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Big box of tricks
Computacenter’s Matthew Yeager explains the cost and agility benefits of deploying optimised virtual datacenter ‘containers’
Servers and storage systems were the first to catch the virtualisation bug. Now, security devices, networking components and applications are all following suit.
As virtualisation becomes a de facto standard across the datacenter, organisations need a simple and economical way to provision, maintain and manage these different but inter-linked virtualised components.
Businesses now have a cost-effective, predictable and repeatable way to achieve this - virtual datacenters (VDCs), which represent an alternative to the traditional IT approach of introducing virtualisation into each area in a siloed fashion.
Building blocks
A VDC is a pre-packaged solution that combines all the technology components needed to create an optimised infrastructure that can support evolving business needs.
Standard VDC components include virtualised processing power, connectivity, grid storage as well as management and datacenter automation software. Each element has been designed and optimised to work as an end-to-end solution, which is supported by vendors as a single entity rather than multiple products.
VDC solutions are highly scalable and space-efficient: an average VDC container can support between 500 and 6,000 virtual machines (VMs) from a footprint of just six standard datacenter racks. In a traditional datacenter environment, the equipment needed to support this many VMs, would require at least three rows of racks. It is therefore easy to see how VDCs can introduce datacenter footprint efficiencies without compromising economies of scale.
Due to their ‘off-the-shelf’ nature, each VDC is based on pre-defined technology stacks. There are currently five main vendor VDC variants:
- Virtual Computing Environment (VCE): based on technology from VMware, Cisco, and EMC
- NetApp SMT (Secure Multi-Tenancy]) based on technology from VMware, Cisco and NetApp
- IBM Dynamic Infrastructure based on IBM datacenter components
- HP Converged Infrastructure: HP based on HP datacenter components
- HDS Unified Compute Platform (UCP): based on technology from HDS, Microsoft and network components that will be announced later in 2010
Although the technologies used to create a VDC are by no means new, the ‘container’ approach is an evolved solution, which means proof of concept is highly recommended for customers.
Validate the benefits
In April, Computacenter became the first IT services company in EMEA to deploy a VCE vBlock 2 and establish a testing facility for the VCE vBlock 2 at its Solutions Centre.
Over the coming months, we will be expanding the centre’s testing environments to include the other vendor variants. This will provide organisations with an end-to-end solution for evaluating the benefits of a VDC approach.
As well as helping you to assess VDC solutions, Computacenter can also provide deployment, migration and management support to ensure you maximise your return on investment.
We can also help you augment off-the-shelf VDC technology stacks to create a personalised VDC container that leverages existing IT assets. As an accredited partner, Computacenter can then certify this architecture to ensure ongoing vendor support and maximise efficiency and financial savings.
Business agility boost
Many organisations will have already unlocked significant cost savings through ad hoc virtualisation projects; with a pre-configured optimised environment that is ready for immediate deployment, the cost benefits of VDC are in a different league.
By freeing up datacenter space and resources as well as minimising energy consumption, implementing a VDC can result in cost savings of up to or exceeding 50 per cent. Computacenter is so confident of the ROI and total cost of ownership associated with VDC that we are prepared to under-write financial savings for qualifying customers following an infrastructure analysis and assessment.
In addition to the financial benefits, VDC solutions also enable organisations to take a giant leap in terms of business agility. Highly scalable and flexible, VDC solutions mobilise IT workloads into controlled and elastic containers that can be migrated from internal datacenters to shared hosting facilities or private/public cloud environments.
As data volumes continue to expand through the use of collaborative and media-rich applications, this flexibility and scalability will be essential if IT departments are to cope with the growing demand on their resources.
The VDC model converges, controls and contains datacenter systems - and costs - so you can focus more resources on making your business sharper.
* Matthew Yeager is Computacenter’s Practice Leader for Data Storage and Protection
Read more about Computacenter’s VCE vBlock 2 testing facility at its Solutions Centre
Read our new technology website Visiontech, providing a clear insight into the best of breed technologies to support your business issues.
Highlights:
Evaluating the ROI from better database performance
Putting VCE vBlock 2 to the test