By Mark Gabryjelski

I have attended many vendor and industry conferences over the past twelve years, and they all have something to offer those who attend.  What I want to share with you all here, is the general vibe of the conference, and where the industry feels Virtualization in general will be taking us as over the next year or two.

In general, many conferences have recently seen a decline in their attendance, due to whatever reason we want to believe.  Not so with VMware Partner Exchange (PEX) 2010.  2,600 people, from 45 countries attended this year’s PEX…up 70% from last year.

VMware held a plethora of Boot Camps…VSP, VSTP, VCP, VCDX.  VMware has 80,000+ certified people in their ranks, so this was a great way to add to that total and (shock!) all sessions were full.

EMC, Cisco, and NetApp held their own Boot Camps around the event.  These were full blown boot camps, where vision, strategy, and the details around the specific technologies were all discussed, taught, and solutions were explored.  Datacenter strategies have been planned and shared.  In my opinion, it provides some real substance when all of the vendors start to formulate the methodologies to get to the cloud.

Tuesday morning was the start of the conference officially, and The Keynote addresses for both Tuesday and Wednesday were great.  While there was much that Partners could take away from these, there was some key underlying messages that people should have heard.

CIO’s are starting to understand the need to architect and chargeback (or at a minimum, use chargeback models to get a better understanding of datacenter utilization)…this is going to be a key component to the cloud.

CLOUD

Throughout the event, Cloud was a major focus.  Cloud is being seen as much more than just a hypervisor.  It is truly a chance for organizations to do what they need to do…bring process and control of systems and their lifecycles to their operational procedures.  Cloud was deemed so important, that about 1/3 of the conference focused on Cloud.

A couple of things I kept hearing in regards to the cloud…

The cloud is more than just a hypervisor running Virtual Machines.  While vSphere Infrastructures are great for enabling the Private cloud, the focus on Automation will enable us to make external clouds portable.

This covers the concerns I have heard from many people…I can get my information into the public cloud, but how do I get my information out once it is time to move to another cloud vendor?  The portability that I kept hearing about is what will enable us to move between cloud providers (internal private cloud, external private clouds, or public clouds).

Clouds are not geared to replace IT infrastructures.  We are going to see clouds complement our datacenters operations, and integrate seamlessly with their operations.

Clouds is also things that we are doing today, but just don’t call Cloud.  A virtual infrastructure with properly designed network, SAN, and clusters, can easily be agile and reconfigured to meet any workload, without disrupting operations.  That is pretty cloudesque (I like making up words!).  Now we are just adding the automation component to the definition of cloud, which will help our operations become more mature and cost effective.

AUTOMATION

Automation is the key to the cloud.  Learning business processes, managing virtual machine lifecycles, and management of your applications (servers hosting applications and desktops consuming applications) are major areas we will all need to start focusing on, if we haven’t been focusing on it already.

Automation in the datacenter will enable not only more efficient data center operations, but will force IT staffs analyze their processes as they start to build the automation of their processes.  This sounds like a lot of work to get this done, and it could be.  When you really look at how many things are required to enable your datacenter to operate today, you quickly realize how complicated things are today, and how much automation will simplify many of the tasks you do today.  This is true in all datacenters…virtualized or not.

DESKTOP VIRTUALIZATION

Desktop Virtualization is really taking hold today, with over 80% of CIO’s already committed to virtualizing their desktops or starting this project this year.  Desktop Virtualization will never realize the easy ROI that we had with server virtualization.  But when you break it down, it costs just about the same to replace your desktops with thin clients, run the operating systems in the datacenter, and automate the delivery of applications while simplifying the maintenance of the operating system and applications. This is all about analyzing how operations affect the ongoing cost of maintaining a desktop.  The savings start to be realized once you take advantage of the processes in rolling out updates, not having to worry about large scale deployments of applications or patches.  Lots of organizations have some automation built into their operations, and perhaps even deliver the entire desktop automatically.  That just means they have studied the automation, and can realize the benefits quicker than those who must analyze their processes from scratch, and being their automation journey.

It is great to hear Virtualization vendors say “…desktop virtualization will realize its ROI when we minimize the OpEx spend that surrounds it…”  It is great to hear it is not just an acquisition cost that is being looked at here.  When we compare server virtualization, we have seen tremendous payback in the investments that have been made, and we never even take into account how much efficiency we have added to the IT staff that support these Virtual Infrastructures.

Enjoy the ride for 2010, with Server AND Desktop Virtualization, integrating Business Intelligence and Analytics (to help you automate your operations), Security Software, and Virtual Appliance (or can I say vApps just yet?) to help you achieve your goals, whatever they may be.

All in all, whether you use virtualization, design it, or integrate it in your datacenter builds…this is going to be a fun and exciting year!  Have fun building YOUR Clouds!

Since 1996, Mark Gabryjelski has been involved in design and integration of solutions for clients in all markets. With focus on datacenter optimization, he has worked with companies across all aspects of business. Leading the virtualization trend since 2001 nationally, with a focus in the Northeast corridor, he has been on the bleeding edge of solutions involving network, storage, server, operating system, and application virtualization. Mark is currently Senior IT Consultant at CAS Severn. Contact him here.