Page 111 - How Cloud Computing Is Transforming Business and Why You Cant Afford to Be Left Behind

THE HYBRID CL OUD

Much of the impetus behind the current drive to imple-
ment virtualized servers in data centers is the desire to address
these problems. On a virtualized host, as many as six or eight
applications can be run at the same time without being in dan-
ger of encroaching on one another. A hypervisor supervises
the virtual machine traffic and enforces boundaries between

the applications. Through virtualization, server utilization
jumps from 15 percent to 66 to 70 percent; some margin of
headroom still needs to be maintained so that bursts of activity
in one or more applications can be accommodated. The ini-
tial drive into virtualization has yielded big rewards in reduc-
ing the number of servers needed in a crowded data center.
It has reduced electricity consumption and, in some cases,

simplified application management, although realistically,
another element of complexity has been introduced into the
data center as well.
A glimmer of hope can be found in this virtualized section
of the data center. First of all, there are radically fewer server
architectures in it. Instead of Sun UltraSPARC, DEC Alpha,
and IBM POWER or mainframe microprocessors, the data
center is constructed from a single set of x86 microprocessors,
such as Intel’s Xeon. The new data center design might re-

semble the way Google builds its thousands of cloud servers,
or perhaps reflect a cloud design offered by Dell. This virtual-
ized server set is run as a pooled resource, viewed constantly
through a single management console that can balance loads,
shift virtual machines around, and even add new hardware to
the cluster without interrupting any business operations. In
short, it’s being managed much like a cloud server cluster.

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