Perhaps the biggest advancement in server virtualization in 2006 was the introduction of instruction sets designed to provide much better virtualization support at the hardware level. The Intel VT and AMD-V technologies now being integrated into those companies' server-class x86 processors enable the use of hypervisor-managed VMs (virtual machines), without the need to modify the OS to support it. This breakthrough paves the way for hypervisor solutions that promise faster and more efficient virtualization on x86-based systems.
Historically, VMware has had the fullest portfolio of enterprise-class data center products, but Microsoft, Novell, Virtual Iron and XenSource appear to be lining up to take a run at the king of the hill. Novell's SuSE Linux Enterprise Server has integrated support for Xen, and in 2007 products from XenSource and Virtual Iron will be out of beta and offer full Xen solutions that merit evaluation. Microsoft's Virtual Server 2003 R2 should be in full release as well, and the upcoming Longhorn platform will offer new Windows-based hypervisor technology and additional support for Unix-based VMs.
Server virtualization continues to be a hot topic for many data centers, and the promise of easily managed virtual servers combined with more efficient use of hardware resources should spur most IT groups to at least test the virtualization waters in 2007, if they haven't already. But whether these new offerings are a major improvement over the tried-and-true product offered by market leader VMware is yet to be answered. The big challenge for these competing vendors will be to provide the same high-level tools to support physical-to-virtual conversion, VM migration across physical servers and fail-over capabilities with better performance--at a lower cost.
Regardless of the virtualization platform you choose, it's important to test and evaluate the processing and I/O requirements of your applications in a virtual environment to ensure that they will continue to meet your performance and SLA requirements. Fortunately, much of the focus from the new crop of virtualization vendors is being placed on ease of migration, reliability and performance. Added to this is the massive performance growth in the current crop of priced-to-own dual-core and, eventually, quad-core systems. Next year is shaping up to be the time when many of the pieces for enterprise-class server virtualization on the x86 platform will finally fall into place.
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