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E-Book HOW VIRTUALIZATION CHANGES HARDWARE PURCHASES

February 2015

PURCHASING SERVERS
IN A VIRTUALIZED WORLD
With virtualization taking over networks, storage and servers, the software-
defined data center is on the rise. This inevitably affects IT buying decisions.
BY CLIVE LONGBOTTOM

Too Good
D D Moving On to
to Be True Purchasing

Rationalizing
D Persisting Needs
D
Applications
I
HOW VIRTUALIZATION CHANGES HARDWARE PURCHASES

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Too Good to Be True

Rationalizing
Applications

Moving On to
Purchasing

Persisting Needs

F YOU ARE still running physical serv- thats the accepted line when the discussion turns to virtual-
ers, take a look at the CPU utilization izations effect on purchasing. Not only that, but IT will also
rates for these machines. At peak, be told that software manages everything else. Applications
youre probably maxed out at 100%, needing more resources can just have them applied in real
meaning application performance time via the resource pools; the need for systems engineer-
is suffering. Averaged out over a week or so, however, you ing is lessened to the point of not being an issue at all.
might find that theyre running at less than 10%.
To remedy this waste of resources, IT admins have turned
to virtualization. By taking available resources and making TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE
them accessible as pools usable by multiple applications, In a perfect world, the aforementioned scenario would
the utilization rates (of servers, storage and networks) are occur without a hitch. However, this isnt usually the case.
increased. Subsequently, this increased efficiency can lead Virtualization cannot solve every problem. What it does do
to a halving of required hardware, with the concomitant re- is provide flexibility for dealing with the unavoidable issues
duction in energy, licenses, system admins, and other costs that come with an IT platform.
associated with owning all of the equipment. So, what does this mean regarding the purchasing of IT
Virtualization is a great tool, provided it is used correctly. systems? The cookie-cutter approach may not work for your
IT is commoditizing and all that is needed is an estate of IT infrastructure. Basing it on scale-out commodity equip-
low-cost servers, storage and network switchesor at least ment will only work in certain areas; you will still need good

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systems architects. Also, to support the business, you will RATIONALIZING APPLICATIONS
need to understand the interplay between different parts of Many organizations, when carrying out an application dis-
Rationalizing
Applications
the IT platform. covery activity, find that they have multiple applications
In many cases, the business will need a means of sup- executing the same overall function. Rationalizing applica-
porting and facilitating a collection of business tasks and tions to a single vendor can make your negotiating position
Moving On to
Purchasing processesit is best to try to avoid thinking of any business much strongermore seats can push your contract over
problem in terms of, What business application solves this into a lower cost-per-seat bracket.
Persisting Needs issue? Instead, look at which systems are already in place Look at all of the applications that you will be retaining.
that can provide support for the underlying business tasks. Are any of them cyclical? For example, if you are running
This will identify where you do not have the right systems payroll on-site, then it is likely that this will only be running
in place to support the total business process. once per week or once per month. How about accounts pay-
This determination constitutes a basic gap analysis. How able? Do you only run those once per month?
do you move from where you are to where you need to be at Understanding the cyclical nature of certain applications
a business level, with some idea of what this means at the can really help with regard to virtualization. If the applica-
technical level? tions can be made counter-cyclical (for example, running
Once you have completed this analysis, you are in a bet- payroll on the last Friday of the month, with accounts pay-
ter position to examine your existing systems and identify able being run on the second Friday of every month) they
potential upgrades. Do you have multiple instances of a will not be fighting for resources, and can share the same
single application to deal with different departments or pool more effectively.
divisions? If so, these should be consolidated into a single Even more important is determining whether the appli-
version. If this isnt possible, you should examine why this cation is suitable for a scale-out virtualized environment. It
is the case. Consolidating application instances can signifi- might be better served by running on specialized silicon
cantly reduce IT overhead costs and increase the usefulness maybe on an IBM Power CPU or on Nvidia GPUs. A low-
of the information contained in that application. It can also level workload could use a low-power Intel Atom processor
help you understand what the base resource load of the or ARM chip. The platformwhatever that may bemust
overall application is likely to be and how your organization work in conjunction with the rest of the virtualized envi-
may need to shift resources. ronment. You dont want to create siloed hardware islands,

