At virtualization.info there’s a special skepticism about virtual appliances in their current form.
No less than three years ago we wrote about the shortcomings and hidden risks of this virtual machine incarnation.
A modular data center may certainly be in the future of IT, but in its implementation, a virtual appliance is not the best way to go there. The lack of enthusiasm from customers, which someone highlighted, is a confirmation.
The VMware effort to enhance the virtual appliance concept with metadata to define security policies and performance SLAs, something the company calls vApp since 2008, is a step in the right direction.But while waiting for the first wave of vApps and its subsequent generations, there’s still much that can be said on this topic.
Christofer Hoff, Director of Cloud and Virtualization Solutions at Cisco, published an interesting article focusing on the current limitations of network virtual appliances. It’s definitively worth a mention here: 1. Most of the virtual network appliances, especially those “ported” from the versions that usually run on dedicated physical hardware (COTS or proprietary) do not provide feature, performance, scale or high-availability parity; most are hobbled or require per-platform customization or re-engineering in order to function.
2. The resilience and high availability options from today’s off-the-shelf virtual connectivity does not pair well with the mobility and dynamism of de-coupled virtual machines; VMs are ultimately temporal and networks don’t like topological instability due to key components moving or disappearing
3. The performance and scale of virtual appliances still suffer when competing for I/O and resources on the same physical hosts as the guests they attempt to protect
4. Virtual connectivity is a generally a function of the VMM (or a loadable module/domain therein.) The architecture of the VMM has dramatic impact upon the architecture of the software designed to provide the connectivity and vice versa.
Read more: virtualization.info
No less than three years ago we wrote about the shortcomings and hidden risks of this virtual machine incarnation.
A modular data center may certainly be in the future of IT, but in its implementation, a virtual appliance is not the best way to go there. The lack of enthusiasm from customers, which someone highlighted, is a confirmation.
The VMware effort to enhance the virtual appliance concept with metadata to define security policies and performance SLAs, something the company calls vApp since 2008, is a step in the right direction.But while waiting for the first wave of vApps and its subsequent generations, there’s still much that can be said on this topic.
Christofer Hoff, Director of Cloud and Virtualization Solutions at Cisco, published an interesting article focusing on the current limitations of network virtual appliances. It’s definitively worth a mention here: 1. Most of the virtual network appliances, especially those “ported” from the versions that usually run on dedicated physical hardware (COTS or proprietary) do not provide feature, performance, scale or high-availability parity; most are hobbled or require per-platform customization or re-engineering in order to function.
2. The resilience and high availability options from today’s off-the-shelf virtual connectivity does not pair well with the mobility and dynamism of de-coupled virtual machines; VMs are ultimately temporal and networks don’t like topological instability due to key components moving or disappearing
3. The performance and scale of virtual appliances still suffer when competing for I/O and resources on the same physical hosts as the guests they attempt to protect
4. Virtual connectivity is a generally a function of the VMM (or a loadable module/domain therein.) The architecture of the VMM has dramatic impact upon the architecture of the software designed to provide the connectivity and vice versa.
Read more: virtualization.info