How much of the data centre can you virtualize? Will cloud services overtake internal virtualization? What is the next phase of virtualization? What is the best way to virtualize the data centre? Is virtualization safe and secure? Arvid Fossen director product management & marketing, DAAS.com, looks at these issues

The modern data centre is the heart of the enterprise. A bulwark guarding the crown jewels that are vital applications and business data. Whether in a co-located facility or dedicated centre, some organisations will not settle for less than absolute control over hardware, security, availability and resilience when it comes to this critical environment.

However, many data centres are incredibly inefficient, especially co-location facilities due to the very nature of renting out individual blocks of space. Although demand is still strong, competition in the marketplace is also fierce and driving down costs while increasing utilisation provides more revenue for data centre service providers or better value for tenants.

For some, Virtualisation is the key as it allows much higher utilisation of processors, storage and available bandwidth. However, even though VMware is continually launching products with more suitability for critical environments, many end users are still reticent about moving sensitive apps like ERP systems, oracle databases or real time transaction processing on to virtual servers. The prospect of moving these same applications into virtualised and shared environments is a complete non-starter.

At a technical level, data centres can be virtualised in a relatively simple fashion on a per rack basis using VMware, Virtual Box, Xen or Hyper-V. The technology is understood and relatively mature. End customers can carry out the process in a co-location facility in relatively short order with no major changes to the underlying hardware. The problem for data centre owners who would like to virtualise shared elements like storage and deliver them as value add services is more complex. Especially when trying to convince tenants that there is significant benefit with minimal risk.

Data centre providers like Rackspace, TelecityGroup and Interxion are all offering add-on services like data backup, systems monitoring and management to enhance their respective offerings. More advanced features like load balancing or also gaining interest are a logical step to full virtualisation of resources.

All of these firms and others like them are positioning themselves as potential starting points for the delivery of software as a service or even public clouds. However, they all start from a legacy position and are constrained by having to run a mixed business model to serve a wide variety of client types. However, they all stop short of offering dedicated clouds for fear of upsetting resellers or users of their data centres. Cannibalisation is a real issue.

At the other end are a bunch of up and comers who are betting on virtualisation becoming ubiquitous and have either built or bought capacity to deliver infrastructure as a service (IAAS). Firms like SymetriQ, FlexiScale and Elastichosts have invested in dedicated space in data centers and have built fully virtualised environments from the ground up.

“There is no doubt that cloud computing is on the rise,” explains Phil Huber, founder and MD of SymetriQ, “But as it’s a new concept, there is still caution. For intensive applications like Oracle databases then at this point the cloud may not be the best option but for websites, PAT testing, email and especially development environments – it makes absolute sense.”

SymetriQ has gained ground for these ancillary areas and Huber believes that as more firms begin to trust virtualisation, the traditional data centre environment will have to change. SymetriQ is a completely virtualised environment across every client with every element of processing power, storage, connectivity and licensing designed to scale up and down.

“The data centre guys are stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he comments, “They want to embrace cloud computing but it fundamentally changes their business model. As end customers look to drive down cost, every successful virtualisation project in the enterprise will make the desire to virtualise in the data centre stronger and after a while, it will happen on mass.”

With the tighter economic climate, firms are somewhat risk adverse but the potential of virtualisation and cloud computing might be a compelling enough reason to prompt a few of the old guard to join the emerging innovators.
A lot of service providers are evaluating Cloud Computing. Some will choose to build it themselves using VMware or via bespoke solution. Others may host it on top of public clouds like Amazon or Terremark.

The problem is that that building an efficient environment is a long and complex project. The challenge  explains why few newcomers in 2009 have delivered  real cloud computing offering capabilities like dynamic scaling, metering, auto provisioning with open API’s.

Vendors like A-Server; a Cloud Technology firm has become the first to offer a complete turnkey infrastructure offering called Datacentre-As-A-Service (DAAS.Com) aimed at service providers. To date, the technology has been used by SymetriQ and CloudSphere to deliver both public and private clouds and is under trail at a number of sites in both Europe and the US.