In recent years, we’ve watched virtualization adoption and deployment gather momentum across the board. The emergence of virtualization in all areas of the enterprise data center has resulted in a concurrent, exponential growth of server density. At the same time, transition to Remote Desktops and VDI technologies has driven user computing consolidation in various areas. Both trends (server virtualization and desktop transition) have deep implications for traditional computing, networking and the surrounding ecosystem.
Virtualization accelerates the growth rate and mobility of the data center, compounding the challenges faced by administrators even as it dramatically enhances and expands capacity.
Let’s visit a simple example at the rack level: several years ago a rack of 10 physical servers simply meant that administration was responsible for 10 servers. Nowadays, the same rack (in many cases with the exact same hardware equipment) can house 10 physical hypervisors with 20-30 servers residing on each, resulting in expansion of administrative responsibilities by 2500%. We hear from administrators, operations executives and security teams that the lack of “visible” growth is creating understaffing situations in all areas of IT.
As a result of this sweeping expansion, IT organizations must look to a variety of tools to help administer and simplify the management of this growing computing and networking infrastructure. Clearly, the breadth and depth of virtual environments is much greater than those of comparable physical environments. To address these changes, Net Optics is focused on the state of network access, management and monitoring in both physical and virtual networks.
Many of our customers are avid users and consumers of monitoring and access solutions in the physical network. Since we launched the Phantom Virtualization Tap about 18 months ago, we have learned that virtual network monitoring is a topic that falls between the cracks of current corporate IT departments. In many well-managed enterprises we find (and often help the organization realize) that no one is accountable for the virtual networks and the operations aspect of their performance. Network teams that are designated as responsible for the network tend to focus only on the physical network. The VMware team is responsible for the hypervisor infrastructure. The piece that consists of the inner network of the virtual environment is somewhere in between (the cracks). Cisco has introduced the Nexus 1000V virtual switch, an integral part of the Nexus product line, to help expose the cracks. However, adoption is minimal and growing slowly. What we conclude from the trends we now see is that virtual networks are still somewhat of a conundrum that is yet to unfold and be addressed.
As the virtualization eco-system grows, many instrumentation layer tools are being developed for hypervisors and virtual machines. What we are witnessing, however, is a lack of the higher level view accommodating the de-facto reality of convergence. Today, no organization is either fully physical or fully virtual. No large organization is a single vendor shop. Multiple hypervisors, multiple virtual network device vendors, and a variety of tools exist, and many organizations deploy more than one solution to address the same need. There is currently no standard that everyone adheres to, and even networking protocols are varied and incompatible with one another or with the surrounding tools.
When we came to design our monitoring and access solution for virtual environments, we had more than the mere technical challenge of designing a solution. We needed, in addition, to evaluate the eco-system, trends and directions of virtualization. Within 24 months, three of the major players released advanced networking solutions to allow the bridging of virtual machines to and from the physical network and passing via hypervisor networking. VN-tag, VX-Lan and FabricPath are three of several new mechanisms developed to optimize speed, routing and switching of packets traversing the virtual and physical segments. Although technologically advanced, those tools impede the existing tools and require additional tools or stripping.
Net Optics’ solutions are developed with two goals: provide total access capabilities and enable unrestricted monitoring at any tool of choice, whether virtual or physical.
Learn more about Net Optics Phantom Virtualization Tap
), before we finally land on the physical uplinks. Microsoft’s Hyper-V was a savior for companies looking to reduce operating costs and scale out more applications with greater efficiency. But the limited views of the virtual networks made it difficult for their instrumentation layer tools to see the different types of traffic being passed. Our Phantom Virtualization Tap supported VMware, XenServer, KVM, Oracle and now Microsoft’s Hyper-V to allow Systems/Network admins regain that visibility they once had.
(insert evil laugh here!)
First Day at Microsoft Tech Ed 2012
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