Cloud Computing Gaining Visibility in Server Virtualization

Officials from BMC Software, Inc. recently introduced new end-to-end workload lifecycle management software. In other news, officials from VMware, Inc. announced a new product roadmap aimed at taking it beyond server virtualization, while executives from Intel Corp. announced the availability of its new 6-core Dunnington CPU.

Focal Points:

• BMC executives recently introduced its new Workload Lifecycle Management software. The product, BMC CONTROL-M, is designed to manage end-to-end change management and version control. With version control enabled, the product will allow version control across multiple environments and platforms. Executives said the product will allow personnel to track, report, compare, and reinstate earlier versions of jobs, while at the same time determining any problems that need to be corrected on an existing job. A unique feature of this product is that it can manage jobs across both mainframe and distributed environments. Early implementers of this product claim that have reduced the time for doing batch job change management by up to 40 percent.
• Officials from VMware recently outlined a new road map for VMware at its recent VMworld conference. The intent is to allow VMware to be used to facilitate cloud computing in the data center. Officials said they believed they would be able to offer a combination of software and services to build data center environments similar to the one currently operated by Google, Inc.  In addition, officials said they intended to increase their capabilities with desktop virtualization. VMware officials called its new cloud computing initiative the Virtual Datacenter OS (VDC-OS). They predicted that they would be in a position to implement new products and services with VDC-OS in 2009. VDC-OS is intended to control the entire data center and cloud infrastructure, which include all hardware, software, and virtual machines.
• Intel officials recently announced the availability of its 6-core Dunnington processors. They will be given the 7400 series designation, and are designed for high end servers for use with CPU-intensive activities such as large database applications and virtualization. The 7400 series processors will be offered in both four and six core processor versions, filling out its 45-nanometer chip line. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is expected to offer its own 45-nm based Opteron processors later this year. Intel will have seven different processors running up to 130 watts, but as low as 50 watts on a four-core processor.

Experton Group believes both processor and server designs will increasingly be enhanced to provide easier virtualization capabilities, as well as improved power and cooling. One of the areas to get attention last is virtualization management. As overall data center environments get more complex, management will become critical to effectively deploy applications in a secure and scalable manner. IT executives should build effective management in from the beginning of all data center virtualization architectures.