Is Virtualization going the way of the dinasaur?

Routerronin

Gentlemen, we are on the verge of huge never ending black holes of data retention. I know its a cool trick to partition the hard drive, hell, even I have virtualbox, but lets be honest.
Its a cute trick but its wearing thin.
People don't need virtualization, what they need is dropbox to store their films on.
Is your datacenter hot? Why not offshore to Iceland like so many other companies are doing?
When people first here about virtualization they think its something like virtual reality. When they realize who mundane it truly is its a turnoff.
We need to rebrand virtualization and make its appeal a bit more wide reaching to the average customer lest interest be lost. Basically virtualization needs to become sexy again if its to survive. Can we make this happen?

ajs1976

um, ever hear of the Cloud?

Routerronin

ajs1976 wrote: »

um, ever hear of the Cloud?

You think thats gonna last or its gonna be just a fad?

Everyone

I don't think you understand what you're talking about. You give dropbox as an example... Dropbox is cloud storage. It's all virtualization. The companies building datacenters in places that are naturally cool to reduce cost of cooling the datacenter... they're all using virtualization in these datacenters. These datacenters are often part of "the cloud" or are "private clouds". While only people in this industry understand what is going on behind the scenes, the services virtualization and "the cloud" power appeal very much to consumers. Dropbox, SkyDrive, iCloud, Office 365, GMail/Google Apps, Netflix, the multiplayer games you play on your PC/Xbox/Playstation, and a whole lot more, are all "cloud" services running on many forms of virtualization.

Dieg0M

Routerronin wrote: »

People don't need virtualization, what they need is dropbox to store their films on.

I don't understand. I'm not an expert in cloud storage but isn't dropbox virtualization?

Edit: I guess Everyone answered that sorry

phonic

Dieg0M wrote: »

I don't understand. I'm not an expert in cloud storage but isn't dropbox virtualization?

Edit: I guess Everyone answered that sorry

While DropBox almost certainly is a heavy user of virtualization on their back end, from a user perspective it is not. It would fall under a 'cloud service'.

Routerronin

But the question is - is virtualization necessary or just a passing fad, considering that servers don't need to have their harddrives partitioned?

In a push/pull world, virtualization is a pushed software, pushed through various media outlets to make it appear necessary when its really not. Choke points and data centers were doing just fine before all this hoopla of "clouds" came along.

When your PC can store numerous terabits of data, why will you be needing some cloud to do it for ya? Do you trust these entities to safeguard your personal data better than you can?

Isnt this trend making us less free than more?

You give up all 4th ammendment rights when you store your stuff in clouds, and as an American, this concerns me.

QHalo

Do more with less. Virtualization facilitates that initiative.

Routerronin

QHalo wrote: »

Do more with less. Virtualization facilitates that initiative.

Facilitate or co-opt?

tier~

I think you're missing the point. Virtualization isn't about hard drive partitioning but rather maximizing the utilization of all available hardware resources on the server through software. It may not be all that practical for the home user who browses the internet on their tablet or laptop but it's certainly beneficial for corporations trying to consolidate their data centers and simplify management of end-user devices.

Routerronin

tier~ wrote: »

I think you're missing the point. Virtualization isn't about hard drive partitioning but rather maximizing the utilization of all available hardware resources on the server through software. It may not be all that practical for the home user who browses the internet on their tablet or laptop but it's certainly beneficial for corporations trying to consolidate their data centers and simplify management of end-user devices.

But don't you think its utility have run into diminishing returns?

srabiee

Routerronin wrote: »

Gentlemen, we are on the verge of huge never ending black holes of data retention. I know its a cool trick to partition the hard drive, hell, even I have virtualbox, but lets be honest.
Its a cute trick but its wearing thin.
People don't need virtualization, what they need is dropbox to store their films on.
Is your datacenter hot? Why not offshore to Iceland like so many other companies are doing?
When people first here about virtualization they think its something like virtual reality. When they realize who mundane it truly is its a turnoff.
We need to rebrand virtualization and make its appeal a bit more wide reaching to the average customer lest interest be lost. Basically virtualization needs to become sexy again if its to survive. Can we make this happen?

