Virtualization is increasingly popular, particularly in the economic depression of today eagerly sought after by.
Essentially break the rules of the game from the virtualization technology, completely subvert the "hardware and operating system and application software to correspond to" the tradition. In this regard, the software giant Microsoft, the new changes to meet market demand, quick to take the initiative in this area, thus, started in the field of virtualization to a new campaign.
In the IT industry, Microsoft's destructive for all to see: "Microsoft says to do the operating system, IBM fell; Microsoft says to do the browser, Netscape fell; Microsoft development tools that do, Borland fell ... ..." However, the speed of the scraping, Microsoft is always half a beat slower market pace: in the search field, Microsoft watched Google and succeed, until June this year, it launched a known good box office "must be"; in mobile communications, Microsoft In the mobile phone operating system is also somewhat slow in responding, Windows Phone edge is only recently burst on the scene ... ...
The face of approaching the virtualization era, and this time, Microsoft is once again copy it striking, victory of the precedent it?
Chapter virtual era
In times of economic downturn, reducing costs to become a top priority for many enterprises. Virtualization, in this context quickly jump up red.
Two years ago, the concept of cloud computing has been the industry Fengruo score, so far, that cloud in the sky is still elusive. Today, virtualization is not the will vigorously students, nothing exciting to too?
Cloud computing and virtualization are invisible things, but also between the two there is a very big difference. Compared with the former, virtualization has can provide a real profit. In 2003, to 635 million U.S. dollars by EMC acquired VMware Inc., the global revenues are based on an average 60% -70% growth in 2008 revenue of nearly 1.9 billion. This strong growth momentum in the global software company is very rare.
See bright prospects for virtualization market, Microsoft's innovation and technology with its unique advantages in June 26, 2008 into the virtualization market, announced the same day, Microsoft released an advanced Hyper-V server virtualization technology products.
Microsoft's entry, shook the industry, but also to many enterprises began to focus on virtualization technology. Since then, the end of the anonymity of virtualization days, as IT industry's most fiery "old faces."
New trees flower
Virtualization is not new technology. As of today, it has been 50 years old. It can be popular today, is a typical New flower trees.
Virtualization germination began in the 60's U.S. computer academia. In the June 1959 International Conference on Information Processing Conference, British Computer Technology researcher Christopher Strachey (which was the death in 1975) an article entitled "Large high-speed computer time sharing" of the academic report, was considered On the first virtualization technology exposition.
20 years later, IBM and several other companies in the developed virtualization technology, and the subject of research, like Christopher, research and development company focuses on its performance. In 1965, IBM created a computer program in a number of virtual images, you can make multiple users to access the same host within the same memory and resources. As the definition of the virtual memory management mechanism, the application can run in virtual memory, from the client perspective, these virtual memory as an individual "micro" program to provide for multiple independent computing environments, but these micro-computer in reality does not exist.
Since then, competing in the industry propaganda, the virtualization technology by a number of technology-oriented companies alike. Although there were only a small number of large mainframe applications of the technology, but still get good results. IBM also is firmly established as the earliest promoters of virtualization technology.
In 1999, IBM has adopted a new technical solution, to the effect that a single server is equivalent to 12 servers, efficiency increased dramatically. Although the price of your side, but very popular by many government agencies and large enterprises to adopt.
At the same time, other hardware vendors are pitching. Including HP, Sun, Dell, big companies into the virtualization market, but, due to limited mainframes, minicomputers and servers range of users and the vendors are not compatible between products and technologies, virtualization technology, audience surface is still limited.
Virtualization kept in purdah from the knowledge that no one sought after by the industry, to a certain extent, also due to living in the upstream industry chain chip makers Intel, AMD and others. Especially in the promotion of the two chip giants, x86 processor technology and performance have been significantly enhance the rapid development and how to effectively use the remaining computing power been put on the agenda, x86 architecture virtualization technology to get more attention This makes its application was further expanded.
