The Architectural Foundation for Dynamic IT

Virtualization:

Contents

Why Virtualization Matters To Business and IT Professionals

People and Process are Essential Ingredients in a Virtualization Strategy

Unifying the Conversations about Virtualized Technology

Machine Layer

Application Layer

Presentation Layer

Management Layer

DSI Utilizing Virtualization

You Can Start Today

Call to Action

#1. Develop a virtualization strategy based on where you are and want to be on the infrastructure optimization journey

#2. Pick virtualization infrastructure technologies to realize your strategy

#3. Bring us along on your journey towards more dynamic systems enabled by virtualized infrastructure technologies

Executive Summary

The trend is clear: IT and business professionals will continue to face more devices, services, changes and demands in the business – not less. The challenge is to manage this complexity to achieve agility while keeping costs under control. Dynamic systems technologies help IT and business professionals meet this challenge. And in order to create a dynamic system, companies need a virtualization strategy to mobilize the resources of the infrastructure to meet dynamic business demands. The resulting benefits to IT and business professionals includefaster levels of service, freeing up critical resources to take on bigger business challenges, reducing costs and ultimately achieving competitive advantage through business agility. This paper offers a strategic pictureofvirtualized infrastructure as a whole. It goes on to outline how to get started with virtualization technologies as part of the Dynamic Systems Initiative.

This White Paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.

Microsoft, Windows, System Center, and Vistaare either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Why VirtualizationMatters To Business and IT Professionals

For businesses to thrive they must adapt to meet the changing needs of their customers. They must also be well-matched to overcome the challenges they face, delivering the right solutions at the right time, offering something that is more attractive to their customers than a competing solution. One word describes the nature of this kind of business environment: dynamic. The ability of your business and the people in it not just to survive, but thrive in the face of these dynamic demands, is a function of the capability and “fitness” of the infrastructure of business systems that underpin and support their work.

Dynamic demandsare those that are increasingly immediate, varied, and continuously changing. We call systems designed to enable businesses and the people in them to meet dynamic demands with a quick and effective responsedynamic systems. And we call technologies that include such capabilities dynamic systems technologies.

One of the key elements of the dynamic systems technology strategy is virtualized infrastructure. Virtualizationmobilizes the resources of the infrastructure andbenefits businesses in the following ways:

Reduced cost. By consolidating server and client resources and optimizing provisioning, driving optimized server utilization, reducing unnecessary system complexity, and efficiently managing workload operations

Increased availability.By reducing disruptive events and maximizing business continuity, reducing server downtime, simplifying disaster and recovery planning, and more efficiently planning and managing server maintenance

Increased agility. By efficiently supporting business growth and SLA attainment, dynamically assigning server resources, rapidly deploying new applications and OS, and efficiently supporting business-critical legacy applications.

To reap the benefits of virtualized infrastructure technologies, a strategy is needed to guide decision and actions for necessary infrastructure investments.There are a number of virtualization technology infrastructures to choose from and a number of architectural layers to consider when applying virtualization, including machine, application, presentation and the management of these layers. Getting started on virtualization without having a strategy is like building a house without a blueprint. What you risk is the elements not adding up, not fitting together, and the results being less than optimal and cost effective. Taking action with a strategy in hand addresses these risks.

People and Process are Essential Ingredients in a Virtualization Strategy

It is people enabled by process and technology that dynamically orchestrate businesses and the infrastructure that underpins them to drive towards desired outcomes.A complete virtualization strategy requires a holistic and evolutionary approach in which people and process factors need to be addressed. These include culture, mindset, beliefs, skills, strategy, measurement and metrics, organizational structure, and workforce management systems.

Understanding how IT professionals benefit from investing in a virtualization strategy is important since it is people who must rise to meet the challenges posed daily by dynamic business demands. The more people are enabled by systems that can self-manage to adapt to changing business demands, the more empowered they will be to contribute to the success of the business. This empowerment will come in the form of being freed up from doing manual repetitive low value tasks to overcome the limitations of isolated resources to do higher value work. This is why we have a virtualization strategy in place and why business and IT professionals in them need one, too. Virtualization enables a people ready business.

The scope of your virtualization strategy should include these three elements: people, process, and technology:

In the “people” area, it is important to consider the culture, skills, knowledge, and mindset of the people, how they operate. It is important to check their level of preparedness for working in a virtual team environment, collaboratingelectronically in decentralized teams separated by time, distance, language, and culture.

In the “process” area, processes like incident, problem, change, and configuration management must be adjusted to work with a decentralized, virtual team and IT infrastructure.

In the “technology” area, look at the application level and examine what technologies like SoftGrid can add here, where software applications are streamed to users computers as they are needed, much like how electricity is sent to users and consumed on-demand.This helps to significantly reduce the amount of application compatibility testing typically needed when deploying new applications, upgrades and patches.

