Virtualization to the Cloud: How SMBs Can Take the Trip

Contents
Abstract 1 Virtualization and Cloud Computing as SMB Strategies 2 A Common-sense, Hybrid Approach 2 The Need for a Versatile Platform 3 Conclusion 6

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Abstract
Cost reduction, performance, agility and other benefits have made virtualization a favored computing strategy inside SMB data centers. Continued pressure to rein in IT budgets while increasing access to high-performance applications has put cloud computing high on the SMB IT managers to-do list. While many IT departments imagined moving from one strategy to the next as requirements dictated, the reality is that most SMBs are adopting a hybrid approach: a reliance on virtual servers with opportunistic use of cloud computing for applications that need to be quickly deployed and easily accessible. Leveraging all the benefits of a hybrid strategy requires a software/hardware platform that supports both virtualization and cloud computing. Together, VMware and Dell are providing purpose-built solutions that afford SMBs not only the agility, performance and reliability required by end users, but also the cost-effectiveness and management efficiencies of both virtualization and cloud computing.

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Virtualization and Cloud Computing as SMB Strategies

The traditional servers inside SMB data centers are routinely making way for virtual machines, a strategy that trims budgets while increasing performance, reliability and agility. Server consolidation, just one aspect of virtualization, is saving SMBs space, allowing them to reduce utility expenses, and limiting management overhead. IT teams are taking advantage of streamlined disaster recovery and backup capabilities along with a host of other management facilities that ensure service levels. TechTargets recent Windows Purchasing Intention Survey (November 2011) found that 63% of small and 82% of medium-size businesses have plans to implement virtual servers, an indication that the strategy has indeed come of age. Virtualization has been especially beneficial for large, general-use applications like e-mail and database operations. As data scales up quickly and access needs increase, virtualization allows IT to deliver processing power without radically increasing server footprints and expenses. While scaling out and refining their virtual server environments, IT managers are also looking into cloud computing, another strategy that is quickly becoming mainstream. Cloud computing offers a means to quickly deploy new applications or services through existing virtual environments, which is a huge advantage for time-strapped IT teams. According to SmallBusinessComputing. com (Small Business Forecast for Cloud Computing, October 5, 2011), a growing number of SMBs are evaluating cloud computing as an efficient means of providing access to department-specific applications like online marketing, collaboration, customer management, business analytics, website design and hosting, and accounting/financials. However, the fact that forward-thinking IT managers are looking beyond their initial virtualization projects to potential adoption of cloud computing does not suggest an immediate, wholesale move from one strategy to the other. Rather, SMBs are recognizing that a hybrid approach using virtualization to control costs and increase performance, while implementing cloud computing for department-centric applications could allow them to realize the greatest benefits.

A Common-sense, Hybrid Approach

At first glance, public cloud computing seems to offer SMBs an incredible opportunity to radically decrease the size of their on-premises data centers. Cloud service providers are able to quickly deliver applications or services and meet performance and reliability requirements without adding to the data center infrastructure. On the other hand, data security remains a significant concern, as do data loss and vendor/contract management. Companies of all sizes are right to be concerned about placing their financial, human resources, product development and other corporate data in the cloud. After Amazon suffered an outage in the spring of 2011, it reported that some storage volumes would not be recoverable. Companies that are bound by Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and other federal and state data protection mandates simply cant risk exposure to data loss or security breaches. It is possible to limit security risk or at least increase peace of mind through careful vendor and contract management, but that takes time and real negotiation skill. Should an SMB be the smallest fish in the pond for their vendor, the ability to closely manage the relationship might not be possible. Pressured by revenue goals, service providers naturally tend to give their biggest

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>> VMware Journey to the Cloud VMwares Journey to the Cloud outlines the likely stages of deployment, emphasizing a consistent shift toward greater flexibility and efficiency An SMBs journey is specific to its business and requirements, though the most commonly anticipated destination is a hybrid mix of private and public cloud implementations Phase 1: IT Production Workloads are virtualized, and there is an increase in overall utilization of existing resources and performance Phase 2: Business Production Application accessibility and availability is improved IT virtualizes business-critical applications and uses private clouds for high availability and disaster recovery and performance optimization Phase 3: IT as a Service A corporate cloud infrastructure is in place, with IT focusing on innovation, revenue enhancement, the end-user experience and risk minimization )

contracts the most attention. Choosing a smaller vendor might increase the attention the SMB gets, but the risk of data loss or security breaches could be greater. Given the very real risks associated with public cloud services, its certainly difficult for SMBs to trust critical applications and database platforms like Oracle or SQL Server to anything other than an on-premises service. On the other hand, there are two places in which cloud service providers can add efficiencies to SMB computing delivery: Software as a Service (SaaS) and web hosting.

