Novell's Virtualization Partnership

Jane Walker writes "The push for a virtual data center and utility computing continued this week as Novell announced that SuSE Linux would have support for Virtual Iron out of the box." Novell has also guaranteed that 'that all existing independent software vendor (ISV) certifications will not be affected.' From the article: "'The applications certification [component] is huge,' said Novell director of data center applications Justin Steinman. 'Customers want to know that their existing applications are not going to break when they deploy their technology [on a virtual server].'"

Comments

The future of the web hosting business

[spinfire]

More and more companies are getting into providing Virtual Private Server business for customers who aren't quite ready for colocation or dedicated server usage, but have outgrown the basic shared hosting or have special needs. This is a good environment for people who need a web hosting environment which they can configure and customize but don't want the overhead of an added machine. Furthermore, because of the nature of server load it is efficient to put lots of customers on one massive machine.

With the rise of the dual core Opteron offerings from AMD one can have a very nice server which can support a huge number of customers. It won't replace colocation for the people who want a very personalized setup or need lots of power but cheap virtual servers will likely gain a higher market share soon.

So why bring it up?

[PCM2]

The only mention of utility computing in TFA is this:

"The utility computing, base data center model everyone is striving for today cannot be done without virtualization," Walsh said.

I guess the idea is that virtualization can be a step in that direction, but otherwise you're sort of offtopic.

Re:2006 is the year of the next bubble, apparently

[lucabrasi999]

Seems like much of the rest of the industry (google, msft terraserver, etc) is moving the other direction, where they put applications that once needed ten large computers across 200 low-end commodity boxes.

Interesting. So, instead of maintaining 10 pieces of hardware, you now have to maintain 200. And, those 200 boxes will be significantly underutilized (probably in the range of 2 to 5% CPU utilization). So, now, your electric bill goes up for TWO reasons:

1) You are using a larger data center, and

2) You are wasting a significant portion of your CPU

If you are working for a company that is not taking advantage of all of the virtualization technology out there, then you are working for a company that is wasting money.