Unifying the Conversations aboutVirtualized Technology

The figure below represents the layers or the places where some form of virtualization can be applied in an organization to address a variety of scenarios, such as mobile users, up-time, storage, recovery and backup.

As you can see from the figure, we see virtualization strategy as a layered stack of capabilities. The layers of the stack are detailed in the paragraphs that follow.

Figure 1. Virtualization solution layers

Machine Layer

The machine layer abstracts hardware from the operating system that runs on it. This allows for consolidation of multiple physical machines onto one server, targeting those workloads which may not be fully utilizing its present computing resources. This abstraction also allows for greater mobility and flexibility in provisioning and migrating workloads across the virtualized server farms. The resulting consolidated server reduces administration overhead, in addition to the savings in power and space utilization. Microsoft’s Virtual Server and Windows Server is an example of this.

Application Layer

In the application layer, the application itself is isolated from the operating system and its dependence on system configurationsis removed. These “containerized” applications are not installed,but are managed centrally and deployed directly to the user’s desktop in a contained, virtualized image that does not interfere with or require interaction with the operating system itself and other applications present on the user’s desktop.Microsoft’s SoftGrid allows software applications to be streamed to user’s computers as they are needed, much like electricity is sent to users and consumed on demand.

Presentation Layer

In presentation layer, the application is executed in one location, for example on a server in a data center, and the presentation layer (user interface) of the application is abstracted and then displayed on a different device, in a different location. The application execution and the data used are thus isolated from the user’s client operating system. Either remote desktops or remote applications are provided to the user, the remote applications can be seamlessly integrated with the client desktops and look and feel like they are running locally while actually being isolated in the data center. Microsoft’s Terminal Services technology is an example of this.

Management Layer

The management of these layers enables IT administrators to rapidly deploy new virtual workloads. You can use a technology like MOM Management Pack for Virtual Server, which provides application and operations management, performance tuning, monitoring and alerting, and model-based service-oriented monitoring and probable cause analysis. It also simplifies and speeds up the identification of issues that the IT infrastructure is experiencing, through a centralized reporting facility. Microsoft’s System Center Virtual Machine Manager enables a developer or IT administrator to rapidly build and tear down their own test environments without intervention by the IT administrator, who maintains precise control over the authorized users’ configuration and use of virtual machines. With this technology, IT administrators can provision, consolidate and manage their virtual infrastructure right alongside their physical machines.

DSI Utilizing Virtualization

Since the initiative to create self-managing systems was announced, we have worked to demonstrate our commitment to innovation, leadership, interoperability and industry standards by:

Creating a series of management infrastructure, such as virtualized infrastructure, to enable the management of dynamic systems without substantially increasing the cost of support.
Building these management infrastructures technologies into the Windows® operating systems, applications, developer tools, and our management solutions.
Delivering ITIL®-based guidance for optimizing the people and process side of managing and operating the Windows-based systems in increasingly dynamic environments.
Working with industry leaders to introduce the specifications for management infrastructure technologies to standards communities for interoperability across all operating environments.

What is important here is that we have developed technologies that are available for you to use today to get started on a virtualization strategy.

You Can Start Today

Microsoft has technologies available now so you can start the journey towards dynamic systems today. So, where should you start, and where do you want to go? Microsoft provides infrastructure optimization guidance that helps you to understand where you are on the path towards more dynamic systems capability. Understanding where you are on this path is important because it helps you map to the virtualized infrastructure technologies we recommend as most appropriate for your level of infrastructure optimization. Visit for more information on infrastructure optimization, including a free, on-line infrastructure optimization self-assessment tool.

Besides starting off from the right place, it’s important to start off with a manageable number of technology introductions. When you set out to make your organization more dynamic, you do not have to address everything at once. You can start with specific projects that address key business issues, using Microsoft virtualized infrastructure technology designed to help you achieve the desired results. For more information on the above mentioned technologies, visit

Call to Action

#1. Develop a virtualization strategy based on where you are and want to be on the infrastructure optimization journey

#2. Pick virtualization infrastructure technologies to realize your strategy

#3. Bring us along on your journey towards more dynamic systems enabled by virtualized infrastructure technologies

Virtualized infrastructure is the foundation for the level of orchestration of resources for dynamic systems that today’s businesses require to succeed. Business and IT professionals must take action to lay that foundation by formulating and executing a virtualization strategy. We invite you to take us along with you on your journey. We encourage you to evaluate and invest in the virtualized infrastructure technologies we offer today. And we recommend that you stay tuned as we continue developing and delivering technologies you can take advantage of as you continue your investment to create a more agile business.