Want to run more virtualization applications concurrently? Turn to the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor.

As is often the case, the success of a technology depends on the circumstances surrounding it. That certainly seems to be the case with server and application virtualization. The technology offers great promise, but some say its wide-scale adoption has been curtailed due to concerns about performance.

Now, however, a combination of factors seems to be alleviating that concern. In particular, the new Quad-Core AMD Opteron™ processor offers exceptional raw processing power to help ensure that more virtualization applications can run smoothly at the same time.

In addition, companies can look forward to improvements in virtualization performance as operating system and virtualization software solution providers realize the benefits of the virtualizationspecific hardware features in the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor. Improvements in virtualization performance will be welcome as companies incorporate new virtualization technologies, such as virtual appliances and a virtual desktop infrastructure, in their data centers.

FORWARD MOMENTUM
With the acceptance of virtualization increasing, software vendors are adapting their solutions to take advantage of the end-user demand for virtualized applications. In particular, many independent software vendors (ISVs) are offering their solutions as virtual appliances, which are preconfigured applications bundled with an operating system in a virtual machine.

As companies use virtualization to run more of their business applications, performance and performance management are becoming important issues. For this reason, many organizations herald the benefits of combining virtualization with multi-core systems.

"Virtualization and multi-core technologies have a very strong synergy," says Chris Dawn, principal investigator with the BioTeam, a life-sciences industry IT consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass. "When it works well, virtualization can radically change the way that both users and administrators think about what constitutes a computer system."

Dawn and others note that from an application development and deployment standpoint, companies can run multiple operating systems and multiple versions of a single application, in different stages of development, on a single machine.

With the current wide-scale adoption of dual-core systems, some experts say we are beginning to see what virtualization can truly deliver. Many industry experts believe that companies are waiting on quad-core systems for more extensive virtualization deployments of their critical applications.

These musings have led some to believe virtualization and quad-core are made for each other. "Virtualization is the killer app for Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors," states Neil Kelly, senior strategic alliance manager at AMD. "The scalability is great, meaning customers will be able to host more virtual machines than on previousgeneration processor servers."

Others have similar beliefs. "Unlike other previous multi-core introductions that took time to become mainstream as customers changed their application code, virtualization [helps] customers exploit the improvements in x86 processors immediately, [which can] accelerate business benefits and thereby increase adoption rates," says Michelle Bailey, research vice president for IDC's Enterprise Platforms and Datacenter Trends.

The Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor offers additional features that make the case for virtualization even more compelling. For example, AMD Virtualization™ (AMD-V™) technology with Rapid Virtualization Indexing helps virtualized environments operate efficiently. Specifically, one factor dictating overall performance is virtual machine switching time, the time it takes virtualization software to switch from one virtual machine to another. Called a worldswitch, this process can happen smoothly and quickly on AMD Opteron processor-based systems, thanks to AMD-V technology.

Other factors make virtualization with Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors appealing. For one thing, software licensing from virtualization solution providers is well-suited to systems that use Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, as licensing is typically issued by the number of processors, not the number of cores. Therefore, organizations currently using software virtualization solutions on a dual-core system likely won't have to buy additional licenses when they switch to a quad-core system.

Also, Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors use the same socket as Second-Generation AMD Opteron processors. AMD64 technology and AMD's common core strategy help customers minimize the cost of transition and maximize past investments in hardware, says AMD's Kelly.

In addition, making a move from dualcore systems to quad-core systems means that companies can operate more virtual machines in the same data center footprint, using the same amount of electrical power. Since AMD's quad-core processors are offered at the exact same thermal specifications as its dual-core processors - despite doubling the number of cores - space and energy use remain the same.

MORE TO COME
Companies using virtualization software solutions on dual-core systems today can get a performance enhancement from quad-core processors. Down the line, companies can reap additional performance enhancements as new versions of virtualization software, designed to take advantage of the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor's advanced features, are rolled out.

In August, Microsoft®, Novell, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and VMware announced their support for the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor. These vendors plan to leverage the enhanced power management, virtualization and multi-core features of these processors.

At the time of the announcement, Bill Laing, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Server Division, said: "Windows Server 2003 R2 provides full support for the enhanced power management capabilities of Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors today, and the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008 will [hopefully] offer additional power [efficiency] and performance when it is available."

