Imagine never having to hear about the following situation in your business ever again: A remote worker for an organization calls the help desk and says that their laptop is dead and won’t boot.  The help desk spends half a day attempting to repair the issues, and can not so the remote worker must pack up the laptop, ship it to corporate to have it repaired and reimaged, and then it could be returned to the remote user.  Oh…and a backup of any data that resided on the laptop does not exist, so help desk personnel must now try to be data recovery engineers as well.  To shorten this story quite a bit (most of us have been in this situation at one time or another), how much does it cost to lose all your data, or have your employees unable to work? 

Looking at VDI strictly as an ROI play…..

Well, I agree.  When you look at a VDI, you are not looking at the same quick ROI numbers you had when you were looking at server virtualization.  It really comes down to the long term, operational costs associated with maintaining desktops.  This could be as simple as the disruption a user has when their computer needs to be serviced, to an enterprise wide application rollout, to something as simple as delivering a new desktop for a new employee who, just started today and needs a PC.

You are one of the most experienced virtualization architects in the country – were you ever skeptical about this technology and if so when did you say to yourself that this is now “ready for prime time”?

I remember vividly, that when I first came upon VMware, I was like most people who ran across it for the first time, “…this will never work..”  Naturally, as I worked with the technology, I found it was a software package that did something very unique….it worked right out of the box, the way it was supposed to, without any customizations.

So going back 9 years, would I say I would be running my Mission Critical Exchange and SQL database servers on it?  Probably not.  When did I see it ready for those Mission Critical applications….

ESX 1.x was great.  I could consolidate servers, share my workload, keep separate Windows instances (for my application vendors to be kept happy), but I did bring in a single point of failure.  VMFS (the file system that allows for today’s VMotion and High Availability Features) was not as robust as it is today.  While you could address availability, it required some effort.  There was no vCenter server, so you were managing each ESX server individually.

ESX 2.x was amazing.  VMFS was given a major rewrite, and enabled the VMotion feature.  VMware release Virtual Center to manage all the ESX servers in an environment from a single point.  This was a great step forward, as now there was the ability to easily roll out new Virtual Machines, keep Virtual Machines running, and you could eliminate a single ESX server from being a single point of failure.

ESX 3.x took it a step further.  Now we added the automation of High Availability and Distributed Resource Scheduler to our toolsets and designs.

ESX 4.x (the current version) seems to good to be true.  The performance is there, the controls are there, and this is now considered a mature product that is capable of running Mission Critical services for any organization.

So following that timeline from Version 1.x to the current 4.x version, I’ve seen user acceptance of this product for more and more visible applications throughout the years.  ESX 1 was thought of as a Test & Dev type of solution.
ESX 2 was thought of as a low hanging fruit, infrastructure (file and print, redundant DC’s, etc.) play with some manageability.
ESX 3 was thought of as a ‘not-quite-ready-to-virtualize-my-exchange-or SQL-servers-just-yet, but all my other apps are OK to virtualize’ space. 
ESX 4 is being seen as the first capable, high-end application, virtualization solution.

I have always been 1 version ahead of this…so in the days of ESX 3, I was a firm believer that it was possible, safe, desirable, and beneficial to run Exchange or SQL in a Virtual Environment.  So for the last 7 years, every data center I have built, uplifted, worked in, or evaluated for efficiency has had VMware ESX and vCenter at its core.

Well, 9 years later, and virtualization is everywhere.  We now expect it from our networks, storage networks, our servers, our desktops, and even our applications.

What’s the most unusual or remarkable experience that you’ve had while implementing a virtualization solution?

Not an easy question, as they all offer unique challenges, but this is something I still talk about with people.

I had a client come to me, and ask to develop a Disaster Recovery plan using VMware and backup/restore from tape procedures to bring back 16 servers that were being built for an ERP solution, and it was just discovered that they needed this DR plan to finish the project or it was to be scrapped altogether (and it had to be for less than $50,000).

Now, go back to 2003…P2V was only available from VMware as a service at that point in time…it was not a product you could buy and there was no real 3^rd party solutions at this time.

Long story short…we used 2 ESX servers to accomplish this recovery.   It was possible for the client to restore 16 servers from tape using the procedures we created, and return the ERP solution to service in a matter of 1 business day.  We were given a goal that we would need to return ERP to service in 5 business days….so we did it in 20% of the time allotted, 

So while I enjoy the fact that VMware was being used for Disaster Recovery before it was utilized universally for DR, it was the excitement I saw in a team of people being able to use virtualization to achieve goals that were seen as unrealistic just weeks prior before they were aware of VMware ESX.  It was such a success, that we were invited back to do the entire DR plan with the organization one year later, when the incorporated VMware into the datacenter operations and Disaster Recovery Plans.

Which is one is cheaper and which is better Hyper-V or vSphere?

Pointed question….this is the subject of A WHOLE different column….TCO of Virtual Infrastructures…  Seriously….another time….but my thoughts below….

Just because something is cheaper, doesn’t mean you should buy it.  Do we all drive around in Kia cars?

Just because something is better, doesn’t mean you need to buy it.  Do we all need Bentley’s?

What is VMware View and how does it differ from VDI and VDM?

VMware View is the current version of what used to be called VMware Desktop Manager (VDM).

VDI, or a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, is now what I see and use to denote using virtualization to deliver a desktop, not a specific product.

What does it take to be a virtualization guru? You’re one of the few gurus out there…What did you have to do to get there?

There were many coinciding events that allowed me to be a consistent user, integrator, architect, educator, and writer of virtualization (topics) over the past 9 years.  Some of it has to be attributed to luck or being in the right place at the right time…but that only provides the circumstances.

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