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Virtualization takes hold: enterprise data centers embrace new/old technology to better utilize resources, but security, compliance and mobility issues must be addressed

Communications News, May, 2007 by Jeff Jilg

Centralized computing is becoming the norm for many companies, with PC blades playing an important role. PC blades now have the same performance characteristics of their desktop equivalents, so end-users get the same user experience as they would with a traditional desktop.

As companies evaluate the utilization of their data centers to determine how resources can be extended, one option being considered is virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments. One consideration for these deployments is the amount of resources individuals throughout a company utilize in their PC blades. In many cases, office staff uses only a small portion of the CPU, memory and I/O that is available.

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By examining usage trends and the application loads, staff can determine the minimum and maximum resources required. As an example, standard office applications such as word processing, spreadsheet or custom application usage rarely exceed 30 percent of the CPU's potential. Similarly, memory and I/O throughput are rarely stressed beyond this level.

Virtualizing a pool of PC blades provides a direct path to utilizing the full potential of the resources in the data center. Each PC becomes a VDI resource, allowing multiple end-users to have the full PC experience while sharing the resources on a single PC. There are multiple benefits to this scenario:

Maintenance becomes more efficient. Using a management software suite allows the health and status of each virtual machine (VM) to be monitored and managed from a single PC blade. If a VM becomes unhealthy, that VM may be remotely rebooted without affecting the other VMs that reside on the same PC blade.

There is often no need to physically access the blade to resolve an issue since nearly all operations can be done remotely using appropriate software management and connection broker programs. In cases where there is a hardware issue, the centralized location of the PC blade in the data center makes for easy access.

Deploying new users is simple and flexible. A standard corporate image can be defined as a VM, allowing a new user to be established by loading the VM onto an existing virtualized PC blade and then connecting new hardware at the desktop. The VM can be running in as little as five minutes.

Appropriate management software can be used for connection brokering in this scenario. End-users would be automatically assigned to a freely available VM once they log on. A management suite then brokers the connection by evaluating which VMs are free and assigning the new user session to one of the unused VMs.

This feature can be established for multiple pools of users and VMs. For example, the first floor of a hospital may be configured as a pool of users who have access to the first 20 PC blades in the data center. The second floor of the hospital could be configured as another pool of users who have access to the second 20 PC blades. Once the management software is configured with these users and blades, new user sessions will have their connections brokered to connect to the appropriate blades. Should a problem arise, the administrator can migrate a user to another VM through the management software console.

There are reduced single points of failure. PC blades at their full potential enable a VM density factor that optimizes IT infrastructure without overloading a single large server. A large server full of VMs increases the possibility of failure because of the increased reliance on the hardware. If any of the hardware components fail on the server, dozens of VMs are affected during the outage.

In delivering full PC functionality to a user with PC blades, multiple VMs can be deployed to a single PC blade; the number of users affected by hardware issues is reduced if there is a problem. This provides for a flexible configuration that exploits hardware without overburdening it, and thereby reduces single points of failure.

Should a PC blade fail, appropriate management software can be configured to establish a spare blade that is available to a pool of blades. If one of the blades in that pool fails, then the management console should be able to automatically move the sessions to a spare blade.

Ergonomics improved. An important consideration in choosing thin client technology is whether it has the capability to be noise-free; that is, there should be no fans involved. The end-users interact with the virtualized PC blade through peripherals, which give a clean desktop experience yet provide full PC utilization. In this way, centralized computing solutions are useful for deployments with space constraints, as they take up no space at the desk, emit no noise and generate no heat except in the controllable data center.

Data security is controlled and easily managed. Since all data is contained in the data center, there are no laptops or desktop PC hard drives to be stolen. Corporate data is secure from theft or data lost through misplaced media, such as USB flash drives. While some thin clients have USB ports for attaching peripherals in certain installations, these USB ports can often be disabled using management software. Similarly, network security could be established to allow access to some application information, but to disable access to critical data in the data center.

Technology Industry

Virtualization takes hold: enterprise data centers embrace new/old technology to better utilize resources, but security, compliance and mobility issues must be addressed

Communications News, May, 2007 by Jeff Jilg

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