Oracle became the latest vendor to throw its hat into the hypervisor ring last month with the launch of a Xen-based server virtualisation utility. This month’s Oracle World event in San Francisco also saw Sun Microsystems unveil its xVM server virtualisation management product, which will be released under an open source GPLv3 licence. Microsoft, meanwhile, revealed pricing details of its Hyper-V server virtualisation technology which will be embedded in some versions of its forthcoming Windows Server 2008 operating system (OS).
All this activity begs the question: if the hypervisor is becoming a commodity that is given away for free, or for a nominal fee, with new hardware, OSs or other software applications, where does its value lie for vendors or enterprise customers?
Analyst figures suggests that the proportion of companies using server virtualisation is currently as little as one in 10. Virtualisation makes sense in the datacentre, where server consolidation is an ongoing battle to get similar or better application performance out of less floorspace, using less electricity. But it is less compelling in the average enterprise server room, where server racks are not so densely populated and the need for speed nowhere near as pronounced.
Running multiple virtual servers on a single physical server also looks less attractive when you consider the falling cost of server processing power. With dedicated hardware you are guaranteed the OS and applications sitting on top of it will run as best they can. No matter what the hypervisor vendors tell you about so-called “native” virtual machine (VM) performance, VMs still share system resources and will always struggle to match the computing power provided to an OS by physical hardware.
Vendors themselves know that the market is changing, which explains why they have turned their attention not to promoting the benefits of virtualisation itself, but rather to the issue of ensuring the efficient management of virtualised environments.
This change of tack also provides an opportunity for software vendors to concentrate on developing other applications for virtualised environments, such as automated software testing or patch management for example. Once a bedrock of free or low cost hypervisors has been laid down, it is only a matter of time before the big software companies focus their attention on encouraging enterprises to be more receptive to new, licensed applications that can make better use of VMs.
In his OpenWorld speech announcing the company’s VM offering in November, Oracle chief executive Charles Phillips gave the game away. “Virtualisation is hot,” he said, meaning here’s a nice buzzword that is generating a lot of interest amongst prospective customers, which could make us some money.
As for being “hot”, so was Britney Spears. And look what happened to her.
‹ www.sun.com/software/products/xvm
