IBM pioneered virtualization 40 years ago with mainframes. Since that time the technology has been ported to x86 market, mainly thanks to the effort of VMware.

Now that virtual machines are revolutioning the whole IT industry, IBM is demonstrating its experience putting huge efforts in hypervisors (Virtualization Engine and Xen), management tools (Virtualization Manager and Tivoli Usage and Accounting Manager), desktop solutions (Virtualized Hosted Client Infrastructure), and benchmarking (vConsolidate) development.

virtualization.info met Rob Sauerwalt, Global Brand Manager for IBM System x, to discuss about current company involvement in virtualization and his point of view about raising market trends like virtual appliances and application virtualization in an exclusive interview.

virtualization.info: Before the end of the year IBM and Intel announced a new joint initiative to provide customers new tools to effectively deploy virtualization. The first tool announced has been the benchmarking methodology called vConsolidate. When will vConsolidate be available? Will it only be available to customers purchasing IBM systems?

Rob Sauerwalt: The vConsolidate benchmark methodology is available now. As with other benchmarks - such as SPECweb - anyone can replicate/follow the instructions and get a vConsolidate result. Information on vConsolidate is available on Intel's Web site at http://www.intel.com/technology/itj/2006/v10i3/7-benchmarking/6-vconsolidate.htm/

VI: vConsolidate is able to measure performances on non-IBM systems and/or non-Intel hardware?

RS: Yes, the vConsolidate methodology works on hardware from any x86 vendor. It currently does not encompass non x86 systems.

VI: As you know VMware too is working on a benchmarking methodology called VMmark. How does vConsolidate differs from it? Will measurements obtained through VMmark be comparable with ones obtained from vConsolidate?

RS:Not a lot is publicly known about VMmark, as there is limited access to the methodology because of VMware concerns that the source scripts contain intellectual property. We work very closely with Intel to ensure benchmarks are developed to meet the needs of IBM clients.

I recommend you talk to Tom Adelmeyer at Intel who is heading up the vConsolidate methodology, and is likely in the best position to draw comparisons to other methodologies.

VI: In November, 2006 Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) announced it's working on a standard method for virtualization benchmarking. Both IBM and Intel are members of this working group. How does vConsolidate relate to the SPEC effort?

RS: IBM and Intel have discussed vConsolidate with SPEC at a high level and have shared what we learned while developing the vConsolidate methodology. We plan to continue working with SPEC.org on the development of a benchmark that the entire industry can get behind.

VI: IBM also announced the launch of a Virtualization Resource Center (VRC) in early 2007. What exactly is the VRC? Who will have access to it?

RS: The VRC is an IBM program that is jointly sponsored by IBM, Intel and VMware. The program allows customers to test drive IBM hardware that is preconfigured with VMware, virtual machines and management software. The hardware is shipped to customers for free for a 60 day trial and IBM provides technical and set up assistance.

The VRC pilot program is currently accessible to IBM customers in the Americas and we expect to expand it in the future.

VI: Physical servers aimed at running virtualization platforms must be particularly flexible in configuration and highly reliable. Is IBM already addressing these requirements? Or is it preparing some hardware specifically tailored for virtualization?

RS: In the forty years since IBM pioneered virtualization on the mainframe, we have led the industry in extending the benefits of virtualization - including higher availability, higher utilization, shared I/O, memory caching and so on - to other server architectures and platforms. IBM first onto what we now call our System i architecture and then the System p and, finally, our x86 or System x architecture. Enhancing virtualization was one of the founding principles of IBM's X Architecture. Memory is, as your readers probably know, the precious resource in today's virtualized environment. Through the X3 architecture, IBM scalable (4P+) x86 systems have the ability to provide more physical memory than any other Intel-based server offering from a full line supplier (HP, Dell, etc.)

VI: One emerging trend in virtualization is about so-called "virtual appliances." What is IBM's position on the technology? Will we see the company's products being delivered through virtual appliances anytime soon?

RS: The goal of virtual appliances is really to make it easier to exploit virtualization by delivering the virtual machine with the software in a preconfigured/pre-enabled way. IBM is extending a virtual delivery capability to our customers with an offering from our Tivoli portfolio called IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager. Tivoli Provisioning Manager has been available from IBM for several years and can help deliver some application software through virtual machines. Provisioning Manager was recently updated to include technology from our acquisition of Rembo in 2006 to also push out operating systems to desktops and endpoints. By readily delivering, installing, removing and updating software - both operating systems and application software - managers, depending on how many endpoints software is being installed to, can save minutes, hours, days or even weeks and, because the removal and delivery is almost immediate (it takes only a few seconds) - security can be greatly enhanced as well.

VI: IBM's effort in the open source community, including virtualization technologies like the Xen hypervisor has always been well known. Despite its nature - a large part of Xen developers are employed by a commercial company called XenSource, which signed a partnership deal with Microsoft in August, 2006. What is IBM's perspective on this partnership? Does IBM worry the deal will negatively impact open source virtualization? Did this concern influence IBM's involvement in Xen development?

RS: While Microsoft's engagement in the open source community is commendable, the Microsoft/XenSource partnership has no baring on IBM's contribution to and involvement with Xen, or in any other part of the open source community.

VI: Microsoft announced that it will, a few years from now, release its own hypervisor offering for free in every new copy of Windows Server. Do you think this move will change the virtualization market landscape?

RS: We believe it will positively impact the marketplace. Any time a valuable function, like the Windows Virtual Server, is brought to the market at an attractive price point - especially when it is bundled, for free, into another offering, there will be an increase in adoption. Market activities like this, and like Xen highlight the importance of choice when clients build out a virtualized infrastructure for x86. This is why IBM has built the virtualization management environment to support all choices the client may make. Regardless of what technologies are widely adopted, IBM will be there will to support and optimize their infrastructure.

VI: IBM pioneered virtualization 40 years ago on its mainframes. Since then this technology has evolved, becoming pervasive and taking different forms. So while server virtualization is going more "mainstream", application virtualization is just emerging. In your opinion will customers have to choose between the areas of virtualization or will they coexist? Which trends will we see at that time?

RS: Application virtualization and server virtualization are two trends that are currently advancing independently but will ultimately converge, IBM believes, to the point of mutual dependency. Server virtualization is now, as you suggested, much more mainstream, sometimes even independent of the workload being run on the servers. A better approach to virtualization should be more application dependent - in other words - What is the workload? How much memory is needed? What are the I/O needs?

Application virtualization is perhaps "newer" in terms of awareness but it is making great progress. Think about the phenomenal growth of enterprise grids, the growth of WebSphere XD, Tivoli Workload scheduler and so on. All of these strategies are focused on the workload and moving each workload to the appropriate resource. As architectures like SOA evolve, clients want and, frankly, need to dispatch the right service to the right type of resource, with the needed qualities of service for that workload to get the most from the technology. The "right" resource will often be virtual, no doubt, but putting the right resource at the right time will depend on application virtualization. So, long term, the two virtualization trends will be interdependent.

One possibly major sticking point to the advancement of application virtualization is licensing. IBM announced last summer that we were changing how we licensed and charged for several of our offerings to respond to the changes in how computing is done and several other major and smaller vendors are doing the same thing. Once you remove the traditional mindset that "one server, physical or virtual, equals one license" - you start to see a change in the way the applications and the hardware are used. The sky really is the limit in terms of how far virtualization can go as some of these thoughts emerge in the industry.