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On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 10:55:20 -0400 "Matt Shields" <[hidden email]> wrote: > On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Jerry Feldman <[hidden email]> wrote: > > > On Sat, 26 Jul 2008 08:51:40 -0400 > > Kent Borg <[hidden email]> wrote: > > > > > Jerry Feldman wrote: > > > > I think the future of computing will be leaning very heavily on > > > > virtualization. > > > > > > And isn't that strange. Isn't this an indication of major failure in > > > operating system design? > > > > > > I remember when computers were sometimes nearly naked hardware. The > > > idea of having a real OS sounded so good, it would let multiple programs > > > run and isolate them from each other. Time passes, and I am a Linux > > > user. I know a fair amount about it, and it can run tons of different > > > programs at once...yet I run Linux guests on top of Linux hosts. And > > > others do that too. > > > > Back in the 1970s, I ran an IBM data center with VM370 and OS/VS1 as > > the guest production OS. On an unintentional benchmark, we had to rerun > > payroll. The first night we ran it with OS/VS1 as the native OS, and > > the second night ran it under VM370 with online CMS users. (CMS was a > > single user OS used by our developers). We got better throughput on > > OS/VS1 under VM370 than native. I am also aware of a few other > > companies who achieved much better throughput using DOS (IBM's > > mainframe DOS). But, both of these cases were a result of bottlenecks > > in the OS that were alleviated by VM. > > > > The reason I think that virtualization will be the way to go in the > > data center is flexibility. Hardware is constantly evolving to become > > faster, more memory, and smaller. While there will always be some > > legacy systems, the ability of the vurtualization systems to > > reconfigure dynamically over multiple machines gives the data center > > people the capability to remove the physical boundaries, and also the > > ability to bring new hardware into the mix without shutting down. I > > think that one of the talks planned for the event will be on this > > feature. > > > > -- > > -- > > Jerry Feldman <[hidden email]> > > Boston Linux and Unix > > PGP key id: 537C5846 > > PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846 > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > > > I've been thinking along the same lines. In my current job we have a number > of large datacenters and tons of different applications and have always > ordered spcific hardware for specific tasks, this has become quite costly, > especially since some of these applications sit dormant some of the time. > > I evaluated a product called AppLogic (just another vm app) which you build > your virtual infrastucture (firewalls, load balancers, storage, servers) on > top of AppLogic and it handles provisioning and management across all your > servers. It also did some cool stuff like distributing your data across > your entire grid to provide redundancy, that way you didn't need a SAN. But > when I was talking to management, I was trying to get them out of the > thinking of ordering specific hardware for specific projects and think more > along the lines of a giant grid, like Google or Amazon, where you just > provision your applications. Who cares what your hardware is? Let the vm > application worry about properly distributing the load and what the hardware > is doing. Sure you'll still need to monitor the host machines to see when > they need to be replaced, but this makes upgrading hardware so much easier > because, you put the host machine into maintenance mode, vm's get migrated > off, then you remove the host from the cluster. So much simpler and saves a > ton of time, and anything that saves me time I'm all for.
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