This presentation, delivered at the Gartner Data Center Conference, provides an overview of the virtualization and cloud adoption lifecycle, explains what virtual stall is and how to breakthrough its roadblocks, and provides a case study about Tessera Technologies.
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Virtualization Adoption: The Secrets of a Successful Journey: A Case Study of Tessera Technologies
1. virtualization adoption: the secrets of a successful journey - a case study of Tessera Technologies, Inc. December 6, 2010 Presenters: Michael Soby, VP CA Virtualization and Cloud Services Michael Parker, Sr. Director, CA Services Marketing
2. agenda 2 overview – the journey from physical to virtual to cloud (P2V2C) “Virtual Stall” – the new challenge in 2010 and beyond breaking through the “Virtual Stall” roadblocks a successful journey toward Cloud – Tessera Technologies, Inc. Q&A
6. “Virtual Sprawl” can lead to “Virtual Stall” Virtual stall occurs when organizations strike a ‘perfect storm’ of challenges that slows their virtualization rollout, or stops it entirely 6
7. where does “Virtual Stall” occur? Business Production Service Quality IT Production Cost Efficiency IT-as-a-Servce Business Agility 100% 80% 60% % Virtualized Workloads Virtual Stall 40% 20% Optimization Automation Consolidation 0% Maturity (adoption) Stages 7
8. why the growing concern about “Virtual Stall”? 8 Copyright 2010 CA Technologies
13. how do you avoid or overcome “virtual stall”? 11 Think beyond the tactical deployment of virtual infrastructure and shift to a more strategic approach
25. Tessera Technologies, Inc. – project scope 16 Develop processes and procedures to support virtual new environments Improve application availability and performance 5 4 Deploy SRM and NetApp Disaster Recovery Solutions 3 Reduce environmental consumption in overloaded data centers 2 Build new cross-regional virtual environments 1
26. the journey began with a framework 17 Design reference architecture to support the workloads and business needs identified in the assess phase Install and configure the solution(s) as specified by the design phase and begin adapting existing or developing new operational processes Execute a broad assessment of the multiple environments to identify potential gaps that will impact adoption and create go forward strategy Identify and develop areas to drive more efficiency, implement means to monitor the usage of resources and harvest capacity through reclamation. Applying the “Cloud Adoption Framework” to Tessera’s virtualization initiative
57. Maximize Resources$1B publicly traded semiconductor company 1 2 3 4 “This project met its stated objectives and has set a good foundation for us to leverage as we move forward in expanding and improving our global delivery capabilities and service quality. In serving as a valued partner, not just as a vendor, 4Base has worked collaboratively with us to position Tessera for success in our growth”. Alayne Gyetvai, CIO Tessera Technologies, Inc.
Focus of each stage is to drive continual and incremental business value. Moving forward to each stage drives further adoption, but requires more rigor and maturity in order to do it correctly.STAGE OVERVIEWStage 1 - Assess, organize and consolidate your current IT serversStage 2 - Optimize into new and impactful servicesStage 3 - Automate as many of the tasks and processes that make senseAccomplishment = ability to realize the dynamic datacenter – on the way to cloud-centric computing
Virtual stall” is a fairly new phenomenon and, to some, an unfamiliar phrase. To fully understand it, we must first consider the recent history of the modern data center. Virtualization entered the data center in a different way than most technologies. Its rapid adoption was driven by the ROI of server consolidation, the flexibility it brings to IT organizations, and in some cases, as a top-down initiative aimed at decreasing the ongoing footprint of the data center. Virtualization came in fast and grew quickly, without going through the normal impact assessments that most technologies have to weather before deployment. One of the outcomes of this is that the impact of virtualization as a new data center architecture has only surfaced during the growth phase, leading to problems and eventually applying the brakes to the whole initiative – virtual stall.
Assess, organize and consolidate your current IT serversOptimize into new and impactful servicesAutomate as many of the tasks and processes that make sensePosition efforts to realize the dynamic datacenter – on the way to cloud-centric computing
Even though virtualization seems like a mature technology the numbers are telling us something else why?
Virtual stall has four main causes:Scalability issues: A single IT team often finds it difficult to scale beyond the 25-30 per cent penetration range. This is due to the combination of lack of automation and reporting in virtualization management tools, creating time-consuming manual processes that are a particular problem when there is a lack of experienced and trained staff.Management issues: The data center is not a place that can be managed manually; there are too many elements to be checked, and too many independencies. And, while there are levels of automation built into the virtualization platform, they can be difficult to define and implement. The lack of automated monitoring, alerting and control becomes more and more of a problem as the overall level of virtualization in the data center increases. Process issues: Enterprise virtualization impacts a wide range of existing data center processes, all of which need to be modified, replaced, or augmented. As long as the virtual environments are small and self-contained, these processes can be manipulated or ignored. But as the environment grows, it reaches a point when they have to be dealt with before real efficiencies can be reached. The more “process-mature” an organization is, the more quickly this point is reached.Coordination issues: Virtualization crosses multiple silos and ultimately requires a level of co-operation and integration that is impossible to achieve with the traditional silo management structure. In addition, the first workloads to be virtualized tend to be less critical ones. However, as environments grow, higher-risk, higher-impact services are virtualized. These tend to have more stakeholders, more politics, more distributed infrastructures, and a greater cost of failure and downtime. Consequently, they require more coordination.
TRANSITION TO SOBY
While much of the industry seems focused on VM sprawl right now, virtual stall has the bigger impact by far. The cost of virtual sprawl is underutilized resources, which, if left unattended, will result in incremental spending in order to accomplish growth objectives. Virtual stall, on the other hand, is the emergence of issues, which, if not dealt with, will prevent organizations from ever achieving their virtualization growth objectives.Companies must think beyond the tactical deployment of a virtual infrastructure and shift to a more strategic approach. Treat virtualization as the data center architecture that it actually is. As early as possible, involve data center stakeholders and incorporate the needed reporting, management, and VM tracking systems that are necessary to scale a virtual environment safely and effectively. It’s the only way to ensure that your virtualization initiatives stay on track.
The key is not looking at this as a point project or a point solution. The PPTA is how we help customers (like Tessera) either not encounter or mitigate Virtual Stall. You need to take a holistic approach to meeting your business needs and the combination is critical. Now if you take the Key Factors listed combined with the areas of focused described you can (and will) develop a successful solution to gain real business value through this technology transformation.