number of outages due to failed memory, hard drives, network cards, etc.

5) Backup, recovery, and Disaster Recovery costs reduced. By virtualizing with VMware and EqualLogic, you are able to use your existing backup server infrastructure to backup the VMs. However, you will save costs on the number of backup agents that you need. Using EqualLogic's Snapshot Manager for VMware feature, you can perform snapshots of all of your virtual machines from the SAN snapshot directly from your backup server. This reduces the number of agents from 40 to only 1 on the backup server. Additionally, since VM backups are simply 2-3 files, it is easy to recover an entire VM in event of a disaster. Since ESX can be installed on most industry standard hardware, a VM configured for a Dell server can run on a HP host in a DR location.

In conclusion, if you look at simply the cost layout of virtualizing as opposed to continuing down the rack-mounted individual server route in your datacenter, there is comparable costs involved. However, if you factor in the ancillary costs of doing business in the datacenter, you will see direct savings to your bottom line as soon as you make the switch to a VI3 Virtual Datacenter. Costs such as utilities, network support, server maintenance, administrative resources, downtime, backup agents, and DR projections can be significantly reduced in the Virtual Datacenter. While these are not directly associated with a virtualization project, they are realized within the datacenter as a whole. These cost reductions are also not a one-time reduction to the bottom line. They persist across budget cycles and ongoing savings to the overall datacenter operation for years to come.

With the acquisition of Lefthand Networks by HP last week, the gauntlet was thrown down. Dell had a year's head start, but there will now be some competition in the marketplace. HP was well placed in the FC market, with their MSA and EVA products, but were missing the iSCSI boat. Let's be honest, the MS Unified Storage Server is NOT a viable solution. Lefthand fits nicely into their product line, and will be supported well by HP's storage engineering team. In the first two quarters, there will most likely be a bit of a marketing blitz, and look to see some competitive pricing as well. After that, it will be interesting to see how it integrates into the rest of HP's product line.

Meanwhile, I don't expect that the Dell|EqualLogic team will be sitting on their laurels. Look for improvements to the feature set over the coming months to differentiate their product from Lefthand.

One of the most dramatic changes that occurs when a server is virtualized is that the server becomes compartmentalized. Basically, all of the files, configuration information, data, and drivers that make up a server in your enterprise are rolled into just a few files. There is a configuration file that tells the ESX server how much memory, drive space, network cards are in the server. Additionally, there is a "vmdk" file, which acts as the virtual hard drive. All OS, server config, applications and data that would reside on the a physical server's hard drive is stored here in a single large file. Take into account that virtual servers use "virtual hardware", which is platform independent and can run on any ESX installation. When your servers can be reduced to just a few files, it opens up several possiblilites. Files can be copied. Files can be backed up. Files can be replicated.

In all practical senses, a virtual machine (VM), has been reduced to simply a few files. Looking at this from a disaster recovery perspective, backing up and recovering a server has been simplified dramatically. Where once you needed to use a backup agent to perform a full backup, copy or clone the data to a second site, and have identical hardware available to restore the files to, you now have reduced the entire process to moving a few files. If you need to restore a VM from these files, any ESX installation will do regardless of if it is a Dell, HP, or IBM server on the back end. You can restore a VM running on an HP blade to ESX installed on a Dell rack-mounted server. The difficult part is copying the VM files from your production environment to the DR site, which really isn't that challenging.

Technically, how does VMWare integrate into a comprehensive Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity plan? There are several options available, ranging from manual replication to using VMWare's Site Recovery Manager product to develop the plan within your company's requirements.

I think that this is enough for now. All I ask is that when you think of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity, think of incorporating VMWare into your solution.

VMWorld 2008, Las Vegas. As I stand in line, at least 200 people deep to get on an escalator to take me to the fourth floor of the Sands Expo Center for my next session, I am amazed at the crowd here at VMWorld. This is my fourth one, and I have seen it grow from 3500 at Mandalay Bay to the current estimate at over 14,000 attendees. I finally get on the escalator and say something like " I can't believe there are so many people here". The guy behind me calmly says "Yeah. If a bomb went off here, everything around the world would stop. There would be nobody left to keep the servers running."

While it was funny and everyone around us laughed, it had a ring of truth to it. Virtualization has become so pervasive in the IT space now that we have come to rely on it in almost every aspect of our datacenter. A full 100% of the Fortune 100 are using VMware in production, and 98% of the Fortune 500 use their products. With all of the top engineers in the field in one place, a disaster would surely cripple IT innovation for years to come.

