C4 Marine Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Nally - KMI Media Group

used to provide multiple “virtual”
servers.
• Efficient use of hardware—in many
cases, hardware is of excess capacity,
causing organizations to have
wasted resources.
• Backup/recovery of the operating
environment is very much simplified—in
most cases, the “guest”
operating systems are simply one or
two files, which can be copied to a
backup media, without logical complications
of copying out multiple
volumes.
• In addition to production deployment,
virtual machines are also
ideal for research and development
and prototyping. Thus, organizations
can create prototypes
and demonstration environment,
before settling for a high cost data
Mature Technology
Regarded as a novelty just a few years
ago, virtualization has become a mature
technology that will be the standard architecture
for IT departments for the foreseeable
future. The many concrete benefits
of virtualizing an infrastructure make this
paradigm shift inevitable, including reduced
administration, better security, greater efficiency,
more uptime, less power and cooling,
and lower costs.
“Virtualization” is a broad term that
includes different types of solutions. Each
provides the benefits of virtualization, but is
better suited to a particular type of customer
circumstances. CDS recognizes four major
subgenres of virtualization:
center and refine such a prototype,
until decisions are made on
the actual architecture of the data
center.
key ProvIders of
vIrtualIzatIon
Virtualization vendors are of different
types; some are specific to operating systems
such as Linux, Windows or Mac OS. Many
are also many types of virtualizations, such
as full virtualization, hardware assisted virtualization,
operating system-level virtualization
and so on.
Key providers include Oracle/Sun, whose
VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization
products for enterprise as well
as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an
extremely feature rich, high performance
product for enterprise customers, it is also
By Charles Rarick, Vice President of Sales and Technology
CDS
• Desktop virtualization, which transparently
provides users a familiar
work environment while centralizing
their applications and data.
• Server virtualization, which unties
operating systems from the underlying
hardware, enhancing flexibility
and utilization
• Storage virtualization, which simplifies
data handling and improves
34 | MIT 15.1
the only professional solution that is freely
available as open source software under the
terms of the GNU General Public License.
Among other providers are VMWare, Rightscale,
eNormany, Gigaspaces and Citrix.
some of the drawBaCks
of vIrtualIzatIon
Some key areas of caution include security
of the environment. Since the machines
can be easily cloned, there is some concern
in the industry about data falling into unauthorized
hands. There are several solutions
to mitigate such as risk, including Oracle’s
Transparent Data Encryption, where the
keys can be stored separately from the virtual
machine’s data files. Other concerns include
misuse of licenses. But with proper license
management enforcement within the organization,
this concern can be overcome.
Virtualization will be the standard architecture for IT
departments for the foreseeable future.
back end data protection and performance.
• Cloud computing, which has
become an abstraction related to
remote access, utility computing,
virtualization and SaaS/IaaS/PaaS.
The objective is that the user does
not necessarily know (or care)
where his/her apps, data, or processing
are, but only that they can
be accessed through a variety of
devices.
Each of these types of virtualization can
be implemented in several different ways,
and combined to maximize the benefits of
the virtualized infrastructure. In missioncritical
environments a fully integrated
platform is essential to ensure high availability,
ease of migration and to future proof
secure solutions.
CDS’ proven approach is called Mission
Application Virtualization Environment
(MAVEN). MAVEN is a preconfigured virtual
environment that automatically detects
hardware failures and transfers critical applications
to other physical servers, restarting
them in 60 seconds or less. Administrators
can upgrade applications and operating systems
centrally, rather than attempting to
manage patches and versions across hundreds
of workstations.
Migration from existing applications to
the virtual MAVEN environment requires
little or no modification. MAVEN also supports
any application, such as Microsoft
Exchange and SQL, COMPOSE, and Oracle
Cross Domain Security Express. MAVEN is
in active deployment at U.S. Coast Guard
Headquarters CG-26, with further deployments
planned at other military sites.
A major benefit of this approach is the ability
to take commodity server hardware from
many IT providers, thus avoiding forklift
upgrades.
With the advent of the cloud-computing
trend, organizations look toward a new
range of possibilities for streamlining data
center operations, as well as new concerns
and threats. With the right expertise cloud
computing offers managed expenses and
administration, or in combination “private
clouds” can also improve productivity while
maintaining security and control. O
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