The sector will reach the SMBs

Virtualisation is not new, the concept of abstraction of computer resources from the operating system, application and the user through the creation of a virtual machine is not new, it was available on the IBM System/360 Model 67 mainframe in the 1960s. When it comes to the client/server world, however, the one innovation that defines the technological landscape of the early 21st century may well be virtualisation.

VMware’s senior product marketing manager Asia Pacific, Andre Kemp, said that virtualisation on the x86 platform has a long pedigree. “Virtualisation first started when Microsoft introduced VxD drivers, which abstracted the actual application from talking directly to the hardware. It was really the first taste that the end-user was given towards something virtual, although the word virtual has been around for decades.

“VMware started in Australia in 2004 and to start off with there was a lot education [that needed to be done to explain to the market], what VMware is, what it can do etc. We started off in the test and development arena. But we’ve quickly moved from ‘this is a cool test/development technology’ straight into production and in 2006 in Asia Pacific we saw a definite trend, organisations felt that the product was production-ready and started deploying it straight into production.”

Over the past five years in particular, virtual storage and servers have moved off the leading edge and into the mainstream to mix a metaphor. The main driver has been an overarching trend towards server consolidation with its advantages of higher utilisation rates, lower management overheads as well as power consumption. Of all these factors, increased hardware utilisation was the initial driver, said Gen-i virtualisation specialist Safi Obeidullah, and the other factors became important later.

“The main drivers for virtualisation are around server consolidation, business continuity and streamlining test and development environments. The advantages of going down the virtualisation path include increased hardware utilisation. There have been many studies over the past few years that show most servers, particularly on the Windows platform, are significantly underutilised, with some coming in at under 10 percent. Virtualisation provides an approach that maximises the utilisation of hardware, while at the same time increasing the availability and redundancy of the environment.”