DATACENTER SOLUTIONS Consolidation through Virtualization with the Sun x64 Server Product Line < Today’s IT organizations are being asked to perform a nearly-impossible juggling act. Deliver more applications but at lower cost. Increase performance but reduce the number of systems to manage. Buy the best server for the job but maintain the flexibil- ity to change which operating systems you support at a moment’s notice. Support Microsoft Windows today, the Solaris™ Operating System tomorrow, and keep your Linux skills well-honed. Fortunately, Sun has a solution that helps increase flexibility and reduce risk. With Sun Fire™ x64 servers powered with AMD Opteron™ processors, you can choose which enterprise operating system to run today — Solaris, Windows, Linux — and change your mind tomorrow. But consoli- date multiple applications and different operating systems onto the same server? It’s an innova- tive way to do more with less, and it’s straightforward with virtualization technologies available from Sun and its partners (Figure 1). Doing More with Less These demands translate into a unique set of Highlights Almost every enterprise depends on its IT challenges for IT organizations: organization to support applications that • Reducing capital expenses by using a • Consolidating multiple appli-- make it run. But in today’s economy, almost smaller number of larger, powerful, more cations onto a smaller number of servers helps IT organizations every business is cutting costs to the bone in cost-effective servers cut cost and complexity, do more order to deliver products and services more • Reducing operating expenses by managing with less. cost-effectively and efficiently than the com- a smaller number of servers and by support- • Sun Fire x64 servers give IT petition. This business climate translates into ing a small, core set of enterprise operating organizations the choice of pressure for IT organizations to do the same. systems running the Solaris Operating • Increasing server utilization by deploying System, Linux, or Microsoft IT organizations are tasked to cut cost and multiple applications onto a single server, Windows, and the flexibility to complexity while delivering high-perform- sharing resources and reducing the number re-deploy the moment their needs change. ance, high-availability, business-critical appli- of wasted CPU cycles cations that perform at lightning speed. • Optimizing flexibility and protecting invest- • IT organizations can consolidate multiple Solaris 10 OS and open ments by choosing servers that can be used source applications onto a single server using Solaris Containers Web Server partitioning technology. lidation Application Server Conso • They can consolidate multiple Linux and Microsoft Windows Database Server Application Server Application applications onto a single server Server Database Separate Servers using VMware ESX Server virtual Server Web machine technology. Virtualization Technology Sun Fire x64 Server Figure 1: Consolidation through virtualization allows different applications to run in secure, isolated environments on a single server platform —like Sun Fire x64 servers 2 Solution Brief: Consolidation through Virtualization sun.com/amd to support one application and operating Users system today and support a different combi- nation tomorrow APPLICATION VIRTUALIZATION • Raising availability levels with local replica- Application tion and reliable servers equipped with redundant components CONTAINERS • Provide for continued operations by distrib- Operating System uting applications geographically VIRTUAL MACHINES Virtualization and Consolidation Hardware In the 1990s, a key strategy in designing Internet architectures was to decompose HARDWARE PARTITIONING applications into separate components. Each component was replicated for availability, Figure 2: Virtualization and partitioning technologies fit between layers of the hardware and hosted in its own security domain (usually a software stack, giving the illusion of a dedicated environment to the layer above. dedicated server), and tuned for optimal per- formance. This resulted in a large number of Consolidation each in a separate, virtualized environment. 1U and larger servers deployed across datacen- Consolidation is the strategy of moving multi- Virtualization allows applications to access the ter environments, each contributing to ineffi- ple applications from separate servers onto a resources they are authorized to use — and ciency: single, shared server. This technique is used by not exceed the boundaries of their security • Each server was sized to handle the maxi- IT organizations wishing to leverage the effi- domain. Virtualization also allows IT organiza- mum expected workload, leaving its CPU ciency and cost effectiveness of larger, more tions to manage resources like CPU, memory, (and other resources) underutilized most of powerful servers. and network bandwidth for greater utilization, the time. and dynamically adjust resource allocation. • Each 1U server required its own infrastruc- In some cases, multiple applications can be This helps IT organizations with the flexibility ture including power supplies and cooling consolidated onto a single application they need to respond quickly to rapidly-chang- fans, resulting in higher initial capital costs instance. For example, one database manage- ing workloads. and ongoing operational costs than with ment system can support different applications larger servers offering better economies of through a set of disjoint tablespaces. In most Virtualization begins with a single environment scale. cases, however, each application targeted to and creates the illusion of multiple ones. • Each server contributed to the number of share a single server requires its own applica- Virtualization can take place at several levels, systems to maintain, licenses to track, and tion instance. For example, separate Web but regardless of level the effect is that the operating system instances to support. server instances are needed to support devel- application or the operating system itself has Virtualization and consolidation techniques opment, staging, and production Web sites so the illusion that it ‘owns’ its environment. have evolved since the 1990s to the point that developers can change the environment Four different virtualization techniques are where today they can be used together to without affecting the business application. used in products from Sun and its partners support Internet architectures that are logi- today (Figure 2): cally decomposed but which physically share Virtualization and Partitioning • Hardware Partitioning creates multiple, the same infrastructure. This helps IT organiza- Consolidation is the goal, but virtualization secure, electrically-isolated domains on a tions achieve the same security, availability, and partitioning are the means by which multi- single server platform. Sun’s Dynamic and performance benefits of decomposed ple applications or application instances can System Domains technology is available on architectures while realizing a whole new level share the same platform and resources without mid-range and high-end UltraSPARC® of efficiency. Virtualization and consolidation interfering with each other. For example, processor-powered servers. are two key tools that help IT organizations do virtualization allows multiple Apache Web • Virtual Machines use software to create the more with less. server instances on the same server each to illusion that each operating system running have their own httpd.conf configuration file, on the virtual machine has its own dedi- 3 Datacenter Solution: Consolidation through Virtualization sun.com/amd cated hardware — despite the fact that port a centrally-located and managed pool UltraSPARC® processor-based products to its each operating system only ‘owns’ a part of of storage that can be securely partitioned x64 servers with AMD Opteron processors. the hardware platform. VMware ESX Server and allocated to servers and applications on is the virtual machine technology high- demand. Unprecedented Opportunity with lighted in this brief. • For years, Sun’s high-end servers have sup- Sun Fire x64 Servers • Containers partition a single operating ported Dynamic System Domains partition- Sun’s x64 servers make Sun a “One-Stop Shop” system instance to give each application the ing technology that allows IT organizations for IT organizations needing to support multi- illusion that it has its own environment and to treat their servers as a single pool of ple operating systems, and also for those its own dedicated set of resources. Solaris™ resources that can be allocated to a set of wishing to consolidate multiple applications Containers is the partitioning technology secure, electrically-isolated domains. onto a smaller number of servers. highlighted in this brief. • The Sun Secure Application Switch — • Application Virtualization refers to the fact N2000 Series virtualizes the network, allow- Sun Fire x64 Servers that many applications support virtualized ing IT organizations to allocate resources Sun’s x64 server product line runs existing 32- environments themselves. Most Web including hardware-accelerated TCP termina- and 64-bit operating systems and applications servers, for example, can host multiple tion and re-assembly, packet- filtering, load- with blinding speed. Built around AMD virtual sites concurrently, each with their balancing, and SSL encryption to multiple, Opteron processors and AMD DirectConnect own root