Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

In the choice of server virtualization, enterprises often choose a cost-effective, stable and reliable platform. And the platform is advanced, open, and will not be bound by a certain manufacturer. Therefore, we will evaluate the stability and reliability, advanced nature and openness of the platform, and finally consider the choice from the perspective of performance-to-price ratio.

Stable and reliable

VMware company was founded in 1998, vSphere as the core product of VMware company, has experienced more than 20 versions, the latest version is vSphere 6.7U1, 100% of the Fortune 500 in use, 100% utilization rate of domestic banks, global enterprise occupancy rate of more than 70%, and every year by Gartner as the absolute leader of the magic quadrant, which proves its market position.

From a technical point of view, vSphere starts from ESXi, and VMware removes all management functions from ESXi in order to make the system more stable, and receives vCenter for management. This advantage is that the bottom layer can be run with the least performance, the function is simpler, and the disk capacity is the least, so ESXi supports installation and operation on SD card, installation and operation on USB disk, and even unplug SD card and USB disk. ESXi can still run. Virtual machines still provide services. This is something that other server manufacturers cannot achieve. As you can see in the following figure, VMware ESXi has only one layer of Hypervisor.

At present, it has been observed that users have been using it for 1564 days, and there are no problems at the bottom, which is enough to prove its stability.

Advanced nature of platform

VMware put forward the concept of SDDC (Software-defined data Center) in 2013. VMware believes that all infrastructure will be virtualized and provided in the form of services, and the control of the data center will be completely automated by software.

Software-defined data centers have changed the mode of operation and management of traditional data centers. The data center has been managed by virtualized software running on x86 servers, a shift that provides great flexibility and control, while increasing efficiency and greatly reducing costs. The most critical components of a software-defined data center are computing, networking, and storage.

Software defined Storage (SDS) product vSAN is only one of the modules. In the future, enterprises can achieve enterprise private cloud infrastructure by combining NSX and vCloud to achieve automated business awareness, service provisioning and other functions. And more and more customers have chosen to deploy NSX and vCloud, and the products can connect with each other and integrate seamlessly.

From a technical point of view, vSphere has integrated the vSAN function, which only needs to be turned on through vCenter, which is easier to operate and does not need to install a control virtual machine like other competitors.

As the trend of cloud in the enterprise has become clear, the enterprise private cloud needs to be more docked with the public cloud in the future. At present, the state-of-the-art Amazon AWS public cloud already provides VMware virtualization services, and enterprises can go to the cloud with one click.

For details, see: https://aws.amazon.com/cn/vmware/details/

Platform openness

As a commercial software, the underlying code of VMware is managed by VMware itself, but it provides a lot of open API interfaces, and almost all hardware and software manufacturers support VMware platform. For example, SAP HANA, which requires high software and hardware authentication, is supported to run in VMware vSphere and vSAN environments. The following picture is taken from the official website of SAP.

Https://www.sap.com/dmc/exp/2014-09-02-hana-hardware/enEN/hci.html

For enterprises, after the construction of the virtualization platform is completed, it is like the building has been built, and the rooms inside can also be used. At this time, fire fighting and means of escape have become the focus of future management. After the system is built, we need to think more about backup and antivirus security. At present, almost all backup vendors support it. For example, all backup vendors support vSAN environment backup in 2017, for example, Gartner backup vendors.

Finally check out the supported servers, which can be viewed through the VMware official compatibility list. Currently supports 21 domestic and foreign server manufacturers, 747 servers, users have sufficient choice.

Https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=vsan&details=1&vsan_type=vsanreadynode&page=1&display_interval=50&sortColumn=Partner&sortOrder=Asc

Domestic and foreign manufacturers

Cost performance analysis

Through the analysis of stability, advancement and development. You should probably know which one to choose. So in the end, we analyze it from the perspective of performance-to-price ratio.

Business system stability: according to Aberdeen Group, a business system is down for an hour, resulting in a loss of up to $260000. Moreover, there are many core business systems running on the super-integration platform, and the loss caused by downtime for one hour may be more. Therefore, we must choose a kind of super-fusion software with the highest stability, which can help enterprises to save costs.

The advanced nature of the platform: the platform has an advanced architecture, in line with the future development. Enterprise private cloud should not only meet the needs of enterprise development, but also meet the future trend. Amazon can represent the most advanced public cloud architecture, and enterprises can have more flexible choices when they shift to cloud data centers in the future.

Openness: as stated in the above document, disaster recovery and antivirus need to be considered in improving the enterprise private cloud. If the super-converged product supports only one backup vendor, there will be less choice at this time. In terms of capacity expansion, vSAN supports x86 servers and 747 servers from 21 domestic and foreign server manufacturers, which can help enterprises save a lot of costs in future operation and maintenance and capacity expansion.

For example: IBM's minicomputer AIX system was famous for its stability at that time, and the core business systems of banks and large enterprises all adopted this solution. Later, users found that the maintenance cost was so high that they could basically buy a new one in three years. If you want to change, there is no other hardware support, you can only buy IBM hardware and IBM services all the time.

Summary: VMware vSAN solution is the most in line with the general enterprise requirements, the lowest total cost of ownership, but also in line with the future data center development trend.

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