What is Virtualization?
In the relentless drive to increase data center efficiency, enterprises and service providers alike are increasingly turning to advanced virtualization technologies.
Virtualization enables a single physical server (or storage array) to host multiple “virtual machines” (VMs) that are software-based. This effectively abstracts logical system functions from the physical host systems, allowing flexible sharing of physical system resources across multiple VMs running multiple applications or services. The following figure shows multiple VMs in a virtual environment sharing a single physical server, network connection, storage array, and so on.
By eliminating the traditional, inefficient “one server, one application” model, virtualization allows enterprises and service providers to optimize the utilization of their server and storage resources. Today’s sophisticated VM management technologies allow CPU, storage and network capacity to be balanced and allocated across multiple VMs intelligently, as they are needed.
Virtualization Market Trends
With competitive cost pressures mounting on both enterprises and service providers, many are embracing virtualization strategies to maximize the value from their existing data center resources. That migration is accelerating rapidly, per Gartner research, which predicts that 50% of all x86 architecture server workloads will run on virtual machines by the end of 2012 — representing an estimated 58 million deployed machines.
The drivers for this virtualization trend are clear. Virtualization can enable companies to more effectively control infrastructure investments, while continuing to deliver new applications and services to meet their growing business needs and evolving market demands.
Virtualization allows service providers to dedicate discrete VMs for specific enterprise customers. This enables them to deliver high-value, customized, virtual service offerings to meet specific customer needs and SLAs, without having to dedicate an entire physical server to each customer.
Another notable trend driving the move toward virtualization strategies is the growth of cloud computing models, such as today’s emerging Communications as a Service (CaaS) models. This supports the continued convergence of voice, data, and wireless into unified communications solutions with increased interoperability and efficiency.
Benefits of Virtualization
Today’s advanced virtualization technology offers some attractive benefits, including:
- Reduced Capex and Opex —Virtualization can significantly reduce infrastructure expenditures and ongoing administrative costs by maximizing the use of physical server resources.
- Operational Flexibility — Virtualization allows server and storage resources to be allocated, or reallocated, to meet changing business needs — easily and rapidly.
- Reduced Carbon Footprint — Virtualization can reduce overall energy usage, helping make the data center more “green”— an important priority for a growing number of businesses today.
Virtualization Technology
Virtual Data Center Architecture
Typical virtualization implementations for enterprise or service provider communications applications involve separate instances of the media server or service application software running on the “guest” operating system of one or more virtual machines being hosted on the same physical server.
Virtualization implementations typically will be based on an enterprise- or carrier-class VM solution, such as VMware ESXi or Windows Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V™. The virtualization software partitions a physical server into multiple secure and portable virtual machines that run side by side. Each virtual machine represents a complete system — with processors, memory, networking, storage, and BIOS — so that an operating system and software applications can be installed and run in the virtual machine without modification.
For service providers, virtualization enables the hosting of multiple, discrete media servers or service applications running on multiple VMs on one or more physical servers. For example, a single physical server might have one VM delivering IVR functionality to one customer, and another VM delivering hosted PBX to another. Media resources required for one or more service applications could be hosted on yet another VM. This can dramatically reduce the hardware needed to deliver the services, enhancing the provider’s competitive position. The following figure shows a generic virtual environment in a service provider network with a CaaS solution using HMP to deliver PBX to one customer and IVR to another.
In an enterprise data center, virtualization can permit the sharing of physical servers to deliver communications services, as well as other applications. For example, one VM could be devoted to delivering corporate fax services, while another on the same physical server could be running business applications. This can eliminate the need to devote an entire server to fax communications, if such capacity is not required by the business. The following figure shows a generic virtual environment in an enterprise network using Dialogic® Brooktrout® SR140 Fax Software solution on one VM, and a business application on another.
