What do Virtualised Servers of the future look like……

….not a Server.

Well not a server as a CIO knows of it today, not even a blade, the cutting edge of servers as they currently see it…

Our view at Varidion is the world of virtualisation is about to collide head-on with the world of networking as the applications of tomorrow will be run directly on what we know today as an Ethernet switch.  The reasons are simple; as the enterprise continues to deploy highly loaded virtualised servers running hotter and hotter it’s the network that will struggle to keep up with the server, so we have a couple of options:

Improve the network – The quickest way to improving your virtualized data centre as its likely both the topology and the type of switches installed are causing high latency with inefficient topologies.  In the vitualised world, three tier switching models don’t cut the mustard, a flat, low latency, switching infrastructure is the order of the day.  Unfortunately, even the “new way”  has a ceiling of 10Gbp/s or maybe 40Gbp/s in the near future!

More servers – By sharing the network and processing load across more servers a greatly improve performance will clearly be achieved, but so also will the cost.  Every server will need a network port, power and environmentals.  Not the ideal option!

However, there is a third way!   Today’s data centre Ethernet switches deliver significant processing power and Varidion believe if each logical Ethernet port could provide enough processing power to support a virtual appliance, the problem is solved.   An enterprise could literally have hundreds and hundreds of mini virtual servers that will admittedly support a reduced number of session per server but a greatly increased number of servers all sending and receiving at 1 Gbp/s.

Consolidation will occur but who will prevail? Watch this space!