Term Paper on "Hypervisors Analysis of Virtualization"

Term Paper 8 pages (2390 words) Sources: 6 Style: APA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

This also leads to greater costs to the enterprise than if they had done nothing before. Another disadvantage that is also very significant for enterprises adopting hypervisors is how difficult they have traditionally been to install, tailor or customize to the needs of an enterprise, and gain mastery over time (Brodkin, 2010). Usability continues to be one of the most challenging aspects for enterprises gaining the greatest strategic benefit from their investment, further crippling their pace of progress with virtualization strategies over the long-term. Another disadvantage of hypervisors is the lack of forward planning many virtualization platform providers have completed to ensure a high degree of backward compatibility and cross-industry connectivity (Ma, Ye, Liang, Guan, Li, 2013). The tendency of all virtualization vendors is to create their own unique approaches to hyper54visor support and development, in effect creating distinct competitive advantages that have little if any cross-industry collaboration or connectivity designed in (Ma, Ye, Liang, Guan, Li, 2013). This in turn creates more barriers to getting the most out of these large-scale enterprise investments leading to a greater level of duplicated spending and costs across an enterprise.

Comparing and Contrasting Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESXi and Hitachi Virtage

Each provider of virtualization platforms takes a significantly different approach to designing and implementing their specific hypervisor technologies and systems. The following is a comparative analysis of Hitachi Virtage, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMWare ESXi.

Feature

Hitachi Virtage

Microsoft Hyper-V

VMware ESXi

Base Operating System

Linux-based O.S.

Windows Server

Vmkernel (Linux-based)

Architecture

Bare-metal

Base Metal

Bare-metal

Supported Virtualization Technologies

Full virtualization; Itanium optimized performance; constraint modeling

Para-virtualization, hardware-assisted virtualization

Full virtualization; hardware-optimized virtualization

CPU Scheduling Features

VM Reserve; VM dynamic loading optimization

VM Reserve, VM Limit relative weight

VM Reserve; VM Optimization

SMP Scheduling Features

Multitenancy and thread-based optimization; CPU and register-based performance

CPU Topology-based scheduling

CPU and thread-based load balancing and analysis of performance

Disk Mgmt. Features Latency optimization across Microsoft and Linux O.S.; support for latency optimization.

Pass-Thru Disk, dynamic disk and fixed disk support

Latency and disk perf. Testing and algorithm fine-tuning.

Network Management Features

TCP mapping through O.S. support; VM emulation queuing

VM queue optimized; TCP offload definition

Net I/O Control; TCP segmentation and offload; net queue

Effects of Hypervisors on the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) In Enterprises

Virtualization in general and hypervisors specifically reduce the total cost of ownership for IT system and infrastructures by reducing the amount of hardware needed to run an enterprise. One study completed by Gartner and cited in their hype cycle of virtualized stated that enterprise average a 38% reduction in hardware costs and over 50% reduction in licensing fees for enterprise operating system software (Gartner Hype Cycle of Virtualization, 2013). Hypervisors also contribute to a reduction in TCO by reducing the number of physical servers companies need, which in turn reduces the costs of keeping hardware systems current with the latest generation of software updates and hardware upgrades (Harrison, 2010). TCO is also reduced by alleviating the costs of system integration that often occur when there are multiple, conflicting systems running in the same company (Ma, Ye, Liang, Guan, Li, 2013). Using virtualization and hypervisors, the impact of varying operating systems is alleviated when the specific hypervisor structure supports all legacy operating systems an enterprise is relying on to run its daily operations (Hwang, Zeng, Wu, Wood, 2013).

Increasing Hypervisor Adoption At The System Administration Level

The single greatest cause of failure for hypervisor implementations is lack of system administration adoption, caused by a lack of training and expertise with the more advanced features and their corresponding benefits not being used (Jin, Wen, Chen, Zhu, 2013). Hypervisors have a reputation for being difficult to use and learn however (Brodkin, 2010). As VMWare and others have adopted more ergonomic and streamlined approaches to creating hypervisor administration consoles, adoption is increasing yet training is still needed to get the many benefits from hypervisors across a wide variety of legacy operating systems. As it stands today many vendors reluctantly agree that for an enterprise to get the majority of benefits from its virtualization and hypervisor investments, it must continually invest in training and have its administrators pursue certifications over the long-term.

References

Armstrong, D., & Djemame, K. (2011). Performance issues in clouds: An evaluation of virtual image propagation and I/O paravirtualization. The Computer Journal, 54(6), 836.

Brodkin, J. (2010). A look at bare-metal hypervisor basics. Network World, 27(14), 1-1,11.

Harrison, G. (2010). Virtualization architectures do make a difference. Database Trends and Applications, 24(2), 32.

Gartner Hype Cycle for Virtualization, 2013: Published July 15, 2013. Stamford, CT. Used with permission of the publisher. Link: http://www.gartner.com/document/2566317

Hwang, J., Zeng, S., y Wu, F., & Wood, T. (2013). A Component-Based Performance Comparison of Four Hypervisors. In 13th IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM) Technical Session.

Jeffery, C.M., & Figueiredo, R.J.O. (2012). A flexible approach to improving system reliability with virtual lockstep. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, 9(1), 2-15.

Jin, Y., Wen, Y., Chen, Q., & Zhu, Z. (2013). An empirical investigation of the impact of server virtualization on energy efficiency for green data center. The Computer Journal, 56(8), 977.

Ma, R., Ye, W., Liang, A., Guan, H., & Li, J. (2013). Cache isolation for virtualization of mixed general-purpose… READ MORE

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