When many people think of cloud computing they immediately think of virtualization and virtual machines in particular. This is completely natural and not at all surprising. After all, one of the core underlying technologies necessary for cloud computing is virtualization. However, it is important not to confuse one element of cloud computing with the entire thing - and this can sometimes happen. Many people have begun to leverage virtual machines in their on premise environment and sometimes begin to call this their private cloud. While virtualization is a substantial step forward and help gets you started down the necessary path of standardization and automation that is essential in a cloud - it is not in and of itself "a cloud". |
The National Institute of Standards and Technology has published its definition of cloud computing. This is a very complete and yet concise definition that includes not only the essential characteristics of a cloud solution but also the service models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) and deployment models (public, private, hybrid, community). It is a great way to get a perspective on cloud and can be useful when considering the solutions of various vendors.
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Let me summarize the essential elements of cloud from this definition here:
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So, this is interesting. Not only is this much more than just virtualization - but virtualization isn't even mentioned in the list explicitly. Not to worry - virtualization is of course important and is included under the resource pooling topic. I would assert that virtualization is also necessary to facilitate the type of on-demand, self-service, elastically scaling resources that are leveraged in a cloud. What is crystal clear from this definition is that there is a lot more to a cloud solution than just virtual images and some hypervisor infrastructure upon which to run them. Somebody must provide the necessary on-demand/self-service capabilities, the network access to these services, the management of the resource pools, enabling true elasticity for running systems, measuring services and so forth. IBM Workload Deployer provides just such capabilities for the on-premise cloud allowing you to efficiently deploy patterns built for virtual systems and virtual applications with deep knowledge of the middleware that is being provisioned to optimize these solutions. Furthermore, Workload Deployer provides the complete lifecycle management from pattern creation, to deployment and provisioning, applying maintenance, resource and license management in the on-premise cloud, elastic scalability, and eventually returning resources to the on-premise cloud to be reused. Workload Deployer is a complete solution for not only server virtualization but of course for cloud computing. |
However, virtualization doesn't have to stop with just virtual machines. It is a general principle that can be applied to more than just servers. At its core, virtualization is really about providing a level of abstraction between some real resources and the consumers of those resources. This is a natural fit when we think of server virtualization and virtual machines. However, there are also substantial benefits to be gained by adopting a similar abstraction between the middleware and the applications themselves - sometimes referred to as application virtualization. |
By application virtualization I mean providing the capabilities to abstract the application from the underlying infrastructure such that it can be elastic, participate in health management policies, and provide agility across the pool of application infrastructure resources. This type of application virtualization is built into our Virtual Application pattern (hence the name) in Workload Deployer and surfaced in solutions via policies (such as scaling and routing), and high availability functions built into the Web Application pattern type. For Virtual Applications these features are fully integrated and optimized functions as are all elements of Virtual Applications. However, similar features have also been available for WebSphere Application Deployments in Virtual System patterns with a special extension. |
WebSphere Virtual Enterprise provides application virtualization for traditional WebSphere ND solutions and this same feature is delivered for Virtual System pattern deployments of WebSphere Application Server by use of the Intelligent Management Pack. Leveraging the capabilities of Workload Deployer with Virtual Systems lets you gain the benefits of server virtualization and to reduce hardware, provide rapid and consistent deployment of entire systems, dynamically adjust resource consumption, and much more. Leveraging the capabilities of the Intelligent Management Pack provides the ability to manage service level agreements with elastic scaling and health management, lower operational costs, and provide for improved application management. These two solutions together provide a powerful combination to improve the management and resiliency of your enterprise applications. |
If you would like to learn more about application virtualization using the Intelligent Management Pack in conjunction with Virtual System Patterns in IWD then please join Keith Smith and myself tomorrow for a webcast on this very topic. Keith is the lead architect on our WebSphere Virtual Enterprise and Intelligent Management Pack products and brings a wealth of experience in this space. So don't miss this opportunity - register here. |
-- Joe Bohn |
IBM Workload Deployer
From archive:
March 2012
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I've started to virtualize my systems .... isn't that a cloud?
jabohn
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Virtual System Patterns in IBM Workload Deployer v3.1
jabohn
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