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Other View On The Commoditization of the Hypervisor |
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Wednesday, 23 April 2008
by Michel Roth
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I am a strong believer that virtualization is going to be one the biggest gamechangers we have seen in IT so far. Or has this already happended. One of the key factors in this (future) succes of virtualization is the commoditization of the Hypervisor.
With this omnipresence of hypervisors and other virtualization solution, the true challenge in IT remains the same: management. One of the developments that lies just beyond the horizon that will accelerate the commoditization of the hypervisor even more are the embedded hypervisors. I've written about this before when Dell hinted that they would be giving ESX 3i away for free. Joe Foran has revisited this thought in a very good article: "Hypervisors are destined to become a commodity item, even more so than other
software, because everyone will be utilizing virtualization within the next few
years. Dell and VMware aren’t reacting so much to competition from Virtual Iron,
Hyper-Hype (oops, I mean Hyper-V) or Virtuozzo as they are to Phoenix’s Hyperspace and Xen’s Embedded offering. Hyperspace is the big target here, as it’s embedded
virtualization from a BIOS manufacturer...
VMware saw this coming. They anticipated the inevitable, embedded hypervisor,
which is why 3i came out in the first place. They also know that we, the
computer consuming public, don’t really consider the BIOS when we buy a computer
(be it a personal machine or a server.) We don’t even realize that we pay for
the BIOS, because BIOS builders charge chip- and board-level makers a licensing
fee. That licensing fee per machine is passed on to us in the cost of the board,
and it’s minimal.
I am convinced this is where virtualization is headed: Virtualization will be
a commodity, practically free for all without needing much to install or
configure after the fact. VMware is betting on this core hypervisor as a lead-in
to it’s flagship products. I expect them to focus this new strategy around
transitioning customers from base-level embedded hypervisor to high-end pricing
on management, replication, storage, etc."
Read Joe's entire article here.
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An embedded hypervisor in desktop computers is what will really be the gamechanger for the corporate world. After building the experience with production virtual desktops through VDI, the next obvious step for corporate IT is to re-distribute the newly-centralized virtual desktops back onto the PC through the embedded hypervisor. Machines are refreshed just as they would be with VDI.
I'm a corporate guy building out VDI now. This is where it will end up as long as VECD Thick license is $100 less than VECD Thin license.
Hi Michel,
I think this a definate possibility - once we see the hypervisor become a commodity there is a chance that we will get to much more efficient implementations of VDI?
See - Future vision of VDI? What if the Hypervisor was cheaper and flexible enough to run on BladePC’s/BladeWS’s - could vMotion/XenMotion then switch on demand? @ www.techagility.info
Cheers,
Dave