Certainly with Microsoft entering the virtualization fray, customers will have a serious option to VMware. Now independent management vendors will need to manage virtual environments that span different hypervisor technology. It is clear that over time customers will be dealing with multiple hypervisors in their infrastructures and the tools will have to work across them. Management vendors that can manage across the market leading hypervisors will have a significant competitive advantage. It will be interesting to see if either Microsoft or VMware take an approach to management technology that allows them to work with competitive hypervisors.
|
Does Verizon's Voyager stack up to the iPhone? |
|
|
5 IT skills that won't boost your salary 
[1,407]
Women 4 times more likely than men to cough up personal info [589]
Japan's 10 funniest tech-related commercials [Videos] [407]
Throwing away a promo CD is "unauthorized distribution"? [1,265]
Adults too quick to dismiss educational video games [682]
Attack of the iPhone clones [Slideshow] [578]
10 things IT needs to know about AJAX [1,258]
This Year's 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries [Slideshow] [409]
|
|
Hypervisor Management Tools
Data centers managers are now bracing for the next wave of heterogeneity - hypervisors. In the 90s, a heterogeneous data center usually meant Windows, NetWare, Linux, HP-UX, AIX, Solaris ..... Today, its VmWare, Hyper-V and Xen. The challenge they face is how to manage this infrastructure without the operating costs getting out of hand.
The existing hypervisor vendor's management tools are by and large focused on their respective hypervisors (e.g. VWMare's management tools such as VMotion, VCB only support VMWare's product line.). This trend will continue since the underlying hypervisors continue to get commoditized and the revenue model for the hypervisor vendor is shifting more towards the management apps.
The problem with trying to use the existing management "frameworks" like HP-OpenView is that they were built for the physical infrastructure. Just like the Candle's and the Boole and Babbage's of the industry who tried to retrofit their mainframe management tools into client server environments and failed, history is bound to repeat itself - if the existing management frameworks try to manage the virtual infrastructure when they were built for the physical infrastructure.
What is needed is a clean slate approach to managing a hetreogeneous hypervisor environment. One that is completely agnostic to the underlying hypervisor (case in point - can i automatically migrate a VM from a ESX to a Hyper-V environment based on load thresholds?). I have not come across any ISV doing this today, but I'm sure a whole bunch of emerging start-ups or existing software vendors are working on it
Post new comment