Virtualize Me Part 1

Just one year ago I would have identified myself as a Microsoft computer guy. I used Intel and AMD based PC equipment and servers over most of the last tweleve years. To me, the computer holy wars were over long ago and I had settled into a comfortable living in the PC world.

That all changed in June of 2008. That was the month I dove head first into VMWare ESX server 3.5 and started to realize the many benefits that could come with virtualization. I didn't know it at the time but that new unlocking of what was possible also started to open the doors, and my mind again, to what was possible with other operating systems.

Uh oh, looks like the battle is on again.

I had experimented with VMWare in its earlier form in 2004. Virtualization was all the buzz, but as often happens with new technology, the hardware and software weren't quite there yet. Servers needed to be faster, cheaper, and over all just better. The software was still a bit clunky and, in my opinion, wasn’t ready for prime time.

Some time after that I saw a presentation on ESX that made the point that most people still used a virtual network to just "recreate" what existed in their physical network. In other words, they may have virtualized servers A, B and C onto a central ESX box, but other than that consolidation they didn't change "how" the network worked.

That's where the turning point for me came.

My online email hosting company Sherwebhad posted a Visio map of the servers that ran their back end. I studied the diagram and finally concluded that I could build a similar test network using the hardware I already had in my office.

In short, I was able to consolidate about 25 "servers" onto 5 ESX boxes. I could have consolidated even further but the various servers I had to work with were not your typical enterprise level machines. In fact, two of them were nVidia 680i based gaming machines.

Hey, I said this was a test environment!

What eventually came out of that experiment is where my "shift" in thinking came. Once I got used to the idea of cloning VMs, clustering and SAN based computing, all the pieces started to fall into place. I realized then just how archaic of an idea the one-server-per-piece-of-hardware (OSPPOH) concept had become.

In fact, since I went virtual, I have not built or put into production another single purpose box. Don't get me wrong. There are still applications today that are better left running on a 1-to-1 basis with the hardware, but I know in time that will eventually change too.

What I really didn’t see coming though was how virtualization would reopen my fascination with other operating systems like Linux and OSX. Also, the addition of the part that a Network Appliance would come to play in the greater picture. I’ll explain that in an upcoming post.