Either a trÒll, or winner of the "Dumbest Post of the Year" award.

Routerronin

srabiee wrote: »

Either a tr()ll, or winner of the "Dumbest Post of the Year" award.

I can see how you may think that. Galileo was considered a trohl at one point in time too.
I am just trying to point out the fact that hardware partitioning is a bandaid solution to storage shortage. In the future this will be less of an issue.
Soon storage will be taken for granted.
Imagine the library of congress in your laptop? You never heard of Moore's law before?

tier~

Au contraire. Virtualization is a direct result of Moore's law as we've got ever increasing amounts of computing power at our disposal...

iBrokeIT

srabiee wrote: »

Either a trÒll, or winner of the "Dumbest Post of the Year" award.

I get the feeling that this is someone who is lashing out at the "hoopla" and "fad" because they dont understand what virtualization is exactly.

Routerronin - look into the VMware vSphere suite products and their advantages. Virtualization is so much more than just paritioning a hard drive and Dropbox

iBrokeIT

Also, I have yet to hear a company say "We tried the VMware vSphere suite on our servers for a year and didn't like it. We are going back to all nonvirtualized servers."

ajs1976

Routerronin wrote: »

Imagine the library of congress in your laptop?

What if my laptop is at home and turned off and I want to access the data from my Kindle while sitting on the beach in Mexico?

ratbuddy

Routerronin, are you sure you understand what virtualization is?

How about giving us a one or two sentence explanation of what you think it does, then we can either agree with you, or help you understand why it's useful and will not be going anywhere.

Routerronin

ajs1976 wrote: »

What if my laptop is at home and turned off and I want to access the data from my Kindle while sitting on the beach in Mexico?

VPN?? keep her on, man...

Routerronin

ratbuddy wrote: »

Routerronin, are you sure you understand what virtualization is?

How about giving us a one or two sentence explanation of what you think it does, then we can either agree with you, or help you understand why it's useful and will not be going anywhere.

were i a trohll id wiki it. i wish someone wold answer my qestions tho.

ratbuddy

Not saying you are a *****, I just think you might be speaking a slightly different language from the rest of us. Please, indulge me with an explanation of what virtualization does, in your own words.

Routerronin

Im a bit afraid to because I feel that I will be lashed out at whatever definition I give, like gomer pyle. Be that as it may, my "Mastering vmware vshere 5" book by scott lowe defines it as: "an abstraction of one computering resource from another computing resource."
My definition would be creating various virtual softwares and operating systems on a single hard drive.

Yes, I know its not a great definition, but I am still not seeing whats the fuss when so many organizations are passing this software up.

I basically think its in a bubble.

tstrip007

You're right. We need to go back to spending hours provisioning a new server for one application so that it can be way underutilized and just eat the outrageous power bills. The concept of maximizing your resources along with technologies that make your datacenter more highly available than ever before makes no sense.

Routerronin

tstrip007 wrote: »

You're right. We need to go back to spending hours provisioning a new server for one application so that it can be way underutilized and just eat the outrageous power bills. The concept of maximizing your resources along with technologies that make your datacenter more highly available than ever before makes no sense.

Which applications need to be underutilized?
Can't many protocols already be pooled onto a router and the remaining ones be sufficiently utilized given the amount of memory they need?

TechGuy215

This thread is kind of entertaining. I don't really see a need to make virtualization "Sexy".

Granted, A typical end-user at home may not have much need for full-fledged virtualization (creating a VM and using it) they certainly experience the back-end by using cloud-based services.

You know what is considered sexy to a business and its owners... PROFITS!!!

The cost-benefits of virutaulizaing your Data Center is undeniable. I'm not going to list them out, but suffice it to say if you have a large DC and choose not to virtualize, you will be unneccessarily hemorrhaging a fair chunk of change.

Routerronin

TechGuy215 wrote: »

This thread is kind of entertaining. I don't really see a need to make virtualization "Sexy".

Granted, A typical end-user at home may not have much need for full-fledged virtualization (creating a VM and using it) they certainly experience the back-end by using cloud-based services.