Levels of manufacturers from the server first, to the processor level, vendor support, to carry VirtualServer2005 2006 Microsoft X86 architecture in the operating system level to join, and many third-party software vendors (ISV) of the emergence of multi-boosting virtualization in the next realized from technology to products, to the platform of development. This also indicates that the field of virtualization is a complete ecosystem tends to be a brighter future shape.
To change the rules of the game virtualization technology
Virtualization essentially changed the rules of the game. Now, computing ubiquitous, more powerful and more portable, it continues to help businesses easily deal with new opportunities and challenges, thus significantly improving the operational capacity. Meanwhile, the accompanying management costs and complexity never before upgrading. The enterprise IT sector, the result is the possibility of a series of conflicting requirements: agility, ease of use of the safety and regulatory compliance, performance of the cost of innovation, reliability and continuity and so on. In many ways, IT professionals currently the biggest challenge facing internal pressure to ease, and try to create solutions provide flexibility and control of information Jichujiagou.
Dynamic IT to achieve the goal, companies need a virtualization strategy to mobilize and manage resources in the infrastructure, whether physical or virtual, to meet the rapidly changing business needs. The right of virtualization strategy should contain a valid authorization framework - can 使 IT departments to provide faster and more reliable service, timely release of resources important to the business objectives Yi should Genggao, reduce 成本, and through business agility Huodeqiangtai competitive advantage.
Today, the complex data in order to increase in geometric progression to the business left a lot of difficulty coping with the computational tasks. Management of these accumulated data not only costly and difficult to achieve the desired results. Enterprise Virtualization generally keen to have two purposes, one is to reduce the number of servers, the second is to promote the efficient use of existing servers and reduce energy consumption.
How all this?
Virtualization technology not only solve data management problems, but also flexible and update the software, data and hardware platforms. With virtualization technology, a server can be "divided" into several "virtual" machines, each able to independently run their own operating system, thus avoiding the "one server, an application" of the island model. Results show that the island mode, utilization of computer resources, less than 25%.
And SMEs than for large enterprise virtualization technology more attractive. In general, large companies have built their own data centers, it is often by the dozens or even hundreds of rack-mounted servers, which flashes a light, fan humming, high-speed flow of air must be guaranteed. However, behind the scenes in this big, a lot of server CPU is idle. Sun, a large number of relevant research and concluded: Only 15% of the computing resources are fully utilized. And large enterprises, after the introduction of virtualization technology, computing power imbalance problem will be solved.
Over the past three years, Austin City in the United States service provider of online services arrangements HotSchedules annual sales growth rate of more than 100%. Prosperity of the business they decided to spend 60 thousand U.S. dollars to buy server hardware. They also decided to implement virtualization. Since then, the company will integrate 42 physical servers for the District 4 station, CEO, said after the use of virtualization technology, IT systems computing power increased 10 times, without increasing monthly expenses will be able to carry large flows. In the United Kingdom, a company used virtualization technology, within two years of computer maintenance cost savings of £ 50,000.
Gartner in its report in early 2009 forecasts more than 60% of the servers in the next five years to achieve virtualization, the server and desktop virtualization market sales will grow 43% this year, production value of 2.7 billion U.S. dollars.
In today's virtualization market is far from saturated. According to IDC estimates that by 2010, the world will be only 17% of the server virtualization market. Obviously, this is worth fighting for a piece of sweet cake.
Chapter mind Microsoft Virtualization
It saw the virtualization market prospects and changes in customer demand, Microsoft was not lying on the past laurels, they chose to take the initiative. Microsoft later in the face of action, the original virtualization vendors did not treat lightly.
September 2007, Microsoft released virtualization solution, formal hair force the virtual world.
Microsoft Global Senior Vice President, Greater Simon Leung, Chairman and CEO told the "IT Times", virtualization technology will have far-reaching impact enterprise, from data center to the desktop, virtualization technology will become the enterprise-class infrastructure, part of strategy . As a traditional software giant, Microsoft certainly can not miss on any form of infrastructure competition.
