Technical White Paper on Application Virtualization

Virtualization for the Real-Time EnterpriseCentralized Command and Control of Enterprise Applications
FabricServerT Product Overview
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 21.1 Application Virtualization 21.2 Uses and Benefits 21.3 Utility Operations 3
2 FabricServer Version 2.0 42.1 System Overview 42.2 FabricServer Concepts 52.3 Functional Overview 6Connection Managers 6Statistics Aggregator 6Allocation Manager 6Policy Manager 7Domain and Container Repository 7Reporting Database 7Monitoring and Management Dashboard 7Web Services and SDK 7
3 Using FabricServer 73.1 Creating and Deploying Application Domains 73.2 Statistics Gathering 83.3 Creating and Managing Policy 83.4 Scheduling 93.5 Real-time Provisioning 103.6 Virtual Router 11
4 Integration and Interoperability 124.1 Load Balancers 12®4.2 GridServer 124.3 Other Virtualization Technologies 13FabricServer Technical White Paper
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1 IntroductionFabricServerT virtualizes applications to run and scale across utility compute resources. While there are manyvirtualization 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 legacyhardware or commodity-based utility data centers. By centralizing the command and control of applicationdeployment and execution, FabricServer increases operational efficiency whilst reducing cost and complexity.
1.1 Application VirtualizationApplication Virtualization frees applications from the confines of their fixed operating environments. Static host-specific configuration dependencies are removed from the application driving automation of softwareconfiguration, deployment, execution, monitoring, and management of individual applications, or large numbersof applications - all based on policy. Not only does FabricServer eliminate the need to install and configureapplications on individual machines, it also enables the controlling a pool of compute resources in a highly scalablemanner. 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 - theenvironment can automatically respond to changing business needs. The figure below illustrates the threefundamental aspects to application virtualization.
Figure 1 - Three main concepts behind application virtualization
1.2 Uses and BenefitsApplication virtualization is a transforming technology that opens up a number of use cases beyond justincremental automation improvement. FabricServer does automate manual tasks in a new radically more efficientparadigm, transforming the way application services are delivered to the business. The list below calls out someof the new capabilities that are made possible by using application virtualization:
Capacity-On-DemandApplication capacity can grow or shrink based on demand. Thresholds for activating new application instances canbe made based on results from system or application level monitoring. Unused applications will automaticallyshrink down to their minimum required level of capacity, freeing up capacity for other applications where it isneeded.FabricServer Technical White Paper
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Standardization and CommoditizationCentralizing applications, application servers, and runtime distributions helps to bring order and disciplineinto an IT organization -a key driver to standardization. Migrating applications to commodity hardwareis made much more attractive with application virtualization, because you can scale the management ofthese commodity resources. Server sprawl is made possible by low-cost hardware, but the managementimpact is large without application virtualization.
Business ContinuityProvisioning policies can be created and stored making it easy to activate entirely new applicationarchitectures across hundreds of disaster recovery (DR) machines with a single button click or Web servicecall. If there is a hardware failure, resilience is built into FabricServer, allowing new servers to beprovisioned automatically.
Resource optimization and consolidation By pooling resources and quickly allocating resourc... [download for more]