tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4285729513030543746.post8014164521896140812..comments2024-03-27T00:26:40.551-07:00Comments on Real Time View: Virtualization? It’s on its way - or is it!Richard Bucklehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17723428627971060930noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4285729513030543746.post-42503457955309778652008-08-05T08:44:00.000-07:002008-08-05T08:44:00.000-07:00Richard -Yes, Pathway is definitely a form of virt...Richard -<BR/><BR/>Yes, Pathway is definitely a form of virtualization. Actually, it is virtualization in two ways:<BR/><BR/>1. On the one hand, Pathway supports multiple applications on a single server. The applications each have their own virtual view of the physical server. That is virtualization in the hypervisor sense, but without a hypervisor.<BR/><BR/>2. On the other hand, a single application can be a server class. Several like servers appear as a single server to the outside world with load balancing and fault tolerance. That is virtualization in another sense. Pathway virtualizes the server class to appear as a single server to the outside world.<BR/><BR/>Wikipedia defines virtualization as an abstraction of a physical process. In the first case above, Pathway abstracts the NonStop server and OS to make it appear to the application that it has its own machine (a virtual machine, in effect). In the second case, Pathway abstracts the server class and makes it look like a single application server. Many servers for one machine (1), or many machines for one server (2).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4285729513030543746.post-44265404315607890012008-08-04T13:09:00.000-07:002008-08-04T13:09:00.000-07:00Bill,Got it! Thanks ...Now, to change tack on you ...Bill,<BR/><BR/>Got it! Thanks ...<BR/><BR/>Now, to change tack on you here - let's look at Pathway. While positioned nicely as an infrastructure / middleware product addresing the needs of users developing transaction processing (tp) applications - can't you imagine that Pathway too helps out here and provides a level of virtualization? After all, Pathway developers never had to understand or deal with the processors supported by Pathway - be it a simple 2 cpu configuration - or a much larger 16 cpu configuration?<BR/><BR/>Thoughts?Richard Bucklehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17723428627971060930noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4285729513030543746.post-39575559442481707332008-08-04T12:25:00.000-07:002008-08-04T12:25:00.000-07:00Richard -Absolutely. If one of your virtualized se...Richard -<BR/><BR/>Absolutely. If one of your virtualized servers is going to be running a mission-critical application, you'd better have a backup. The virtual machine products now generally provide failover facilities. For planned downtime, failover can be seamless with no application downtime. However, following a crash, failover is like a cluster. The database has to be recovered and applications brought up. This can take minutes or more, especially if the crash caused database corruption (which at least has to be checked for).<BR/><BR/>With NonStop, the backup is already there and failure recovery is virtually instantaneous.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4285729513030543746.post-12748220278652996242008-08-04T08:42:00.000-07:002008-08-04T08:42:00.000-07:00Bill,Question - running a number of virtual machin...Bill,<BR/><BR/>Question - running a number of virtual machines on one server, and being vulnerable to a physical server outage; any difference to what a Pathway environment exposed? In other words, a total server failure / outage needed to be accommodated with access to a second server even with NonStop right? So, shouldn't you view, from a planning perspective, the need for a second server when running virtual machines much the same way? Just a thought, Bill.<BR/><BR/>Cheers, and again, thanks ...Richard Bucklehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17723428627971060930noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4285729513030543746.post-28608921580782018532008-07-31T09:13:00.000-07:002008-07-31T09:13:00.000-07:00Richard -A nice take on virtualization - interesti...Richard -<BR/>A nice take on virtualization - interesting analogy to a movie.<BR/>Actually, NonStop systems have been providing the advantages of virtilaization since Tandem first delivered product. What are the touted advantages of virtualization today:<BR/>- Running servers full blast by hosting several applications on a single server. Sound familiar? When was the last time you saw a NonStop system running at 10% of capacity.<BR/>- Simpler management. NonStop systems beat the management complexity of other systems hands down.<BR/>- High availability? With server virtualization, you are putting all of your eggs in one basket. If that server fails, you have lost many applications. Some new products can provide failover, but failover is minutes at best, especially if the failure caused data corruption (which must be checked for). NonStop applications fail over in seconds.<BR/>- Reduced cost? Well, let's see how NonStop blades play out.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com