"The reason why Microsoft has set the company all the resources together, from product development and licensing strategy, to take the initiative and strategic interoperability partnership, dedicated to helping users achieve virtualization," said Simon Leung, "The reason is that IT is a Microsoft virtualization has been advocated 'Dynamic IT' vision of the start, any computer, anytime, anywhere, on-demand access to resources. "
Today, VMware in the server virtualization market is still walking in the front, but it has not yet been a relatively strong voice. Server virtualization is not simply an independent market, and it is closely linked to cloud computing. If there is no occupation of high cloud computing, even if possession of more market share, can not say that the occupation of the software industry chain high.
Microsoft senior vice president of global, Zhang Yaqin, president of Microsoft China R & D Group, told "IT Times," "Cloud computing is a key technology of virtualization. With virtualization, cloud computing can only become possible." He believes that virtualization is one level below the cloud. "Virtualization is the management server for a start of a tool, then applied to the desktop, cloud computing need to use virtualization management approach that we can manage so many data centers, servers and multiple terminals." He said.
"Microsoft believes that the economic downturn should maximize the use of information technology to improve efficiency, rather than blindly invest in information technology across the board." Said Simon Leung. In his view, if only the technology as a virtual enterprise "tighten their belts" of the tool, it is "overkill", the greatest value of virtualization is to help enterprises to maximize the use of IT investments, while the IT infrastructure has lowest cost, but also to reduce energy consumption.
Cloud computing is one of Microsoft's strategy of pushing. Simon Leung told "IT Times", cloud computing and virtualization are "centralized computing, on-demand applications," the fulcrum and Technology in a wave. In this regard, Microsoft has long been the deployment of resources and has established a number of advantages. Today, virtualization has become Microsoft's development strategy an important part.
Microsoft's Greater China business group general manager of server products to the Articles square Rick also confirmed this: "In the eyes of Microsoft, virtualization is not a simple technology that can enable enterprises to better manage physical and virtual IT infrastructure, IT spending can also change the entire structure. virtualization technology has become an important IT technology in the basic aspects of cloud computing to businesses and individuals more flexible access to IT resources, virtualization, cloud computing into the enterprise easier. "
"Virtualization technology has become an important IT technology in the basic aspects of management cost savings can quickly deploy enterprise applications need, when the situation changes, they can be easily transferred to the new application or framework, The data recovery will be easier. "Fang said Rick.
After several years of gaining, Microsoft cloud computing platform in the effort to create the same time, has begun to take "full flowering" virtualization product line.
Microsoft's strategic intent is clear: the area of its virtual hard to value the remaining point is not the market, VMware is the virtualization market to reshuffle the cards, then advantage of the opportunity to enhance the expansion of the field in the cloud. They do not want to play a minor in this area, but to fully embrace the market.
The software giant's virtualization path
Microsoft believed that to allow customers to have confidence in their technology adoption, the best way is to first use of virtualization technology within the company, as materials for their own, thereby nurturing the market.
Station to the front of the stage is the Microsoft China R & D Group, Server and Tools Division. As the core of Microsoft China R & D Group, one of the sectors, the business unit with headquarters and R & D institutions around the world work closely with, Microsoft is committed to providing security and access, management and services, interconnected systems, data platform, Windows Server and Solutions , business services and development tools in the network core product and technology development and incubation, however, the cost of server management and application of number and the number of linearly increasing relationship between the leading IT management and cost pressures.
How to better manage data centers, and promote data sets, IT assets and reduce management costs? How to use limited resources to better the business results on investment and improve operational efficiency and availability? Zhexiehangye of Wen Ti not only afflict 着 IT outside of the circle of Qi Ye , has become an urgent need for Microsoft engineers to solve their own problems.
Now, using virtualization technology, Microsoft simply by upgrading the current server and update the part of the server hardware, you can save at least 1 / 3 the cost. , Said Simon Leung, 2007, Microsoft's internal IT department to 25% of the server moved to a virtual environment, the final cost reached 10 million U.S. dollars.