Aside from that grim concept, the conference has been fantastic. With the new announcements surrounding vStorage, vNetworks, and the vCloud initiative, it is obvious to all that VMware is not sitting back and enjoying their lead in the Virtualization space. Every time their competitors start getting closer to what they are doing, they take a huge leap ahead and push virtualization to new heights. I am amazed every year that they continue to innovate, and look forward to getting my hands on the new technology.

This concept was shown to the audience at the keynote this morning as a live demo.  Despite the common pitfalls of all live demos, it performed flawlessly.  A vApp packaged and running in a virtual center was stressed, and based on performance SLAs, a replica vApp was pushed out to a service provider vCloud, and run in parallel to balance the load and satisfy the SLA.

Fault Tolerance is a new feature being built into the new VI4, allowing for mirrored VMs, one in production and the other on standby, that ships transactions from the hypervisor from one to the other.  In event of a failure on the primary VM, the backup will automatically take over with NO DOWNTIME...  Yes, that is correct.  By shipping hypervisor calls, the backup is perfectly in sync with the last transaction and therefore a perfect replica for the production environment.

VMSafe is a new API being built into VMware's VI3 allowing for third party security partners to monitor the hypervisor transactions.  Simply put, you can run a virtual appliance to handle firewall, antivirus, and IDS on each host and be able to monitor the activities for all guests, thereby eliminating the need to run those processes within each VM.  Saves on overhead and licensing from a client perspective while maintaining secure computing within your guest servers.

vSwitches are a new concept being introduced at VMWare.  By creating a virtual switching environment that can be spanned over servers in a cluster, it eliminates the need to configure virtual networking for each host in the infrastructure.  This not only eliminates management overhead and potential configuration mistakes, but also allows for easier replication between hosts, central management, and the ability to monitor VMs on a cluster basis as opposed as a host basis.

Those are a few of the new announcements and concepts being discussed a VMWorld.  Please feel free to add your own insights to these solutions or others being discussed.

Thanks to Chris Harney, the chapter president, for getting things going. A huge thanks to his wife Dawn, who actually did all of the work organizing the party and making sure that it ran smoothly.

VMware User Groups (VMUG)

According to virtualization.info, Mendel Rosenblum, VMware’s co-founder and chief scientist has resigned.This comes only a month after his wife Diane Green, former CIO and co-founder was removed from the Board of Directors in July.  Additionally, we saw that Richard Sarwal, the Executive VP for R&D left to head back to Oracle.

With this announcement coming so close to the opening of the conference, it will be interesting to see what sort of spin will be put on these departures.  Do I think that VMware is headed for trouble?  Absolutely not.  VMware has a very strong product, and is an innovative leader in the field of virtualization.  However, those of us who have dealt with them over the years have noticed that they have some growing pains, especially relating to corporate organization.  I think that changes at the top may mean that we see the emergence of a leaner, more efficient organization.  With Hyper-V now on the market and charging hard, it may be the best time to get into fighting shape.

The Mosaic SEs are the people that are ultimately responsible for assisting our customers with matching their business requirements to appropriate solutions to their problems. As a VAR we have dozens of vendors that want to work with us and it's our job to help weed out the technology that can help our customers from the stuff that's just taking up time & resources. You can be assured that by the time we're talking with you about a technology, we've already qualified the solution, tested it in our labs, agreed that there are a set of business problems that the technology can solve, developed relationships with the vendor SEs and done lots of other behind the scenes work to make sure we're providing a solid solution. It's not your typical - see the product, sell the product approach of many vendors.

And after we've put together a solution and you've decided to move forward with us, we'll be there to assist with your implementation in whichever way you choose. We'll come in for a day and do a jumpstart, assist with project management during complex projects or do a soup-to-nuts installation & migration; again all based on your requirements.

What's our biggest challenge? Keeping up with EVERYTHING that's happening in the IT world. That's why we limit our focus to Virtualization & Storage. Trying to stay up to speed on everything happening in Security, Networking, Collaboration, etc is impossible so we focus on what we know and do best and we rely on our strong partnerships for the other pieces.

The best part of our job is helping our customers and a big piece of this is not re-inventing the wheel. As you all know, a lot of times we'll tell you about Customer A who was implementing a particular solution to solve a business problem that they may be similar to yours. One of our major goals for this blog is to spread those messages further so you'll be reading about a LOT of different customer situations and how they went about solving their problems. Hopefully you'll find this helpful and please let us know what we're doing well and what you'd like to see different!

Please be aware that although you need to register to post here, we will NOT be using any information for business purposes. We adhere to strict confidentiality rules and want this to be an open exchange of information. Our hope is that this forum will produce small bits of discussion and knowledge that will grow to a greater understanding of the technology used in today's datacenters in the same way that small bits of tessera come together to create a piece of art that can be admired by all.

Thank you, and Let the discussion begin...