By John Humphreys Tim Grieser, IDC, Sponsored by: Intel

IDC OPINION

The rapid spread of software-based server virtualization on Intel Architecture (IA) platforms over the past few years is making virtualization an important solution for scale-out hardware resource sharing. As virtualization is increasingly being used for production workloads, less complex and more efficient implementation strategies for deploying virtualization are being developed. With the uptake of the technology, it is increasingly important that integration occur between the hardware and virtualization layers in order to ensure the most efficient, high-performance, and reliable platform possible. The Intel approach is based on hardware-assisted virtualization, using the newly developed Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT), which provides specific hardware assists to enable virtual machine monitors (VMMs) to operate more efficiently.

INTRODUCTION

Virtualization in the form of partitioning a physical server into multiple virtual servers or virtual machines (VMs) is a long-established and widely accepted solution for hardware resource sharing on large, scale-up server platforms such as zOS and zVM mainframes as well as high-end Unix processors. In such environments, virtualization has evolved over many years to become a stable and robust technology for improving hardware utilization and efficiently processing production workloads, including high-value, mission-critical applications. The history of virtualization on such platforms includes evolution of the basic resource partitioning strategy from software-only implementation, to hardware-assisted partitioning software, to extended hardware-based virtualization support.

RAPID GROWTH OF VIRTUALIZATION

Virtualization has emerged during the past few years as an increasingly important resource-sharing strategy on scale-out Intel Architecture hardware platforms, and it is forecast to grow rapidly in the future, in terms of the number of servers supporting virtual machine capabilities. Today, virtualization on Intel is based largely on software implementations, such as VMMs or software hypervisors, which can partition physical servers into one or more "logical servers" or "virtual machines."

Each virtual machine can contain an image of an operating system (OS), such as Windows or Linux, which in turn can support standard applications. According to IDC, as shown in Figure 1, worldwide shipments of server hardware platforms with software virtualization capabilities are currently forecast to grow rapidly from 172,000 units in 2004 to 1,209,000 units in 2009, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 47.7%. The number of virtualized system images running in partitions is expected to grow from 778,000 in 2004 to 5,107,000 in 2009, a CAGR of 45.7%. In the mix of virtualized server platforms, Windows and Linux images are expected to increase at CAGRs of 51.4% and 55.3%, respectively, whereas Unix images are forecast to increase at a lower CAGR of 34.7%.