Ya-Qin Zhang told "IT Times", virtualization itself will reduce costs, the greater the advantage of the environment also make all kinds of alienation easier. "Microsoft's virtualization feature provides one cross-operating system services; second is to help businesses manage resources well. Now, many companies 80% -90% of the server resources are not being well used." Zhang said, " Using virtualization technology, companies can find out where in use, where idle. and after with virtualization, IT managers can deploy to multiple operating systems on reasonable use. "
It is understood that each of Microsoft's data center 1 / 3 of the cost spent on electricity bills. Microsoft China R & D Group, Shanghai Centre, Shanghai Centre, before the server starts, Minhang District on the power, do this, Microsoft specifically requested to pull the article, Minhang District, green, and application virtualization, light electricity savings equivalent to Shanghai 3000 residents a year's electricity consumption. Currently, Microsoft has nearly 2,000 engineers worldwide dedicated to do cloud computing and virtualization technology research and development.
China Petroleum (market share it) after the use of virtualization technology made significant changes Microsoft has the best case to attract customers. Its use of Microsoft technology to optimize IT architecture virtualization before, only to have a business system server 12 sets the total power consumption up to 18000W. After the implementation of optimization, only 3 servers can assume the existing functions and services, the number of servers and reduced power consumption by 75%.
Jin Jiang International Hotel Management Co., Ltd. is the largest professional hotel management company, the company has a complex internal IT process management system. According to Jin Xiang Li, the vice director of information systems introduced through the use of Microsoft's virtualization technology, the company has significantly improved earnings.
Before the adoption of virtualization technology, Jin Jiang International Hotel Management Co., Ltd. constantly buying expensive servers, but also recruit a large number of personnel responsible for maintenance, cost a lot of pressure. Provided by Microsoft's desktop lifecycle management, application virtualization and server virtualization solution, it successfully constructed a flexible, efficient and stable IT environment. Server virtualization on the current use of the system provides online training and disaster recovery environment and provide the conditions for rapid deployment of the server, but also saves energy; application virtualization to improve the performance of a desktop device to achieve a different version of the application software in a system platform compatibility issues, is to improve software efficiency, reduce software license procurement and effective way.
Now, in the Jin Jiang International Hotel Management Co., the outside of the user's computer, users simply click on the appropriate procedures to quickly obtain the virtualization application, without going through the cumbersome process of software deployment, but no need to worry about software compatibility and safety problem.
In addition to a substantial increase in efficiency, the company's virtualization technology to not only direct savings of more than 10 million of hardware overhead, and through these technologies to provide automated management tools to significantly reduce management and maintenance of staff input. The Jin Jiang International Hotel Management Co., Ltd. System Reconstruction and upgrading projects, had more than 100 clients in the deployment will cost 2-3 persons / week, after the adoption of virtualization technology, only 5 hours can be completed successfully.
Currently, Microsoft provides virtualization solutions are attracting attention to more customers. Among them, the Shanghai Securities, China Petroleum, China 10 000 nets have been added to its virtualization camp. All this no doubt has put pressure on competitors.
Chapter who will rule the roost in the virtual world
Now, make it clear what Microsoft is doing is not easy, and perhaps can only be summed up as: information technology (IT). In the IT field, one to Microsoft, competitors often feel a huge mass destruction (of course, except for Google). Microsoft says the operating system to do, IBM fell; Microsoft said to do browser Netscape fell; Microsoft development tools do, Borland fell ... ... "sleeping beast has been sober." IDC research director StephenElliot this Microsoft described the involvement of the virtual world. This time, Microsoft can win?
Lung power giant
In the field of virtualization, Microsoft has already been action. From cooperation with others, to the introduction of molded products, very smooth pace.
