Server Virtualization: A Five-Year Roadmap (
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The installed base of VMs will grow more than tenfold between 2007 and 2011, says Gartner. By 2012, the majority of x86 server workloads will be running in virtual machines. Unix and mainframes also will be using virtualization, but Intel-based open systems will run the bulk of the workloads, Gartner predicts.LAS VEGASBecause the virtualization of IT infrastructure now is so
pervasive and integral to the daily operation of data centers, it would behoove
IT managers to take a look at the next five years and get a projection of where
trends in this technology might be heading.
So, Thomas Bittman, a Gartner data center research vice president, on Dec. 2
dared to look into the future and reportbased on IT trends of the pastwhat he
believes will happen.
"Only two or three years ago, almost all virtualization was relegated to
testing and development. Now we figure that a full 70 percent of all data
centers are using virtual machines of some sort in production," Bittman
told a crowded room of attendees at the Gartner Data Center Conference here at
the MGM Grand Hotel.
Virtualization is a major paradigm shift from conventional single-purpose
application servers to a pool of computing power that encompasses a few or
numerous servers, enabling notable performance gains and a lessening of the
electrical energy used to run them.
"By 2012, at least 14 percent of the infrastructure and operations
architecture of Fortune 1000 companies will be managed and delivered much like
a cloud-computing provider, internally (service-oriented, paid by usage,
scalable, elastic and shared)," Bittman wrote in a report that accompanied
his presentation.
This technology is called a "private cloud," a spinoff of already
well-utilized public clouds, such as those provided by Amazon.com and Google.
Private cloud computing differs from the mainstream version in that smaller,
cloudlike IT systems within a firewall offer similar services, but to a closed
internal network. This network may include corporate or division offices, other
companies that are also business partners, raw material suppliers, resellers,
production-chain entities and other organizations intimately connected with a
corporate mother ship.