1. Higher consolidation ratio in virtualization with the latest CPU, memory and servers performance
2. Higher capacity disk drive which significant reduce the number of storage expansion require
3. Virtual I/O which allow the higher utilization of the available bandwidth in data center
4. UCS to provide consolidation and higher capacity of bandwidth to support network and storage utilization in the data center

I may had not included all the facts here, but these should be good enough to point out the changing happening to the current market. I had been impressed with the IBM 3950 M2 previously but now, the Unisys alliances with VMware is another choice which provide similar features for the large environment which contains large number of machines running. The unisys Enterprise Server ES7000 could be the ideal machine in this case. 16 physical cpu sockets which contain 6 core each from Intel Xeon 7400 series of processor, and maximum of 1TB of memory with 8GB memory module in a single server. If we do a calculation, you should able to have 96 cores of CPUs in a single server. This will allow more virtual machine to be consolidated into it.

You can view here for more information about the hardware details.

So, with all the technology available, we should able to have our data center running with less number of server racks for servers, storage and networks. This had significant reduce the space require to run a data center, and allow the users to expand the life cycle of the data center in a longer term. If I have to choose to invest 1 Million on DC expansion VS 1 Million of Virtualization, servers and storage, I will definitely choose the 2nd option which provide additional capacity and reduce the space require by a data center. In a longer term, the real estate cost, power & cooling always cost us a big sum of dollars to keep the data center running.

In the near future, there will be 8 cores and 12 cores CPU in the future market. When it come to the time for us to refresh the current ESX servers which run on quad cores or 6 cores base server, the new servers capacity may be double the current servers that we using, and for sure it will allow more machine to be consolidated.

The IBM x3950 M2 provide with scalable version on 1TB of memory and maximum of 96 cores. The concept of doing this is basically scale as on demand. Each of the X3950 M2 is contained 4 physical CPU sockets which support up to current 6 cores processors from Intel and 256GB of physical memory. The chassis itself allow for further expansion of 3 additional of X3950 M2, and able to combine the resources in term of CPU, Memory and I/O module to become single host. Why is scale on demand? The answer is simple, as you start with 1, and scale to 4. When you scale the machine, it scale the I/O, processing power, and total number of memory, still you are managing single host. As HA/DRS is always important to us, you may end up which only require to manage 2 ESX host from the virtual center with this design. If we compare with the traditional way we manage the ESX host, we might end up managing 8 different ESX host. Of course, there are always pros and cons, but I still think that this idea is not bad as we may looking at virtualizing some powerful machine in the future, which you may require more processors and memory per VM. Personally, I am aiming to even run the heavy database environment in a virtual mode as the reason of doing this is not cost but is the important and flexibility we gain from Virtualization Vs Physical Environment always. At the same time, the competition between Intel and AMD had drive the processors power to be increased to the level that we may not able to fully utilize it in 90% of the environment we have today, except Virtualization. VMware is going to support 256GB per VM in the next release. It will not surprise to have such powerful machine like IBM to provide the resources to those who may require having it. Again, this is quite similar to the Z system as IBM is working on SUSE Linux installable on Z system, and able to provision the Xen’s VM to achieve 1:100 easily( This had been communicated by Novell during the seminar in town previously ). Now we may able to do the same for x86 platform and will be interesting to see whether this concept will be another next hot item to the market.
I may think the combination of IBM X3950 M2 with Xsigo Virtual I/O director will be something as perfect match for massive performance and volume for Virtualization. Of course, I believe the cost of this will require additional consideration for us to proceed further.

If we analyze what happen to the IT spending on the financial and banking environment, you will not surprise to see that the amount of storage, servers, solution and unnecessary equipment been under utilized for every bank around the world. The IT department for financial sector had been comfort live for many years and is time now for them to review and revise their IT spending to ensure higher return from their investment.

Open source or reliable LINUX had not been really high utilize in financial sector are really due to the comfort living of their IT department. Personal point of view, why we have to run something else on the expensive IBM AIX, mainframe, HP UX, Microsoft, Oracle VS the reliable LINUX from x86 or x64 platform to perform the same result? The simple answer is really the mindset from the person.

