LAS VEGAS -- The concept of a so-called "meta operating system" for
data centers and smaller IT systems is getting a lot of attention this
week at the Gartner Data Center Conference here at the MGM Grand Hotel.
Fundamentally, a metaOS is a virtualization layer of software, wedged
between applications and distributed computing resources, that utilizes
those resources -- and those resources only -- to perform scheduling,
loading, initiating supervising applications and error handling.
Only a small percentage of data centers are employing anything
resembling a metaOS at this time, but this eventually will become an
integral part of how new enterprise computing will work, researcher
Thomas Bittman told conference attendees Dec. 2 in the event's kickoff
keynote.
Bittman, a data center research vice president for Gartner, said that
virtualization hypervisors such as VMware's ESX and Microsoft's Hyper-V
are, in fact, serving as de facto "constructs," or blueprints, for the
data center operating systems of the future.
And that future may be sooner than many people think -- perhaps only
three to five years away. Most of the ingredients for metaOSes are
available now.
"Right now, as we have had for many years, we still have islands of
IT," Bittman told the audience of about 2,000 attendees. "They're
designed for the client-server model we had for more than a generation.
But as computing moves more and more toward a service model, delivered
through the Internet cloud, this is requiring a new take on the makeup
of the data center itself to enable more agility and performance."
The traditional operating system has been the center of gravity for
server computing. Real-time infrastructure architecture, which often
requires 10 times the performance now provided by standard operating
systems, is changing that completely, Bittman said.
'Service Governors' Will Be Included in MetaOSes
A metaOS consists of a hypervisor like the two noted above and a
"service governor" that manages the usage of distributed computing
resources at a service level, Bittman said.
"Conceptually, a meta operating system provides the same
hardware-enabling functionality that an operating system does, but
across distributed servers," Bittman said. "While there may not be a
single product that performs the role of the metaOS, the concept is
very real and will be made more real as RTI [real-time infrastruture]
technologies evolve."
Bittman described today's cloud infrastructure as fairly standardized
("one-size-fits-all-type services"), elastic, "but in chunks," and
monolithic -- basically closed -- in nature.
"We're seeing Google, Amazon, Microsoft -- all huge players --
providing most of the cloud services now. It's pretty much 'one
provider does it all,' at the moment. But this will all become a lot
more granular, with a lot more specialty players in the future,"
Bittman said.
Bittman envisions fewer large cloud providing players and many more
smaller ones who will "join up together in their own little
eco-systems" to deliver software services on demand. "The user, most of
the time, won't have any idea exactly where the service is coming from
-- he just knows that he wants the result," Bittman said.
Storage to Remain a Major Cost Center
Bittman also said that storage will continue to be a major cost center
as long as data keeps multiplying across the vertical boards at a 60
percent to 70 percent rate each year.
"This is where thin provisioning, data compression and deduplication
all come in as super important. All systems will need to be using all
three of these methods of keeping only the most important data
available in the system," Bittman said.
Finally, enterprises are going to be needing to build what Bittman
called dynamic sourcing teams -- groups of IT- and business-savvy
employees within each enterprise who can run these new data center
fabrics while also being in control of operations costs [due to power,
cooling and maintenance of these new hardware systems].
"This combination of skills will be very important going forward.
Companies will need these people to manage the day-to-day sourcing
decisions a company will make to enable its business to work
efficiently," Bittman said.
The Gartner Data Center Conference continues through Dec. 5.
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