Microsoft, the industry has a good user base, which makes both cases to promote industrial applications, or cross-platform compatibility has greater advantages. The second quarter of 2008, IDC statistics report shows that Microsoft's WindowsServer in the server operating system market share has reached 34.2%, to account for only 12% share of Linux is far behind them. This means that at least 34.2% of the server operating system market is Microsoft's virtualization potential advantage site. The biggest difference between Microsoft and VMware is its Windows-based virtualization system development, which is independent of any operating system other than the technologies.
Microsoft's formal entry into the field before the virtualization market share basically VMware firms. According to IDC, statistics, VMware in virtualization market share of about 85% to 90%.
In 2008, Microsoft launched the professional virtualization tools Hyper-V, providing desktop virtualization, server virtualization, application virtualization, the virtualization layer to display complete product lines, its comprehensive virtualization strategy for this attack surface.
Simon Leung on this quite confident, "to Hyper-V virtualization technology as a platform ecosystem in the virtualization market, Microsoft's biggest advantage." Industry generally believe that the family of Microsoft virtualization, Hyper-V technology breakthrough can be so Microsoft has plenty of lung power.
According to Ya-Qin Zhang, at present, Microsoft China R & D Group, Shanghai team to do virtualization in the development, but also make the world-class product Hyper-V. In the virtualization market, Microsoft is in a relatively favorable position, because many companies are using Microsoft-based operating system servers.
Microsoft has its unique advantages - virtualization products take up very little disk space! In fact, Hyper-V is only 300 K of the "thin" applet, and VMware's ESXServer a capacity of 2GB large, taking up disk ESXi is also the smallest space 32MB.
In function, Microsoft's Hyper-V product is mainly used to connect between the hardware and virtual machine, "a thin middle layer", without going through the multi-layer conversion. Minimal because of the source code, code execution occurs when the probability of error is greatly reduced, and the Hyper-V does not contain any third-party drivers, streamlining able to take full advantage of the hardware resources to virtual machine system performance close to the operating system performance .
Not only that, Hyper-VR2 adds real-time migration features, which makes the value of VMware's flagship before the shrinking rapidly, and, Hyper-VR2 in the network performance and virtual machine density has improved in that at least for Microsoft virtualization products stand the same height with VMware.
Giant, giant, after all, have the backing of strong technical strength, Microsoft seems to have no need for the "newcomers" as troubles. Details worth pondering is that when Microsoft released in 2008, their latest virtualization products, VMware's share price immediately fell by 15%.
According to CNN reports, Microsoft announced Hyper-V market share and considerable increase compared to last year, Hyper-V users have over the business of all sizes.
Rewrite the competitive landscape
Now, you will have a hard to describe what the next competition. One is to act as the virtualization market has been the mastermind of software vendors on certain days of VMware, which has 19 billion dollars in annual revenue; the other, is coming soon just to kill the software giant Microsoft, the annual income of up to 600 billion dollars.
In the field of virtualization, VMware is not afraid of color on the face of Microsoft; Microsoft also noted that the only leader, but it does not seem to like to look at them as the main rival (last year, Microsoft said in a report in the server and tools business, Citrix is the main competitor, its virtualization products on the Microsoft threat. The report is Microsoft to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings). It seems Microsoft, VMware and Microsoft do not have the strength to compete, VMware does virtualization technologies and products in the lead, but this may be only temporary.
Held last month, Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC), there participants said that Microsoft's Hyper-VR2 than in the past, there has been a breakthrough leap. Microsoft Partner BrightPlanIT CEO Alan said: "ultimately they will be able to go hand in hand with VMware." Partners that have VMware, Microsoft a real chance to beat VMware in the SME market which people often complain about VMware products are too expensive. Microsoft's supporters do not think Microsoft can be successful in the SME customers there. In their view, Hyper-VR2 support the core features of 256 very attractive to corporate users.
In the current global economic situation was not stable, IT spending and resources, more intense than the original case Xia, many companies hope that through server virtualization and better utilization of server resources Lai Gao Xiao reduce IT deployment and Guanli basic facilities, cost is the Linux and Windows in the server virtualization platform to achieve integration, to reduce the complexity of their infrastructure and reduce costs as much as possible.
