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With business booming, enterprises are in expansion mode. The networks are expanding and get ting complex. Not only networks, even the data being generated is growing in huge numbers. Depending on requirement, the network infrastructure includes: multi-vendor server environments, diverse connectivity technologies, and multi-vendor storage. However, efficiency and cost effectiveness does often accompany this expansion. CIOs of enterprises are always looking to optimize whatever resource they have.

In normal circumstances, on an average, only 60–70 percent of the various network components like storage and server space are utilized and certain user sections draw more capacity while others have less to them. Users who get less from the network demand more, even when almost 30 percent of the network's infrastructure is not being used. All this has resulted in more boxes being added to the network, without attending to factors like efficiency and central management of resources. The equipment vendors were quick to realize this problem of the CIOs and knew that there was a limit to how much investment could be made on infrastructure equipment-especially when the capacity utilization was not to the optimal levels.

Consolidation and Virtualization
One answer to the problems was seen in consolidating the scattered resources and pooling them in a central location for better management. This started happening in the late 1990s, when the IT downturn came and enterprises were looking at cutting cost all around. However, consolidation only brought the many equipment at one place, neither did it reduce the number of boxes nor did it allocate resources according to demand. These goals were met in the next phase, which is being sold as virtualization. The industry agrees that without consolidation, virtualization would not have been possible. "Consolidation of network resources and their virtualization work together. It is difficult to see them separately as of now," says Mathew Boon, managing vice president, enterprise management and storage, Gartner.

"Consolidation is the phase before virtualization. Consolidation of infrastructure happens first and then resources are intelligently prioritized on demand," said Jagdish Mahapatra, regional manager, channels, India and Saarc, Cisco. Others also agree and say that had consolidation not happened, why would any one have gone for integrated box solutions and implement virtualization on their networks? "Consolidation helps the businesses avoid wastage of resources. Virtualization on the other hand allows organizations to manage the existing information in a better way, share it within internal business applications, and maximize the return on investment which organizations have already made," said Shuja Mirza, technical consultant, India, Brocade Communications Systems.

Virtualization as a Concept
The oldest form of virtualization happened when a number of small LANs were connected to one switch. This created virtual LANs (VLANs). Though logical partitioning was still absent in them, VLANs are easily the grandfathers of current-day network virtualization. "VLANs are the oldest form of virtualization and it is now happening with other parts of the network too. Like in firewall virtualization-instead of putting separate firewalls for each department, a single box is logically partitioned and allocated to different departments," says A Prasad Babu, SE manager (India and Saarc), Juniper Networks.

By definition, virtualization enables the creation of logical (virtual) representations of physical IT resources such as memory, networks, servers, and storage-that perform as if they were actual resources. "Virtualization enables organizations to deliver the right information at the right performance level and the right functionality to the business at the lowest total cost," says Ajaz Munsiff, regional practice leader, EMC Corporation.

Storage Virtualization
Storage is one area where vendors are pushing virtualization in a big way. With enterprises generating lot of data and huge data centers being established, storage vendors are doing good business. Today every storage vendor has some kind of storage virtualization road map to offer.

Virtualization solutions are being promoted to ease the task and cost of storage capacity planning. They promise enterprise-wide manageability, allowing storage systems to be constantly available and scalable to meet future needs. They also allow easy storage space reallocation with minimal impact to application servers: diminishing downtime and enterprises do business at optimum intensity-24x7.

"Virtualization is also fundamental to enabling business continuity functionality, such as mirroring and remote backup. With proper implementation, storage virtualization can yield tremendous cost savings and other vital benefits to today's enterprises," Munsiff adds.

In a storage environment, enterprises go for multiple vendors. Virtualization facilitates usage of heterogeneous storage, empowering enterprises to leverage their current infrastructure and to make future purchases based on the best choices available rather than being tied to homogeneous proprietary storage offerings.

"In the past, virtualization was a dream, just a concept. But with products like volume managers and virtualization engines in the market, managing and online migration of data through single window, single switch-without shutting down the system-has become possible. From buying separate controller boxes, he now has the option to do it from a single place. This is the power of virtualization," says Srikant Chakrapani, consulting director, Hitachi Data Systems India.