If we compare the super computing for research and development, you will find that the top 5 fastest computing in the world are build from the x86 or x64 platform whihc you can common found from the market. If you are telling me that the x86 platform is under power, I will say is depend how you manage and deploy it. Looking at SAP, which is the biggest ERP solution around the world, and they even suggest to run on SUSE or Redhat Linux with the MaxDB and etc. My experience on that, it really perform as require and even outperform when we compare to the AIX machine that we previously have. We know the MAXDB are still far behind the Oracle, but at least from the operating system point of view, the LINUX always provide more reliable compare to Windows or proprited UNIX platform from HP and IBM.

Beside these, you may consider the operation maintenance cost, the open standard will provide more flexible and cost effective. Intel and AMD competition have also promise to increase from 6 cores to 12 cores in 2 years time. The processing power are always increasing from time to time.
I will not believe the x86 will not able to handle the load that require to run for any system in the world today, is really depend how we plan it and manage it. Some of the bank I know, they even run their critical machine on LINUX today, and I do not see the reason of others bank can’t. At the same time, Virtualization will provide the better utilization for every single dollar been invested by the business.

Moving forward to the current economy environment, to survive and sustain for IT department is challenge. Instead of sticking with old and expensive solution, it may end up the CEO will just fire the entire IT department and look for outsource vendor. I believe the IT department have to be more open and follow up with the open technology which are much more cost effective compare with those expensive solution. The more dollars for IT to save, that increase the percentage for the job security as well as business effective. Do not forget, IT is to assist the business to generate revenue higher and faster, you may not want to make IT as a cost and is not profitable when it show up in the entire financial summary to the boards. If that does happen, human will stop using IT and prefer to work on paper and pen again as traditional.

1 of the good example, IBM had ship their regional office to Malaysia from Singapore previously, because they saw the potential market grow in this country as well as more talent source in Malaysia for IT related area. Many of the IT giant are setup the IT hub, data center as well as corporate office in Malaysia to enjoy the TAX free holiday as well as cheaper real estate cost and man power resources. There are HP, IBM, DELL, SHELL, EDS, HSBC, Prudential and etc around in Malaysia. Guess what, most of them are even having their production data center in Malaysia itself.

Now we go back to VMware, virtualization is growing in Malaysia, but the present from VMware are more relay on the partner in here. Training are not provided as what been provided in Sinagpore or Australia. Most of the time, even in singapore training center, the attendees are not Singaporean. As economy crisis now, to attend a training in Singapore will be 3 times more expensive for someone who attending a training in Malaysia. If I not mistaken, they have less than 10 employees in malaysia for VMware itself. It just not big enough to attract the confident of the potential giant customer from Malaysia market if you do not present yourself strong enough as your competitor.

Some customer are willing to go with Microsoft Hyper V just because the support, present and Microsoft Malaysia. As you can also see the Teched having in Malaysia every year for SEA, I believe VMware should consider their option to ship the conference location to Malaysia instead of Singapore. Of course, we do hope VMware will consider a VMworld Asia in the future and be held in south east asia.

High Gas/Petrol price become an global issues, no matter which region or which country are you from, this had become and issue which drive the Operational Cost for a Data Center to keep alive from daily basis. In Malaysia, the goverment had recently increase the commercial eletricity for 26 %. Imagine that if you DC consume RM 30000.00 a mount from power perspective, you had to pay RM 37800.00 a month. that had been significant impact the entire IT budgets plus the operational cost. As IT always be the main driver for most business today, we may need to provide a highly efficient Data center solution which able to recover the ROI within the shortest period as possible. Virtualization & Consolidation had come to the point for this.

As if we compare the power consumption from major chip maker like AMD and Intel, the watts per processor had stack and remain the same for the last 3 generations at least. The only improvement they made was really the perfomance per watt. 6 cores and 8 cores had been down the road, I will be strongly encourage who had not adapt to virtualization need to start virtualize or prepare to virtualize 80% of thier production environment.

My environment currently had running the entire DR solution with VMware technology. In production, I do have more than 50 production VM which provide web hosting, middleware, file & print servers and etc. Imagine you had a tight budget with only 50k USD, how many of physical servers will you able to buy from there? and wat about the amount of power you need to absorb on monthly basis? That is the real cost as many of you may had not see the electric bill. For my case, my cost center had to paid for the power bill ourselve.

To achieve 15:1 in VMware is no longer a big thing with the high capacity server from DELL, HP and IBM. By doing this, you can avoid the multi million renovation to expand your DC which may had nearly full. Technology is cool, but again as human being, we had to work smart. High efficient Data Center sometimes do equivalent to High Productivity of the support team too.