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Open-Source Virtualization Moving In

Open-Source Virtualization Moving In

Added 20th Nov 2009

By Nicole Lewis Computerworld (US)

At least some corporate IT departments think so. They're turning to open-source software as part of their virtualization mix. Sure, savings are a big factor, but so is the ability to tweak the software to suit specific requirements.

Open-source virtualization -- tiny but growing

Despite its fans, the overall market for open-source virtualization is very small indeed, though it is expected to grow.

"Open source is less than 5 percent of the overall server-virtualization revenue market share, but could nearly double by 2012," says Alan Dayley, a Gartner Group research director.

Open-source hypervisors including Red Hat 's KVM and Xen -- used by both Citrix and Oracle -- and the management tools running on top of them are gaining strength in both adoption rates and advanced features formerly found only in the likes of VMware, the virtualization market leader, Gartner says.

Gartner's 2008 figures show that for the hypervisor market -- in units, not revenue -- Citrix had 2 percent and Virtual Iron held 1 percent. For 2012, Gartner's projections are that Citrix will hold 6 percent of unit share, and Red Hat 2 percent.

Nevertheless, open-source virtualization will likely always remain a small piece of the pie. "While companies like Citrix and Red Hat are going to see great growth, they are not going to take significant market share," says Gartner analyst Phillip Dawson. "Most of the share change will be between Microsoft and VMware."

And that's a shame, says IDC analyst Gary Chen, because open-source virtualization software has a lot to offer. "A lot of people don't really know how good Citrix XenServer 5.5 has become," says Chen.

One potential huge market for open-source virtualization: cloud service providers. "If you're a large service provider and you're building a cloud, you may have very custom specific needs, [and] you may need to modify the source code and you can go with open source," Chen says.

As companies like Amazon.com build out their cloud computing strategy and virtualize literally thousands of servers in their data center, they will be looking at vendors offering cheaper virtualization solutions with well-developed management tools that they don't have time to build, predicts Bill Claybrook, a former Aberdeen analyst who now has his own technology research firm, New River Marketing Research, based in Concord, Mass.

Under this scenario, he says, Citrix's attractiveness will increase. "Citrix is one company out of all of those vendors that could make some money in cloud computing by providing a free Xen hypervisor and marketing its management tools at a reasonable price," Claybrook says.

Is Oracle's role broadening?

Oracle's recent acquisitions of Virtual Iron and Sun Microsystems, and their respective virtualization technology, could prove interesting long-term. While most observers expect Oracle's open-source virtualization software to be a hit primarily in existing Oracle shops, Sun's large customer base may give Oracle a chance to penetrate a greater number of corporate IT departments, says Claybrook.

"Oracle will probably end up with the largest open source for virtualization installed base of any one of their competitors," Claybrook predicts.

For its part, the University of Massachusetts is running Oracle VM because it is such a huge Oracle shop in general, says Michael Poole, chief technology officer "It made sense to choose Oracle VM . . . especially with the significant number of Oracle applications we support." He says the university has realized significant performance gains and considerable cost reductions in its operations.

UMass is in the middle of an infrastructure-transformation project that consists of many sub-projects. While planning a new primary data center and a more robust disaster-recovery and testing data center, UMass investigated many options and chose to standardize on open-source Xen Virtualization with Oracle VM and Oracle Unbreakable Linux support. UMass started implementing Oracle VM a little over a year ago.

By next summer -- the target date for the infrastructure project's completion -- Poole says the university will reduce its physical servers from 500 to fewer than 300. It also expects to save close to US $100,000 (about Rs. 45 lakhs) a year in power and cooling costs alone. And UMass will have totally switched from VMware over to Oracle VM.

The university's IT infrastructure is managed and monitored with Oracle Enterprise Manager, and UMass makes extensive use of Oracle's PeopleSoft ERP, Oracle Enterprise Linux, Oracle DB, Oracle Real Application Clusters RAC and Oracle WebLogic servers. UMass is adding Oracle Business Intelligence Suite and the Oracle Identity Management Suite to its lineup.

"We're a big Oracle shop. It was important to us to buy into the logic that says Oracle is developing and testing all of their applications on the Oracle infrastructure components, including Oracle VM, and getting the kinks out of the system, or at least reducing them before they get into general release," Poole says.

Poole explains that one of the university's biggest successes to date has been the virtualization of its Blackboard Vista learning management system. Through this, professors distribute content, exchange emails and engage in live discussions over the Internet with 63,000 students.
Server virtualization stats
The rising tide of server virtualization use will lift all boats, including the use of open-source software. There are approximately 5.8 million virtual machines in use today, but by 2012 that number will grow to 58 million, a tenfold leap, Gartner says.
Percentage of servers that run virtualization now - 19 percent
Percentage of servers that will run virtualization next year - 28 percent
Percentage of servers that will run virtualization in 2012 - 50 percent
Source: Gartner Group

Before it was virtualized, the Blackboard Vista application ran on 40 separate Solaris-based application servers. Today the number of physical servers running the application has shrunk to 5 and performance has quadrupled, Poole says.

By using Oracle VM to virtualize Blackboard Vista, Poole says, We've seen a very significant reduction in hardware while at the same time dramatically improving upon performance and scalability." Poole estimates that the difference in the cost of the hardware alone was nearly US $ 300,000 (about Rs. 135 lakhs)

But before going with open-source virtualization, it's important to have a staff with the right Linux/Unix background, recommends Richard Cote, systems architect and technical lead at the University of Massachusetts.

"If I were making a decision at a small company that only had Windows-savvy tech administrators I'd probably look at VMware or HyperV if I did not have a Linux or Unix group to support me. If you come from a traditional Unix-savvy staff then you're going to be drawn toward Xen," Cote says.
Small businesses may find much to like

Server virtualization growth is expected to increase in small- to mid-size businesses, and there, too, open source could gain a foothold.

Gartner classifies small business as companies with 20 to 99 employees and less than US $50 million (about Rs. 225 crore) in revenue. Mid-size companies have 100 to 999 employees and US $ 50 (about Rs. 2500) to US $ 500 million (about Rs. 22500 crore) in revenue. "We expect the [SMB] growth rate for virtualization adoption to be higher than the overall market through 2012," Dayley says.

And even companies that are using VMware and/or Microsoft's HyperV may still find a place for open source.

[Managing multiple virtualization suppliers can be problematic, users and analysts say.]

While analysts continue to speculate, and vendors continue to improve their products, in the end, IT managers will have to make up their minds based on their needs.