Software as a Service
Provided through an on-premises private cloud or public cloud provider, SaaS is an efficient way to deliver applications to specific groups of users. End users gain anytime, anywhere access to an application and data without having to install it on each of their computing devices. IT doesnt have to worry about multiple installations per user, data syncing problems and the multiplier impact on updating and upgrading tasks. SMBs are looking to SaaS for customer service, sales and marketing applications that are typically used by highly mobile end users. Salespeople, for example, can remain productive by accessing their sales contact management application and data from their laptop, notepad or smartphone.

Web hosting services

All companies have at least one web presence that has to be carefully managed and maintained. In many cases, IT finds itself in charge of multiple websites some that are specific to departments and others that support a project or program. Hosting service providers can be a good option for temporary sites that, for example, support a particular product launch or marketing effort. These sites are typically small but time-critical. They have to be launched quickly and deactivated on schedule. Adding on-premises infrastructure to support temporary web initiatives doesnt always make business sense. In that case, service providers can keep the investment in line with project goals. The same is true of test sites, those that are created to trial content management operations, specialty content delivery, online retail operations or other capabilities that are new to the SMB. As in the case of temporary sites, it might not make sense to invest in infrastructure for tests. Rather, concepts can be proven through a service provider and then moved on-premises when appropriate. Web hosting services are also attractive to companies that have small, very stable websites. Rather than require any IT oversight, marketing departments might work directly with a service provider that keeps the site up and running and secure. Changes can be made on a contracted schedule.

The Need for a Versatile Platform

Given the high probability of having a hybrid computing strategy that includes virtualization and opportunistic use of private and public clouds, SMBs need to invest in software and hardware platforms that support both virtualization and cloud computing. On-premises virtual infrastructures have to deliver high performance, reliability and agility. And since SMBs expect to grow,

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easy scalability is important and has to be cost-effective. IT managers at SMBs have to be able to make good, timely decisions about virtualization and cloud computing deployments without having to disrupt end users and corporate processing. Dell and VMware have partnered to offer a platform that delivers market-leading virtualization capabilities and the ability to leverage those investments through cloud computing.

VMware
VMware offers SMBs a single-vendor strategy for virtualization and cloud computing. vSphere 5 is a virtualization solution that focuses on application availability and business continuity. The vCloud product family provides secure cloud computing, enabling SMBs to deliver highperformance computing services to the most demanding end-user communities. During the past several years of steady virtualization implementations in data centers of all sizes, VMware vSphere has earned its place as the industry-leading virtualization platform. The product focus has always been on high rates of consolidation, ease of management and security. That focus continues with vSphere 5. VMware vSphere 5 thins the virtualization architecture through convergence with ESXi. Since ESXi runs independently of any operating system, its size can be reduced. And VMware has reduced its size to 100MB, lowering associated operational infrastructure. Meanwhile, server consolidation rates remain as high as 15:1 to keep growing SMB data centers as lean as possible. Of course, while SMBs struggle to rein in their data center footprints, they are also under pressure to increase capacity and performance. vSphere 5 allows virtual machines to scale up to 32 virtual CPUs and 1TB of RAM to support the very largest processing loads. Keeping a ceiling on administrative overhead is also critical for SMBs. vSphere 5 reduces hands-on IT management by eliminating third-party management agents; there are fewer required patches and fewer security vulnerabilities. When patches are required, the process is fully automated, as is update management. Business continuity is another huge benefit of virtualization. With vSphere 5, that benefit is enhanced with hardware-independent failover. SMBs are able to make the best, most costeffective hardware decisions while taking advantage of failover capabilities. Backup is agentless, which, again, delivers management capability without adding overhead. Centralized management that includes performance monitoring makes it easy for IT managers to keep their eye on operations across the virtual environment. Security gets a boost with ESXi Firewall, a stateless engine that restricts access via IP address or subnet. Thats extremely important for the increasing number of applications that require network access. Improved identity management adds to security and ensures reliability and availability the right users access the right applications on the right servers. As SMB virtual environments expand, so do storage requirements. Realizing the full benefits of virtualization requires storage virtualization. vSphere 5 allows SMBs to make the most efficient use of storage resources. Scalability and performance are enhanced through a transparent upgrade to the latest clustered file system version. Meanwhile, improved I/O control and thin provisioning improve performance.

