Speaking Virtualization with Dan Kusnetzky

Posted April 7th, 2008 by Joe Pendry

Dan Kusnetzky 135x155 ZDNet’s resident “Virtual Man” blogger Dan Kusnetzky took a few moments to answer some questions on the state of virtualization today. Dan is a partner in the Kusnetzky Group, and responsible for research, publications, and providing advisory services for Kusnetzky Group clients. He has been has been involved with information technology since the late 1970s.

Dan was executive vice president of corporate and marketing strategy for Open-Xchange, Inc. Prior to that he was vice president of IDC’s System Software research and was responsible for research and analysis on the worldwide market for operating environments and virtualization software.

StackSafe: How did you get into virtualization, what made you become passionate about the topic?

Dan Kusnetzky: I’ve been involved with virtualization technology since the late 1970s. While at Digital Equipment Corporation, I was program manager for VAXcluster software one of the company’s business units here in North America. Later I moved to International Data Corporation (IDC) and as Vice President of system software research, conducted a great deal of research on the markets for system software, open source software and virtualization software.

StackSafe: Virtualization is not new, but is experiencing a significant boost in interest these days. What do you think is causing the excitement?

Dan Kusnetzky: With the inherent capabilities of computers, virtualization has become a major catch phrase being bandied about in the media today. Usually, the media mistakenly equates virtual machine technology, technology that can encapsulate all of the software that runs on a physical system and allows that capsule to run alongside of others on a single system, with virtualization itself. It is often presented as something new and different rather than a well-established group of technologies with a long track record of success in data centers around the world. Mainframe and midrange system suppliers have been involved with all levels of virtualization technology for a very long time.

There are many layers of technology that virtualize some portion of a computing environment. Each of these tools can be applied to making industry standard systems part of a larger, more efficient, more productive computing environment. Here’s a graphical representation of those tools:

Let’s quickly review how each type of virtualization helps organizations.

Access Virtualization makes it possible for nearly any type of device to be used to access nearly any type of application over just about any type of network. Using this technology, developers aren’t forced to change applications to allow individuals get things done using a hand held device, a thin client, a laptop computer or even a desktop system.
Application virtualization creates a protected environment that makes it possible to automatically restart an application in case of a failure, start another instance of an application if the application is not meeting service level objectives, or provide workload balancing among multiple instances of an application.
Processing virtualization hides the physical hardware configuration and makes it possible, on the one hand, to present a single system as if it were many or, on the other hand, to present many systems as if it were a single resource. Tools such as Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT) really help with the tasks found in this layer.
Storage virtualization presents a logical view of storage that allows many systems to share a single storage device that’s located on the network.
Network virtualization presents a logical view of network resources that is secure and managed.
Management and security software makes it possible administrators to treat many systems as a single computing resource.

The exciting news is that virtualization technology, something that has been part of mainstream IT for decades, is now available as part of agile high volume, industry standard environments as well.

StackSafe: What do you see as the biggest trends for enterprise IT today with regard to virtualization?

Dan Kusnetzky: Exciting things are happening at each layer of the model. There are over 100 different companies developing technology and bringing it to market. This technology is likely to allow organizations to develop processes and procedures that simplify their desktop environments, their server environments and the web of technology that ties everything together. Depending upon the organization’s needs, it is increasingly possible to access computing from wherever a person is using whatever intelligent device they have available. It is possible to harness the power of many computers and make them act like a pool of resources that can be dynamically allocated based upon the organization’s policies, service level objectives and the like. It is also possible to allow many independent workloads to share the same industry standard system without allowing them to conflict with one another. I could go on and on.

StackSafe: How can companies benefit from implementing virtualization strategies? What is the ROI? (Financial savings? Freeing up resources? Technological advantages?)

Dan Kusnetzky: The best place for an organization to begin is to really understand where they are right now rather than randomly selecting and deploying technology. Building a strategy around a single product from a single vendor is often a big mistake.

Once the organization understand what it is doing now, the next step is deciding where they want to be several years from now. Decision makers should take the time to develop and overall architecture and only then seek out the products or technology that can make it possible to implement that architecture. This approach makes it possible to use today’s technology today and make room for tomorrow’s technology to be adopted when it is available.

StackSafe: What kind of companies should use virtualization? (Size, type, etc.)

Dan Kusnetzky: Just about any size of organization could chose to use some form of virtualization technology. Which forms are best really depend upon what a given organization is doing now and where they’d like to be several years from now.

StackSafe: What advice would you offer to companies that are just now preparing to deploy virtualization in the data center?

StackSafe: Have you noticed any differences in virtualization adoption between North America and other areas globally (EMEA, Pacific Rim)?

Dan Kusnetzky: The goals of organizations differ. Some are focused on consolidating workloads to increase the utilization rates of their industry standard systems to more closely resemble what they’ve been seeing on their mainframes and midrange systems for decades. Others are focused on harnessing the power of many inexpensive industry standard systems so that they can use systems to execute applications beyond their reach in times past. Others are seeking ways to harness many industry standard systems together so that they can see levels of reliability and availability that previously was only available using mainframe or midrange systems. Once again, I could go on and on.

StackSafe: What does the next generation of virtualization look like to you?

Dan Kusnetzky: It is increasingly clear that the industry is moving in the direction of a unified hardware environment that is capable of running a diverse mix of workloads and operating systems. It is also clear that applications and data being hosted by such a resource will be available to staff, partners, consultants and customers from wherever they are, using whatever client device is appropriate for them and all in a secure, well-managed way.