Nice explanation, Duane.  There is a piece missing, however, that I picked
up from the IBM side of the house.  The virtualization of the hardware will
also be a situation where many companies "share" the same hardware (CPU),
and each uses the hardware at an opportune time.  This would eliminate
paying for more horsepower than you need, yet having all you need when you
actually need it.  So, company A on the East coast uses CPU J in Oklahoma at
6:00 am EST, then company B on the West coast used the same CPU J in
Oklahoma at 6:00 am Pacific time.  Assuming a 3 hour process time window,
company A and company B both get the three hours from a dedicated CPU
without any impact to each other, and neither had to pay the full price for
the CPU.

Yes, it will indeed happen, and it will be the next revolution in IT.



Ray Shahan

"There is so much good in the worst of us,
and so much bad in the best of us,
that it behooves none of us
to talk about the rest of us"
                  --Robert Louis Stevenson?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Duane Percox [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Friday, December 05, 2003 11:24 AM
> To:   [log in to unmask]
> Subject:      Re: [HP3000-L] OT: HP virtual adaptive enterprises
>
> John writes:
>
> >So here we have a group of reasonably intelligent and very
> >experienced technoids on this list, and nobody can understand
> >what HP is driving at. Excuse me, but this only makes me want
> >to sell my HP stock.  Or is this some new marketing method
> >that is ahead of me and I can't grasp with my small,
> >martini-soaked midwestern brain?
>
> You might want to search the archives for posts I have made on
> this topic. The most recent one being 11/20/2003.
>
> Second, you should check out Sun Microsystems and anything they
> have to say about N1, IBM and anything they have to say about
> the Utility Data Center.
>
> All three vendors are working on virtualizing the datacenter. The
> reason you are seeing press releases is there is a race on to see
> who can get there first and establish themselves as the vendor
> to work with to establish a true virtual datacenter.
>
> I think one of the reasons these things are hard to grasp is that
> the typical hpe3000 shop is not the size of those that are pushing
> the vendors for this type of solution. At the SMB level you are
> probably not going to need or get much benefit from such
> virtualization. At this time. However, just as disk virtualization
> started out for the 'big guys', we are now starting to see disk
> array technology become more available for the masses as price
> points drop and improvements in on-board management allow the
> less sophisticated to install/use the technology.
>
>
> Try the following to help grasp this interesting initiative:
>
> * Consider what virtualized disk arrays did for managing disk
>   when you couldn't manage JBOD anymore. The disk array hides
>   the complexity of managing all that disk storage efficiently.
>
>   Take this idea and project it to virtualize your servers in the
>   data center. Instead of designating specific servers for specific
>   applications you would build a pool of servers and the virtualization
>   layer would manage all your resources so your applications get executed
>   on the appropriate server(s) at the time. Servers can be removed/added
>   to the datacenter without concern (hot swappable servers).
>
>   Keep in mind that for all this to work you must have a level of
> cooperation
>   between servers, server components, and application software that
>   currently doesn't exist. This is why this is so ambitious. But, I
> believe
>   it will happen. It's a natural evolution that cannot be stopped.
>
>
> Interesting Sidebar
> -------------------
> I am not fully aware of the inner-think at HP, but the virtualization
> research has been going on within the major vendors for some time.
> If there was a requirement that all HP servers co-exist in the virtual
> data center (even before it was shown any light in customer land) and
> that all server divisions do the engineering/work to play in the
> virtual data center - then I could see the cost for making the HP e3000
> co-exist cost prohibitive and might have played a role in any decisions
> WRT to ending sales.
>
>
> duane 'when can I virtualize the programmers' percox
>
> * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
> * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *

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