AMD's relationships with these vendors are designed to ensure customers have outof- the-box compatibility between these operating systems and virtual infrastructures. However, the relationships are intended to go further. New versions of these solutions will exploit AMD64 quad-core capabilities.

One area where performance improvements are likely to be realized is a technology called Rapid Virtualization Indexing, formerly known as nested paging tables. Essentially, software that takes advantage of Rapid Virtualization Indexing will be able to receive an additional hardware boost to enhance virtualization performance.

A paging table contains the map that translates virtual memory addresses to physical memory addresses. In the past, each central processing unit had only one paging table, so when virtual machines swapped in and out to use CPU resources, each would have to load and store its corresponding page tables.

The Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor uses Rapid Virtualization Indexing, so each virtual machine maintains its own paging table. Rather than loading new tables and saving them when a system switches from one virtual machine to another, the operating system or virtualization software can supply the identity of the virtual machine being activated, and the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor would flip the tables.

In essence, Rapid Virtualization Indexing removes the function of guest virtual machine management from the virtual machine monitor, the hypervisor, to the processor. This helps remove guest virtual memory management from software to hardware.

In the August announcement, Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and VMware reinforced their support for such features in future releases of their solutions. "VMware has worked closely with AMD to optimize the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor for VMware virtualization products," said Brian Byun, vice president of global partners and solutions at VMware. "Features such as Rapid Virtualization Indexing are designed to [help] enable customers using the industry-leading VMware platform to further increase CPU utilization and provide efficient memory access."

As new applications take advantage of the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor's design to enhance the virtualized environment, concerns about performance are expected to lessen.

VIRTUAL APPLIANCES
Moving forward, more companies will realize the benefits of a new trend in enterprise software delivery that is enabled by virtualization: virtual appliances. Virtual appliances are enterprise applications that have been prebuilt, preconfigured and are ready to run, being packaged with an operating system in a virtual machine. By copying a set of files and powering on the virtual appliance, the application is immediately available.

When using virtual appliances, companies can realize several benefits. For instance, the apps can quickly and easily be deployed to many locations, since virtual appliances are ready to run and don't require any installation or configuration.

Virtual appliances can simplify IT management by offering simpler patch management and enhanced security, and by reducing the time and effort needed to deploy software. Additionally, running virtual appliances on VMware infrastructure can simplify application management. For instance, users can automatically get high availability by virtue of VMware HA, load balancing through VMware DRS, backup using VMware Consolidated Backup and zero-downtime maintenance thanks to VMware VMotion.

Virtual appliances may also provide enhanced security over traditional software by virtue of JeOS, which stands for "just enough OS." The idea is that an ISV can select a stripped-down version of an operating system that includes only the programs and components required to run the specific application. The stripped-down version has fewer targets and exposure points than a full-blown operating system, which could make it more secure.

Virtual appliances have the potential to change the way software is developed, delivered and deployed. Adoption of virtual appliances is steadily on the rise, and VMware is seeing an ever-growing number of visitors to the Virtual Appliance Marketplace (www.vmware.com/appliances), the industry's largest repository of virtual appliances that can be deployed in production or used in evaluations.

The nearly 600 appliances on the marketplace site span the areas of security, content and collaboration, infrastructure, databases and networking. Several leading ISVs are currently developing and distributing their software as virtual appliances.

VIRTUAL DESKTOP INFRASTRUCTURE
Another use of virtualization that could potentially benefit from the performance capabilities of the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor is Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), which runs desktop applications on virtual servers in the data center. In today's world where antivirus signatures must be constantly updated and new patches are issued by application and operating system vendors, keeping desktop computers up to date is a daunting challenge.

In addition, a great deal of data usually resides in the hard drives of users' desktops. Unfortunately, users often don't back up their data. If a desktop hard drive fails, the data might be lost, and that could adversely impact business. Also, government regulations require certain data to be retained, so lost data could result in fines or legal problems.

With the se factors as drivers, companies are looking to VDI. With this technology, users access the applications on virtual servers from a desktop PC or thin client via a remote display protocol.

The advantage of using VDI is that the applications are centrally managed. Desktop administrative and management tasks can be performed in the data center, instead of having to send a member of the IT staff to a user's desk, and applications can be quickly upgraded and patches can be deployed. In addition, security is centralized, and data can be easily backed up.

With developments like these, the future of virtualization seems brighter than ever.