Based on this, July 20, 2009, Microsoft announced the release for the Linux kernel community has 20,000 lines of device driver code. These include three Linux device driver code for Linux community and customers, to support any version of Linux operating system or Microsoft Hyper-VServer2008 on WindowsServer2008R2Hyper-V virtualization, and significantly improve performance. The move to meet customer demand for heterogeneous, for promoting the development of the industry, or on Microsoft in the virtualization field has the further development of breakthrough.
There is no doubt that with the addition of Microsoft's virtualization market competition will be rewritten.
Prospects
However, this process still has a long way to go.
Because no technology is a potential defect or trap. The management, security, ROI and energy issues are likely to lead to virtualization deployment error. Moreover, the biggest problem is that corporate executives. To implement a project, sometimes the key is people, not technology.
"When you have to deal with virtualization projects, the most difficult business leadership." Industry experts believe that "business is often a group of lay managers to hold onto the server, they do not want to give up has got used to the physical server, Even if they get up from the benefits of virtualization also remains unchanged. "
This is not to say sensational. Dell Greater China IT Solutions Consulting Services Manager, Ding Tian said to correspondents, Dell to help customers implement virtualization in the process, we found lot of problems. SMEs in the implementation of virtualization project, is sensitive to price. If virtualization solution the high cost of the product itself, the customer will be discouraged.
Intel China's trade cooperation and solutions division, pre-and co-partners to support the Department Manager of China World Liang Yan believes that many customers are interested in on the virtualization technology, but on how to achieve not particularly understand, let customers accept requires a long process of understanding. Some enterprises in the implementation, they all want a simple-to-use virtualization product, after installation use and maintenance are easier, but hard to solve this problem. Therefore, customers choose the time virtualization technology, also need to select the technical support behind the product. Need to develop good long-term plan in advance, planned how to deploy, how to use after deployment. Otherwise, even if the deployment of virtualization technologies can not get good returns.
Although facing many problems, but not to say that virtualization will not stop there. Tian Ding of the prospects for virtualization technology is very promising: "Virtualization will be the development of an industry trend, regardless of enterprises are willing to implement virtualization, including hardware manufacturers, software vendors, hardware and software in the future is certainly in line with this development tendency to evolution. another three to five years, the industry environment may have become a virtual environment. "
In this regard, Liang Yan also hold similar views. "Over the last two years, virtualization technology to promote the commercialization of fast, especially with Microsoft's all-round action in the field of virtualization, virtualization technology is estimated that there will be a larger area of application." Liang Yan said, "Virtual The next step would be more concerned about the dynamic resource allocation and application of interaction, because this is the problem. and various control various, not the compatibility between each other. Microsoft some time ago released the Linux kernel community 20 , 000-line device driver code initiative will effectively improve the problem. Once the solution of these problems, virtualization will become mainstream industry. "
Now, Intel and Microsoft are for the customer to create a whole application virtualization solutions for enterprise customers to implement excellent platform for virtualization. Currently, Intel and Microsoft have invested heavily to optimize, test, validate and support the combination of solutions and hope for the current complex server environment, the highest level of performance, interoperability and reliability. Through bilateral cooperation to create a solution, enterprises can more Microsoft and third-party operating system (OS) and application stack into a powerful 64-bit multi-core based on Intel Xeon processor server, and use a common management tool to accelerate product supply and to streamline workload management.
It is understood that in the virtualization field, Microsoft and Intel is an important strategic partner. Their virtualization technology for most enterprises has been widely recognized as a proven solution. The solution has been in testing and development of infrastructure to improve the hardware utilization, extend the application of life cycle and high availability and disaster recovery and so demonstrated a significant advantage. Tens of thousands of the world is a wide range of business applications using the technology.
It appears that the field of Microsoft virtualization ready.