In virtualized storage environments, applications can see and interact with these logical components that are independent from, but able to interact with, their physical counterparts including: SANs, disk arrays, tape components, and other storage media.

"In complex storage infrastructures, with so many islands of information existing, virtualization was the need of the hour. Vendors have done well so far to address this and there is scope for more," says Mirza.

The new trend in virtualization technology is combination of storage and server virtualization. Till now, both were separate solutions. However, solutions from companies like VMware enable enterprises to reduce acquisition and ongoing management costs associated with SAN-based servers and storage.

Virtualization simplifies management and reduces the number of devices needed. A combination of server and storage virtualization enables organizations to quickly and easily partition the computing resources to match application requirements and reduce the overall needs by allowing several virtual servers to reside on a single server through optimizing the use of resources.

Security Virtualization
The increasing pressure on securing networks has prompted the need for virtualization in security solutions too. Though doubts have been raised about the efficiency of a single virtualized box, vendors' offerings for enterprise and the SMB segments have been well received when weighed in on the cost parameters.

"Currently, in security areas, virtualization is happening in VPNs and firewalls where almost 75 percent of the security budget is sunk in. But virtualization is not for enhancing security. It is more for utilizing the resources better, cutting down on capex, and increasing operational efficiency," said Mahapatra.

Today, virtualization is happening mainly in firewalls solutions but areas like intrusion detection and protection and even SSL-VPNs can be virtualized to route and scan specific traffic. Security virtualization is being built into the routers and servers. With the increase in mobile workforce, use of public infrastructure to access the intranet has also gone up. Virtualization of SSL-VPNs ensures that depending on the profile, a mobile user he can be directed to the intranet of a specific division instead of putting up multiple devices to route the user. Similarly, depending on the traffic, firewalls can be scaled up or down and filtering can happen for different profiles in a single box.

"The idea is to have complete freedom in management and configuration. Today, MPLS has the best virtualization capabilities when in comes to WAN. The tagging concept is another form of virtualization which ensures delivery of information packets at the right destination," says Babu.

Ground Realities in India
Globally virtualization has been happening in a big way especially after the economic downturn, which prompted cost cutting and increased emphasis on efficiency. However, in India enterprises are not open about adopting virtualization as a solution. It is happening, but in bits and pieces and in specific areas of the network only.

It has being offered more as an option rather than a complete standalone solution by the vendors. "In India we are still not very convinced about virtualization happening in the next 12 to 18 months. It is being pushed by some vendors and in most of the cases they are also not very sure of their offerings," said Boon. However, everyone agrees that virtualization is in the next big thing and it is a matter of time before this concept takes concrete shape. It has been gaining traction and generating a lot of interest, but it has to prove itself as a complete solution and not in parts, for example: being successful storage, server, or router space.

"Customers are intelligent. They know about virtualization. If I will not offer them, they would go and ask my competitor. In the coming days we see virtualization as a key differentiator and those having a proven record would be successful," adds Babu.

The lack of product and acceptability, coupled with lack of standardization, has slowed down the implementation in India. In fact, vendors are busy creating awareness. "In India it is more of a desire. There is lack of products, with many vendors having just a virtualization roadmap to offer," says Parag Arora, business development manager, Cisco Systems, India and Saarc.

"We must keep in mind that not all sizes fit all and virtualization is not something to be picked up and carried away. It is an option which the customers have. If they need it, we are ready to implement it otherwise we are not pushing it," adds Chakrapani.

Market acceptance has been slow, but will begin to take off later this year as more robust, enterprise-class storage virtualization solutions come into the market. "Our approach to storage virtualization is one that will add substantial value to the enterprise, without adding substantial overhead costs or impacting existing applications or functionality. Early storage virtualization implementations fall short on these requirements. New implementations will be developed with an open approach that is highly compatible with industry efforts to develop a standard API for SAN-based applications," says Munsiff.

Storage virtualization, as a concept, has been there since the mainframe days. Storage pooling, data migration, and replication have all been referred to as virtualization technologies at least in the storage industry. These applications-along with volume management and virtualization technologies associated with data management-exist in the country and qualify as valid production examples of virtualized storage infrastructures. "Lots of testing and deployment along with our OEM partners is already on. There is a lot more to it and we feel that the year 2005 will see this phenomenon take off," says Mirza.

Anurag Prasad