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VMware vCloud
While wringing cost and performance advantages out of virtualization, SMBs can streamline application provisioning and access through cloud computing. VMware vCloud works with vSphere to add resource pooling and automation features, enabling SMBs to fully optimize their data centers for application and service delivery. Policy-driven self-management minimizes day-to-day IT oversight responsibilities. The system is set to follow security, business and governance policies. SMBs derive the biggest initial cloud computing advantage from streamlined provisioning. Endusers select the applications they need from catalogs rather than call IT for installation assistance. Of course, catalogs can be specific to end-user groups. IT retains control over application and service access and usage. Service-level agreements arent an essential requirement for private clouds, but they do help IT ensure performance levels. Chargeback provides a useful financial accounting of departmental computing costs. Both service-level agreements and chargeback help IT plan for future budgets and weigh the advantage of available computing strategies.

Dell Servers with Intel Xeon processors

The performance and reliability of any virtual or cloud infrastructure depends largely on the hardware that supports the platform. Dell works closely with both Intel and VMware to engineer server and storage technology for evolving SMB data centers. Dell PowerEdge T610 servers are built with virtualization and cloud computing in mind. The focus is on performance and reliability. The servers offer tremendous extensibility up to 18 DIMM slots and 288 GNB of main memory so that SMBs can increase the number of virtual machines as needed. Using Intel Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions (AES-NI), CPU performance for encryption is increased 53% for secure Internet transactions, without using additional appliances to boost performance. Hot-swappable, redundant components keep servers fully reliable. Should a fan or power supply fail, a backup component automatically takes over. Maintenance on poorly performing or failed components can be performed while servers are running to reduce end-user downtime. The inclusion of Intel Xeon 5600 series processors adds further performance and energy-saving advantages: Intel Turbo Boost Technology Server performance is automatically maximized by increasing core frequencies, enabling faster speeds for either specific threads or very heavy workloads. Intel Intelligent Power Technology Both CPU and memory are shifted to the lowest power state that delivers the performance required. That saves on energy used to run the server and reduces heat output, which in turn reduces cooling requirements. Automated energy efficiency Idling cores (those that are not needed to support current workloads) are powered down to near zero consumption independently of working cores to reduce overall power consumption. Automated low-power states Processor, memory and I/O controllers are automatically reduced to the power state that supports the performance needed by the current workload.

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Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN solution

Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN solutions are also tuned for virtual and cloud computing environments. The arrays go from the box to an operating SAN in just minutes. Ease of use and other features enable EqualLogic iSCSI arrays to lower storage total cost of ownership when compared with traditional DAS or Fibre Channel SAN solutions. A wizard-based GUI integrates EqualLogic iSCSI arrays into the Ethernet backbone of the SMBs virtual infrastructure. Technicians apply common IP skills and knowledge to set configuration options. Options can be changed when necessary to enable easy scale-out. Since scaling out is as easy as stacking devices and changing options, SMBs can invest in only the storage thats needed to support current requirements. Like PowerEdge servers, EqualLogic iSCSI SAN solutions are built with redundant, hot-swappable components to increase availability and reliability. The units are also fault-tolerant. The built-in redundant controller and enterprise-class RAID protection provide 99.999% availability.

Conclusion
The cost and performance benefits of virtualization have put SMBs on a steady move toward fully virtualized data centers. Cloud computing is the next strategy on the horizon, offering SMBs further opportunities to reduce IT overhead and streamline deployment. However, risks associated with public clouds will likely turn most SMBs toward hybrid environments that add some private and public cloud use to virtual operations. Given the close technological relationship of virtual and cloud computing, it makes sense for SMBs to choose platforms and hardware infrastructures that allow easy movement from one strategy to the next. Dell and VMware have become leaders in the development of technology that optimizes SMB data centers. Dell PowerEdge servers with Intel Xeon 5600 series processors and Dell EqualLogic iSCSI SAN solutions create a purpose-built infrastructure that reduces power consumption and increases performance. VMware vSphere v5 and vCloud give SMBs intuitive platforms that create easy-to-manage, cost-effective virtual and cloud environments.

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