A slow start for virtualisation

However, the advice of early adopters is mostly ignored by Australian SMEs, which are taking the slow and steady approach.

Fear of complexity, migration issues and general ignorance are holding them back, as well as the real issues of cost, incompatibility and lack of virtualisation support from software vendors.

Some doubting Thomases question whether virtualisation is necessary in the short term at all.

“You don’t break the first rule of computing: If it’s working, leave it,” says IDC’s associate vice president, Asia/Pacific Storage, Graham Penn. The other rule of computing – keep it simple ¬– is truer for Australia’s many SMEs than for the enterprise, where a level of complexity is automatically assumed.
A lot of SMEs don’t need virtualisation because their computing requirements are too basic, says Penn. “Just because it’s a success story doesn’t mean everyone should adopt it.”

Virtualisation requires spending money ¬– sometimes quite a lot of money – to save money. “There are people costs, licence costs, maintenance costs, infrastructure costs,” says Penn.

Licences range from US$1000 per two CPUs for the starter edition of Virtual Infrastructure 3, and top out at US$5000 per two CPUs for the enterprise edition. Virtual Center, a management app essential for running more than one VMWare server, costs another US$5000. Mandatory 12-month maintenance charges add another US$1200 per app.

Even if the cost of software of manageable, the budget can double after replacing hardware.

The philosophy behind virtualisation is that you use half as much hardware, but work it twice as hard. In reality this means that the wonders of virtualisation are hamstrung if run on an SME’s current hardware, which is usually single core.

Dual core processors run 80 percent faster, which means plenty more power for virtual machines and a far lower cost per virtual machine. (VMWare, the only vendor of “bare metal” virtualisation software, charges the same for a licence whether it is running on a single or dual core processor.)

Space, power and security drivers aside, the upgrade to virtualisation is therefore most likely to occur over time as part of the SME refresh cycle.
Some resellers are working hard to bring the price of virtualisation down to SMEs’ budgets and tempt them into refreshing earlier.

VMWare systems integrator Oriel is developing a bundle consisting of two HP servers with a small SAN, two Infrastructure 3 enterprise licences and Virtual Center for less than $50,000. The bundle will be targeted “for all the five-server people who think they can’t do” virtualisation, says Oriel managing director Jack Wynne.

Oriel is also running a deal that bundles an HP DL-380 server with VMWare VI3 starter edition for under $9000.

However, a lack of education rather than cost is preventing SMEs from exploring the potential benefits of virtualisation. “That’s the hard thing, to get people to realise what [virtualisation] can do,” says Wynne.

VMWare’s longest serving local partner, Network Systems Integration, has had staff trained up in VMWare products since 2001, before the vendor had an Australian office.

Although an enthusiastic promoter of VMWare’s products, the integrator still receives most of its leads from the vendor itself and not its SME customers.
“A lot of people are still hesitant” to look at virtualisation, particularly in production environments, says NSI’s managing director, Ramon Ali. But “once someone virtualises, we’ve never had them go back,” he adds.

Ali says he believes the greatest obstacle to virtualisation is fear of the unknown. In-house IT staff running a conventional, three-tier environment where they can touch and feel each layer face a seismic shift in moving to one with virtual firewalls and virtual machines.

Virtualisation changes every-day procedures from a security perspective as well as an operational and support perspective. “They would have to go through a mindset change,” says Ali.

Virtualisation also works best with a storage area network (SAN), an area with its own arcane skills that could intimidate a first timer.

The reality is that these skills are largely unnecessary, as VMWare has hidden the command line behind graphical user interfaces. And yet many SMEs still think they have to develop a mid-range capability and understand Unix before virtualising their IT resources, says Ali.

And then there are real barriers to virtualisation, the first of which is migration.

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