Advanced Virtualization and Workload Management

SWsoft
ADVANCED VIRTUALIZATION AND
WORKLOAD MANAGEMENT ON ŽITANIUM 2-BASED SERVERSSWsoft
ADVANCED VIRTUALIZATION AND
WORKLOAD MANAGEMENT ON ŽITANIUM 2-BASED SERVERSAbstract
Virtualization and workload management are essential technologies for maximizing scalability, availability and value on high-end computing systems, and ItaniumŽ 2-based servers offer many options. One is SWsoft Virtuozzo*, a proven, software-based virtualization solution for consolidating Linux and Windows applications. It provides granular control of workloads, along with exceptional performance and scalability-factors that make it ideal for many mission-critical environments.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary.................................................................................................2The Power of Virtualization.......................................................................................2OS Virtualization-Ideal for Many Deployments........................................................3Reccommended Usage Models...............................................................................4Virtuozzo on Itanium-Based Servers........................................................................5Conclusion..............................................................................................................7
Executive Summary
Server virtualization and workload management have become essential capabilities for optimizing utilization, availability and agility in business computing environments. ItaniumŽ 2-based solutions support virtualization on all levels-in the processor, in individual vendor's system architectures and in software-based solutions. This enables IT organizations to choose the best virtualization strategy for their particular requirements, at lower cost and with greater flexibility than traditional RISC architectures.
This paper will discuss the virtualization options on Itanium-based servers, focusing primarily on SWsoft Virtuozzo, a software-based virtualization solution optimized for servers running Windows or Linux. By enabling multiple application stacks to be consolidated safely and securely on a single OS instance, SWsoft provides a lean and efficient virtualization architecture that allows businesses to host large numbers of applications and heavy workloads on each physical server, and to achieve near-native response times. Workloads can be moved very quickly between virtual partitions, and server resources can be allocated with exceptional granularity and without interrupting production environments. With just a single OS image per server, the software environment is also consolidated, which further reduces complexity and simplifies management.
These advantages make Virtuozzo running on Itanium-based servers ideal for many mission-critical environments, either as the primary virtualization technology, or in addition to the hard and soft partitioning capabilities provided by many system vendors. The relatively low cost of Virtuozzo also complements the flexibility and affordability of Itanium-based servers. With the combined solution, IT organizations have important new options for supporting their most data-intensive and mission-critical applications on an affordable, industry-standard server architecture.
The Power of Virtualization
In just a few years, virtualization has evolved from a relatively obscure mainframe capability to a mainstream technology that is helping hundreds of thousands of companies improve business responsiveness and IT efficiency. By enabling multiple applications to be hosted safely and securely on a single server, virtualization increases server utilizations rates, often by a factor of ten or more. This not only reduces capital costs, but also cuts down on power, cooling and management expenditures, and helps to extend the life of existing data centers.
Just as importantly, virtualization cuts the link that binds a particular software stack to a particular hardware platform. With appropriate management tools, new applications can be deployed more quickly, workloads can be migrated without downtime between servers, and hardware resources (CPU, memory, I/O, etc.) can be adjusted as needed. These capabilities enable IT organizations to provide higher availability at lower cost, and to d... [download for more]