Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The economics of “one workload per computer” are, in many cases, difficult to
defend—and are the original justification for virtualization. Because of the risk
of harmful interaction between two workloads, in certain environments it was
necessary for these workloads to be isolated. The deployment of “one workload
per VE” has led to an explosion of entities in need of management. Fortunately,
software developers have responded with increasingly sophisticated tools for man-
aging these large populations of VEs.
In addition to consolidation and isolation, virtualization increases the separa-
tion between workloads and the computer. Virtualization makes it easier to think
of a workload and its surrounding software as an object that may be transferred
from one bucket to another. This approach, which is called VE migration, was
discussed in detail earlier in this topic.
Like a computer, a VE has a life cycle. It is created, used, monitored and man-
aged, and, ultimately, destroyed. Unlike the life cycle of a workload running on a
single physical computer, however, the various stages of the VE life cycle might
take place on different computers. Each stage of the life cycle is described in this
section.
9.1.1.1 Discover
Existing data centers have many servers, and may already have many VEs.
Tracking all of these resources manually is difficult. An automated tool that uses
the network to discover computer equipment obviously has value in these cir-
cumstances. These systems, and the VEs running on them, are sometimes called
“assets” in this context. Understanding the population of existing systems, virtu-
alization platforms, and VEs on the data center floor makes the choice of a home
for a new VE much easier.
Data center management (DCM) tools can discover assets via standard proto-
cols such as SNMP and IPMI. Once they have been found, DCM tools aggregate
the information so you can view the information and manage those assets.
9.1.1.2 Provision
Once the asset population is understood, you can choose appropriate hard-
ware for future “bare metal” installation of hypervisors or operating systems.
Virtualization management tools should also allow you to customize individual
platforms or, even better, groups of similar platforms. Such customizations in-
clude infrastructure services such as directory services. Existing assets, including
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