VMware, Cisco Plan Data Center OS

Lucas123 writes "John Webster over at Computerworld says VMware and Cisco plan to develop a Data Center OS that would consist of a data center cloud populated by servers, storage, and Cisco's 'intelligent' networking gear, all managed by Cisco and its partners — starting with VMware."

Comments

Confused.

[MrCrassic]

Is this implementation going to set up virtual servers aligned as a data center, for which virtual computers can access? Or is this an idea for a completely custom virtualization-based operating system that offloads one huge datacenter onto single computers?

If either is the case, how is that any different than either setting up a test server (or servers) with VMware computers all connected to each other using physical connections, or just having multiple VMware sessions on one computer all interconnected using a single connection?

Re:Confused.

[jhfry]

I think what they mean by "Data Center OS" is that they are developing an OS that utilizes an entire datacenter as it's resource... rather than a series of discrete systems that are linked by their OS's.

Essentially I imagine it will be similar to the way a mainframe acts... a large number of resources, all controlled by a single OS. But instead of a single manufacturer implementation, this will be a proprietary "standard" that allows 3rd party components to be added to the cloud and become available to the "OS"

It's actually a great idea... it's the next evolution from virtualization... Why should a data center admin need to ever concern themselves with the individual servers and storage devices... instead they just add another processor (server), storage device (NAS array), or external network, and the OS will utilize it as it chooses.

I'd imagine that if it is properly executed, it will greatly improve utilization and make managing the data center infinitely easier as all you do is plug the device in and it is automatically assimilated into the system.

All I hope is that they make it a true industry standard, it would suck if only a combination of Cisco, Dell, and EMC devices (for example) would work with the new "OS".

Re:Confused.

[jrexilius]

This is in essence what my company (http://hostedlabs.com/) does. We take it a step further and "cluster" multiple datacenters into a single system. Although what we do is not based on virtualization more on underlying OS and altering programming language internals to make it transparent to the application.

In essence they get to the same place but ours is more limited and geared towards a particular class of application running on the LAMP stack. Also the problems we were trying to solve when building it was not utilization but scaling, availability and performance. We are actually kind of wasteful of hardware currently but as we grow we get more and more efficient. Economies of scale thing.

License costs?

[Colin Smith]

I keep looking, going "holy fuck", then shelving the idea for another year.

I know the architecture I want. Just can't justify it... Xen might.

It's Buzz-word-licious!

[machinecraig]

TFA was pretty short on details - but coupled with this release from the folks at BEA, which basically allows a Weblogic app server to run directly under VMware (no other OS required); it may give a clue as to future direction. I'll take it all with a grain of salt.

Why not...

[symbolset]

A vm on every desktop for serving stuff, with some management glue to make it look like the vm is running on a server in a rack?

Is it not time for that yet?

Xen

[athloi]

A new battle's shaping up. Citrix, known for remote management software, has acquired XenSource. Symantec has a management utility. So does Microsoft/Novell. Should be a good fight.

I'm looking forward to a return to big iron or something like it. The quality of hardware, and the amount of thought that went into the operating system, software and configuration, was much higher. Big Iron is like the aristocracy of computing.

An interesting article from last year on this topic

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2004075,00.asp

Looking forward to the Cert Test!

[SoupIsGood Food]

Since this is Cisco we're talking about, I'm looking forward to long nights memorizing oddball commands to pass the certification test. I can almost feel the one-coffee-too-many burning a slow ulcer into my esophagus while puzzling over the two-and-a-half bibles thick study guide.

Cisco makes mad, crazy money from certification tests. It's a way they can squeeze another dime from both out-of-work and desperate tech workers as well as companies confused as to exactly what their CIO bought when he went to play golf and came home with the Cisco polo shirt (and, oh, yeah, some contract or something. My name is going to be in Business week, and I got a shirt!)

Money all around, and all they need to do is pretend the advances in modern GUIs, scripting tool, shells and command line utilities the rest of the industry uses don't exist.

Now they want to take this esoteric-for-esoteric's-sake aesthetic across the entire enterprise! On the one hand, having that certification will mean a huge pay jump, as no-one will be able to design, deploy or maintain the sumbitch... I won't either, but I'll be making lots of money calling in Cisco consultants to do my job for me. I might get them to bring me a polo shirt. On the other, you will never be able to bring into the server room a new technology that Cisco/VMWare doesn't want in the server room, regardless of whether or not it's the right thing for your organization. It's like Bad Old IBM all over again if this thing gets any traction.