Application Virtualization:
FabricServer virtualizes applications to run and scale across utility compute resources. While there are many virtualization technologies today that focus on system resources, FabricServer is unique because it provisions, activates, and manages applications on remote servers. These servers can be heterogeneous collections of legacy hardware or commodity-based utility data centers. By centralizing the command and control of application deployment and execution, FabricServer increases operational efficiency whilst reducing cost and complexity.
1.1 Application Virtualization
Application Virtualization frees applications from the confines of their fixed operating environments. Static host-specific configuration dependencies are removed from the application driving automation of software configuration, deployment, execution, monitoring, and management of individual applications, or large numbers of applications all based on policy. Not only does FabricServer eliminate the need to install and configure applications on individual machines, it also enables the controlling a pool of compute resources in a highly scalable manner.
Lastly, application virtualization requires the ability to dynamically expand or contract application capacity based on schedule or demand. This last capability is often referred to as closed-loop provisioning the environment can automatically respond to changing business needs. The figure below illustrates the three fundamental aspects to application virtualization.
1.2 Uses and Benefits
Application virtualization is a transforming technology that opens up a number of use cases beyond just incremental automation improvement. FabricServer does automate manual tasks in a new radically more efficient paradigm, transforming the way application services are delivered to the business. The list below calls out some of the new capabilities that are made possible by using application virtualization:
Capacity-On-Demand
Application capacity can grow or shrink based on demand. Thresholds for activating new application instances can be made based on results from system or application level monitoring. Unused applications will automatically shrink down to their minimum required level of capacity, freeing up capacity for other applications where it is needed.
Standardization and Commoditization
Centralizing applications, application servers, and runtime distributions helps to bring order and discipline into an IT organization - a key driver to standardization. Migrating applications to commodity hardware is made much more attractive with application virtualization, because you can scale the management of these commodity resources. Server sprawl is made possible by low-cost hardware, but the management impact is large without application virtualization.
Business Continuity
Provisioning policies can be created and stored making it easy to activate entirely new application architectures across hundreds of disaster recovery (DR) machines with a single button click or Web service call. If there is a hardware failure, resilience is built into FabricServer, allowing new servers to be provisioned automatically.
Resource optimization and consolidation for Application Virtualization
By pooling resources and quickly allocating resources on demand, data center managers can dramatically reduce the amount of over-provisioning in the data center. Over-provisioning causes low utilization, and FabricServer can increase utilization and reduce the total number of servers required. In reducing servers, FabricServer is also reducing the application license and administration overhead associated with the application stack.
1.3 Utility Operations
FabricServer creates a utility computing operation by centralizing all aspects of application provisioning, activation, monitoring, and administration. Different people within an organization are typically tasked with these different activities. A utility operating model must not only provide the different roles and entitlements, but it must also have significant transparency and reporting for creating diagnostic methodologies and charge back models.
FabricServer is a application virtualization and provisioning platform that creates a highly adaptive utility computing infrastructure for applications. Applications can be running within standard application servers, middleware/integration infrastructure, web servers, independent software vendor applications, or standalone executables.
