The future of virtual servers
Intel-platform server virtualisation is relatively new, but all three vendors have specific ideas about where its product lines--and the technology in general--is headed.
VMware's Greene said, "We think that the server virtualisation capabilities envisioned by IBM's eLiza, Sun's N1, and HP's Utility Datacenter represent the future of server-side computing. All of these require the ability to dynamically repurpose servers for new tasks, while maintaining constant service availability. They have the vision of hardware being managed as a single pool of computing resources. Due in part to their hardware independence and encapsulation capabilities, VMware virtual machines are a natural enabler for the kinds of dynamic computing environments envisioned by the major server providers. We see our virtual machines serving as key building blocks in blade, grid, utility computing, and server virtualisation scenarios.
"Longer term, we think we're headed for a world in which the services that run on top of a computing infrastructure, like an e-business service or a supply chain service, will be deployed and managed completely independently of the physical components that power the service. That's Microsoft's .Net vision, and that's very exciting indeed."
Beloussov described SWSoft's roadmap: "In the short term, we will continue to improve Virtuozzo and dominate the market for Linux/Unix virtualisation in the hosting space. In the next few releases, we will continue to productise Virtuozzo for the enterprise, providing more service-level and mass-management tools that make it easy to manage and deploy virtualised environments on Intel-based servers.
"In addition to an Itanium product--which should be out by next summer--we are putting a lot of development muscle behind our Windows offering--due out the second quarter of 2003--which will make us more attractive to enterprise customers. Longer term, we will release a sophisticated and integrated storage virtualisation product."
And as for the future of virtualisation, he said, "Server virtualisation will play a pivotal role in helping enterprises, SMBs, hosting providers and other organisations fully utilise and consolidate hardware. For service providers, server virtualisation will redefine the industry by providing an automated infrastructure on which to create both new channels and a wide-range of virtual hosting plans."
Shaler described the Connectix roadmap. "In the short term, we are focused on saving customers money today in the 1- to 4-way range, consolidating commodity infrastructure services such as file/print, collaboration, and domain control servers. We're very excited by the capabilities that Microsoft's .Net server brings to the table for us, and are very busy right now cultivating technology and reseller partnerships to enlarge the capabilities of Virtual Server as a virtualisation platform. Connectix's open-platform approach enables the creation of value-added applications by partners.
"As we move forward to the vision of a processor area network enabled by self-healing autonomic computing, we will see more powerful, flexible, reliable solutions leveraging Virtual Server to continue to save our customers money. The datacenter of the future, enabled by server virtualisation, is going to be a very exciting place to be."
Which virtual server technology would best suit your company's needs? TalkBack below or e-mail us.
CodeArts has released management tools designed to manage entire Virtual Data Center composed of standalone servers, blade servers, SAN/NAS or virtual servers from VMware or Connectix.
More info at http://www.codearts.com