You know what is considered sexy to a business and its owners... PROFITS!!!

The cost-benefits of virutaulizaing your Data Center is undeniable. I'm not going to list them out, but suffice it to say if you have a large DC and choose not to virtualize, you will be unneccessarily hemorrhaging a fair chunk of change.

I still don't know what Needs to be virtualized in order to achieve a wider profit margin. Nobody will tell me, I just here this mantra about how great it is.

Everyone

You're too hung up on the hard drive. That's the smallest piece of it. Also storage is much more than a single hard drive. No it is not a fad or a bubble. Where do you get "so many organizations are passing this software up" from? Quite the opposite, more and more are using it, many indirectly.

I can have a system that needs 100GB of storage and consumes very little CPU or RAM resources. Let’s say it only needs 1GHz and 1 core of a CPU to get the job done, and 1 GB of RAM. I can easily build a server to handle this load, but I can’t buy a single core CPU anymore, and who buys servers with only 1 GB of RAM or only a 100GB HD? For our example, let’s look at the cheapest rack mount server we can find from a big vendor like CDW… Looks like they have a slightly older IBM 2U for $342. It has a 3GHz Quad Core Xeon and 4 GB of RAM. It doesn’t come with any storage, but storage is pretty cheap so we buy a 1TB drive to go with it. Great now I have a server that can run my app. I’m not virtualizing, so 3 cores are going completely to waste, and 2GHz of 1 core is going to waste. I’m also wasting 3GB of my available RAM, and 900GB of my storage. A week goes by and now I need to run another app with the same resource requirements. I can’t run it on the same server as my other app because I’m not virtualizing and it isn’t supported to install these apps on the same system together. So now I have to buy another server. Now I have even more wasted resources, and I have to pay to power 2 servers. If I was virtualizing, I could run each application on the same server as their own virtual machine, and I’d still have resources left over for future apps. Since you’re hung up on hard drives and partitioning… These apps can have their own storage while sharing the CPU and RAM resources if needed. They don’t have to be on the same hard drive or even same storage. I can pass storage resources directly through to the VM.

That’s a bit of a simplification, but should help you get the idea.

Now let’s talk about this at the consumer level. As I mentioned in my previous post a lot of services are “cloud” services that run on virtualization in the datacenters that are behind these services. That’s about the extent your “average” person uses it. The average person does not run virtualization on their PC, they just use apps and services that connect back to something that is running on it, mostly without even realizing it. The Xbox One is coming out soon and is a good example of a consumer device that uses virtualization.

Everyone

I should also add that virtualization has been around since the 1960's. There's a great video explaining the evolution of virtualization since then, wish I could find it again.

TechGuy215

Here is a great article comparing the benefits of physial servers vs. virtualizing:

Virtualization benefits are worth the extra cost over physical servers alone

ratbuddy

Routerronin wrote: »

My definition would be creating various virtual softwares and operating systems on a single hard drive.

That's the fundamental misunderstanding at work here. Virtualization has nothing to do with the number of drives, and is really only tangentially related to storage. Yes, virtual machines (VMs) need to be stored somewhere, but the storage medium does not define them, and they need not be limited to a single storage device.

Virtualization allows more than one VM to run at the same time on a real physical machine. The virtual machines act just like regular computers, but you can run a bunch of them on a single server. The VMs could be storing their data on different storage systems, or the same storage, it doesn't matter.

In a server environment, if you aren't using virtualization, you are limited to a single operating system per physical server. If the server is only utilizing 50% of CPU and RAM capacity, too bad, the extra is wasted. If you were running a virtualization host instead, you could add extra operating systems to the machine and attain higher utilization percentage, saving you money on equipment purchase/rental, power, space, etc.

That's just the most basic reason virtualization isn't going anywhere. There are many other reasons to use it.

cruwl

Routerronin wrote: »

I still don't know what Needs to be virtualized in order to achieve a wider profit margin. Nobody will tell me, I just here this mantra about how great it is.

Here: Everything!

Pretty simple right?