On October 25-26, 2006, the annual Data Center Decisions conference took place in Chicago, Illinois offering participants an in-depth look at the critical issues, trends and technologies of data center management. According to Andrew Kutz, Operating Systems Specialist, ITS-Systems, one topic seemed to dominate most conversations for two straight days: “virtualization.” The consensus among many of the attendees and presenters is that the further use and development of virtual systems and servers will be the cornerstone of the future and modern-day data center.
Four tracks of discussion were presented at the event, each designed to help IT managers create more organized, reliable and up-to-date facilities:
- Consolidation: Reducing the amount of floor space dedicated to data centers and to physical servers within one organization.
- Disaster Recovery: Coaching and practical advice on producing and testing action plans for effective disaster recovery.
- Power and Cooling: Measuring energy efficiency and how to plan for appropriate data center power and cooling.
- Virtualization: Turning one physical server into multiple virtual servers to help save resources (and floor space) when managing and designing a data center. This track covered such topics as how to decide on the right virtualization hardware; migration issues that arise with consolidation; and how to get the most out of a virtual tools and resources.
Andrew, representing The University of Texas at Austin, gave a presentation in the “Consolidation” track entitled, “Optimizing Virtualization and Resource Utilization.” This presentation explored the benefits of a virtual environment including taking a close look at VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3), a new tool boasting new automated management of virtual machines (VM). VI3 has the ability to support 64bit VMs and VMs with up to four CPUs and 16 gigabytes (GB) of RAM. A primary goal of the presentation was to help reduce any lingering concerns regarding virtualization.
“The number one concern around virtualization is its relatively short time on the stage of enterprise computing,” said Andrew. “However, I remind people that while x86 virtualization is new, its foundation is built with the ideas that have carried products like the IBM mainframes successfully for more than three decades. The current implementation of virtualization may be new, but the concept is time-tested.”
When looking back at the conference as a whole, Andrew noted that “the thing that impressed me the most was how virtualization is, for the first time, really bringing together modern-day data center technologies that have traditionally remained separate, such as storage, networking and servers.” He continued that the “manufacturers of these devices are all working together in order to ensure that their technologies work together to support the data center of tomorrow, of which virtualization will be key.”
For Andrew, the value of exploring new technologies and attending conferences such as this one is that “the IT world is an ocean and we're all sharks, if we stop swimming and absorbing new technologies, methods, and techniques, we will stop and die. We have to stay abreast of what is going on around us so that we can stay ahead of everyone else and set the pace. The alternative is to have others set the pace for us, and I for one would rather see our university lead instead of follow.”
View the presentation: Virtualization and Resource Utilization by Andrew Kutz
