Clint Eschberger's Blog

Instead of creating a less complex environment, in many cases virtualization has made it more complex. Many business- and mission-critical applications are just not right for a hypervisor. Other software applications won't even support hypervisors even today.

We all knew it had to happen at some point. You had the old guard running servers on physical platforms, sprawling through the data center, using more and more power generating more heat. Then came virtualization via the hypervisor, condensing the many physical servers into a few. This, of course, could not take care of the whole. Far too many business- and mission-critical applications were just not right for a hypervisor.  Other software applications wouldn’t even support hypervisors and don’t to this day.

The real problem was not recognized at first. Most just took it in stride that there would be a virtualized infrastructure and a physical infrastructure. But this means that you have two distinctly different infrastructures - two separate silos - to manage and maintain. At some point, that causes manageability issues, especially for companies wanting to reduce complexity, thus cost.

Some of you are starting to think, wait a minute I can provision much faster now. Sure to virtual server, but what about physical?  Now you have a different process for managing physical that has to be maintained separate of the virtual environment. So, instead of creating a less complex environment, in many cases virtualization has made it more complex.

What is happening now is companies like Egenera, who saw this problem coming, have brought the ability to merge the two silos and manage them as one. Bringing the benefits of a virtual environment into the physical world, allowing users to have a single DR solutions for both, a single HA for both, a truly lights-out management system for both. This is welcome news to the CIOs, CTOs, directors, etc. - that there is a solution to help combine the strengths of both sides of the data center.

Virtual and Physical are both here to stay and you'll see that orchestration is needed more than ever.