Posts tagged with Oracle
Yin and Yang of Virtualization Maturity
Posted by Margaret Lewis in 11:38 AM
Loading ...Yin and Yang of Virtualization Maturity
The notion of consolidation is almost synonymous with virtualization. In the x86 world, we have cut our teeth on virtualization that consolidates workloads of underutilized servers. When x86 virtualization was first taking root, led by pioneers such as VMware and Parallels in 1998/1999 and even Connectix in some respect the late 1980s, we started to see a common phenomena of new markets – lots of innovation and the emergence of startup companies and new technology projects in larger companies. I like to think of this as the Ying phase.
We are now in a more mature phase of virtualization – the Yang phase – with the opposite phenomena of the consolidation of virtualization companies, projects, and technology. Early on Microsoft bought Connectix with Hyper-V being the fruit of this union. Parallels bought Virtuozzo and extended itself to the world of Windows and Linux. And more recently we witnessed Oracle’s pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems and now Virtual Iron.
Oracle has already consolidated some powerful business processing applications under its name and will now add some very critical virtualization technology. Oracle understands the importance of virtualization as an underlying infrastructure technology for the x86 computing world. Its grid technology, introduced in 2003, leveraged innovations like 64-bit and multi-core that AMD was driving into x86 processor architecture and served as a forerunner in scale-out cluster environments that now are taking on the name of cloud computing.
With its purchase of Virtual Iron, Oracle adds another product that is based on the Xen open-source hypervisor technology. While a smaller player in the virtualization market, Virtual Iron has always had a good reputation for software that delivers dynamic resource management and automation. This includes providing some necessary features for making virtualization a mainstream technology, such as capacity management, power management, and the ability to integrate with other software through an open, comprehensive, and scriptable API. Coupled with Oracle’s and Sun’s current Xen-based virtualization projects, this provides a very nice framework for some serious virtualization technology. Another interesting aspect of Virtual Iron, it brings a software that has been more geared to the mid-market in the more enterprise portfolio of Oracle and Sun, a point made by well respected industry analyst, Gordon Haff, in a recent article about the acquisition.
So , we are now living through the consolidation of the vendors who are developing consolidation software. This brings some very interesting symmetry to the market.
As always we want to promote open discussion about virtualization trends in the community, so please let me know your thoughts – pro and con – on the consolidation of virtualization vendors.
Margaret Lewis, director, AMD commercial software and solutions
Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
@margaretjlewis
User Enablement Instead of Vendor Lock-Out
Posted by Margaret Lewis in 11:43 AM
It’s easy to see that virtualization it is a technology that has real benefits for companies both big and small. Not to mention, it is underlying technology for another key computing paradigm that is gearing up – cloud computing.
One thing we at AMD understand is that virtualization for x86 is a fast moving train. Six years ago when we introduced AMD Opteron™ x86 processor technology, virtualization was in its infancy. Today it is a technology that is racing to move beyond early adopters and moving quickly into the mainstream – a trend backed by much industry research.
Six years ago there were no hardware hooks in x86 processors to assist virtualization software. Today – through the power of cooperation – virtualization represents a very delicate dance between hardware and software. It requires joint development efforts between processor vendors and hypervisor providers.
AMD has software engineers working hand-in-hand with major virtualization software partners and is an active contributor to Xen and KVM open source virtualization projects. The end result – we are moving toward near native application performance in virtualized environments, running servers with high utilization rates, and helping to reduce the energy footprint of data centers.
So what’s next? We need to drive toward the next level of cooperation, which is heterogeneous virtualization. Customers are asking us to drive innovation in the direction of interoperability. We need live migration between different processors brands – not just between generations of the same processor. We need enablement – not lock-out and I think Virtualization Ecosystem Month was a great way to get conversations going about how to address this customer need. While March is over, I encourage all of our partners and customers to keep the virtualization ecosystem spirit alive and work together to continue to further this important and game-changing technology.
Margaret Lewis, director, AMD commercial software and solutions
Margaret Lewis (@margaretjlewis) is a Product Marketing Director at AMD. Her postings are her own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Virtualization Itself Is Not the End-Game – Making Enterprise Software Easier to Deploy, Manage, and Support Is
Posted by Julie Lass in 12:47 PM
As development partners, AMD and Oracle collaborate to take full advantage of industry-leading virtualization technologies which help customers reduce complexity, lower costs, and provide greater levels of flexibility. As part of Virtualization Ecosystem Month, I’m posting on AMD’s blog today to provide real-world examples of how Oracle VM Templates make enterprise software easier to deploy, manage, and support. Likewise, Margaret Lewis of AMD can be found on Oracle’s blog about industry virtualization drivers beyond consolidation.
It is all too easy to get caught up in virtualization itself as the ultimate goal when, in reality, the focus should be on the larger objectives you are trying to accomplish: virtualization is a means to an end, not a solution in- and of-itself. So what should be the goal then? You should be creating a data center where applications are radically simpler to deploy, manage, and support; where as much of the complexity is handled for you. And you should be able to do this without having to compromise on the level of sophistication or power of that solution: you should not have to accept a “dumbed-down” solution just to make deployment easy.
Over the last couple of years, the concept of the “virtual appliance” has been floating around with the idea that you just download software, packaged as a VM, start it up and use it without having to worry about the complexities of making sure all the dependencies are in place and that parameters are all configured, etc. Instead of spending weeks trying to figure out how to install and configure powerful software, you could just start using it. Until recently, the idea has been popular but actual use – at least in the Enterprise – has been fairly limited. Why? Because a complete solution requires virtualization software, operating systems, and applications that are all enterprise class and that can be packaged and distributed as a single, ready-to-go solution. In the absence of comprehensive standards, very few companies or communities have all the necessary components that they can legally distribute, so what has been created to date has mostly been made up of “demo” appliances that have not been suitable for enterprise use, certainly not in production. But that is finally changing.
Oracle is leveraging virtualization as part of a broader strategy to make your entire data center better. Oracle distributes an enterprise-class operating system with Oracle Enterprise Linux along with the broadest portfolio of enterprise software available, all of which is officially certified and supported on Oracle VM server virtualization and management software. This means all of it can be distributed to users packaged as pre-configured virtual machines. We call these Oracle VM Templates and they are packaged and licensed for use in the production enterprise today, not just proof-of-concept VMs comprised of limited functionality components. How would you like to be up and running with a Siebel CRM instance or an Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) in about an hour after you download the Template? And how would you feel knowing you were deploying software installed and configured by the experts at Oracle so you know it is complete and reliable (but that you can still fully customize it and save it as an updated Template)? And finally, how would you feel knowing it is all officially supported by a single call to the largest enterprise software company in the world and not simply by a collection of miscellaneous vendors and user forums? A better way to get going faster, easier, and with low risk.
But Oracle VM Templates are not just for Oracle to use. It is technology for users and for the software development community as well. Oracle VM and Oracle Enterprise Linux from Oracle are not only open source they are also free and free for redistribution without a contract from Oracle. That means you can build your own Oracle VM Templates, including Oracle Enterprise Linux configured as you like, with your own software and distribute the whole solution at will. No longer are users stuck trying to find an OS that is Enterprise class AND has a free license AND is re-distributable for free AND that has 24×7 global support. Suddenly, enterprise class “appliances”‘ seem real and practical for everyone.
This is what virtualization is about: making your applications easier to deploy, manage, and support up and down the stack. For more on Oracle VM and Templates, see the website at oracle.com/virtualization.
Adam Hawley is Director of Product Management at Oracle and has contributed this guest blog. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
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