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which present management nightmares and constrain fu- added (through Lenovo, now that IBM has offloaded its x86
ture flexibility. server business).
Rationalizing
Applications
Once you identify the necessary applications and what Converged infrastructure systems will provide some
they require as base resources, youll need to look at what degree of storage, but many will need additional storage or
extra functionality is going to be needed to fully support the storage aimed at specific needs. For example, certain big
Moving On to
Purchasing business. Whereas historically this may have been based on data projects are better served through the purchasing of a
buying extra IT hardware and software for support, we now dedicated appliancesomething along the lines of a Terra-
Persisting Needs have far more flexibility. data, IBM PureData or Oracle Big Data Appliance, the latter
of which adds not only storage but also high-speed analytic
intelligence to the platform.
MOVING ON TO PURCHASING Other storage will change due to the impact of flash-
There will be areas where a pure scale-out modelbased based systems, from vendors such as Pure Storage, Violin
on using low-cost componentsmakes sense. However, for Memory and SolidFire. The incumbents, including EMC,
many, the scale out is better served through the purchasing NetApp and HDS, are responding, and software-defined
of converged (pre-built) systems. Here, the likes of Cisco, storage will continue to gain attention.
Nutanix, Dell, IBM and HP provide systems that have a mix At the networking level, virtualization allows for the
of pre-engineered CPU, storage and network resources that bonding of physical links, which eliminates the physical
are fully engineered into a single system. This converged in- limitations on available bandwidth. However, managing
frastructure means that the interplay between the resource bonded physical network interface cards to provide high-
variables is optimized, and that provisioning of the system bandwidth logical links requires high degrees of network
can be carried out in hours rather than days or weeks. intelligence. Although software-defined networking (SDN)
Many of these converged systems allow for the inclusion is aimed at abstracting that need for intelligence away from
of different workload CPU systems through the addition of the network equipment to a software level running on vir-
blades or bricks into the system. These are based on GPUs tual, commoditized servers, it is far more likely that the
or low-powered CPUs. IBM, through its zEnterprise, of- future will remain hybrid. This would be include OpenFlow
fers a combined mainframe/Power capability; through its software working with intelligent network operating sys-
Power-based PureFlex systems, Intel-based systems can be tems such as Ciscos IOS and Junipers JUNOS to ensure

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that east-west data traffic (traversing between different Cloud Manager, BMCs Cloud Lifecycle Management or
parts of the virtual network) can be dealt with in an ideal Virtustreams Advisor/XStream portfolio among others.
Rationalizing
Applications
manner. Whatever tools are selected, you need to ensure that they
allow you to manage the virtual environment. Also, you
should be able to apply controls around your overall hybrid
Moving On to
Purchasing PERSISTING NEEDS IT platform, including public cloud functions.
You will still be required to monitor, manage and auto- What you are aiming for is the software-defined IT plat-
Persisting Needs mate the virtual environment. Cloud-based systems, such formthe software defined data center (SDDC).
as OpenStack, CloudStack and Eucalyptus, allow for a major So, the increasing use of virtualization does not lead to
functional step up from basic virtualization. Private clouds a Nirvana of commoditized scale out and low-cost equip-
contain the capability to dynamically apply and remove ment building blocks. Up-front architectural design is
resources from workloads as required. Workloads can far more important than it was when you only had to deal
also be moved around the virtual environment in a private with single workloads on physical servers. Optimizing the
cloud. Hybrid cloud, which combines internal and external platform means looking at a mix of hybrid systemsfrom
cloud platforms, allows for peaks in resource requirement CPUs through to storage and overall cloud-based platforms.
to be met by external pools, enabling the initial architecting Far more advanced tools are needed to apply the required
of the platform to be pitched at a high utilization levelthe intelligence to deal with mixed workload needs and highly
entire peak requirement can be paid for on an as-used dynamic resource pools.
basis. Virtualizations effect on purchasing is profoundit is
However, these options still require advanced systems not a case of just telling the purchasing department to or-
management. Some of this may come from existing sys- der more of the same. The modern IT platform remains
tems management tools, such as IBMs Tivoli portfolio, HP just as heterogeneous as it ever has been, if not more. Un-
Softwares systems management portfolio or Dell Quests derstanding this will mean that your IT budget will have a
tools. It is worth looking at what is now coming through as much better chance of being spent on what helps the busi-
more mature virtual-/cloud-based management toolsCAs ness, rather than what purports to help IT. n

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Too Good to Be True


CLIVE LONGBOTTOM is the co-founder and service director at
Quocirca and has been an ITC industry analyst for more than 15
Rationalizing
Applications
years. Trained as a chemical engineer, he worked on anti-cancer
drugs, car catalysts and fuel cells before moving in to IT. He has
worked on many office automation projects, as well as Control of
Moving On to
Purchasing Substances Hazardous to Health, document management and How Virtualization Changes Hardware Purchases
knowledge management projects. is a SearchServerVirtualization.com e-publication.

Persisting Needs Margie Semilof | Editorial Director

Phil Sweeney | Managing Editor

Patrick Hammond | Associate Features Editor

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Neva Maniscalco | Graphic Designer

Rebecca Kitchens | Publisher


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COVER PHOTOGRAPH: RAS-SLAVA/FOTOLIA

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