Executive Summary: - Groundbreaking announcements at the Microsoft Management Summit 2008 reveal the company's plans to embrace competition while demonstrating the value proposition of a unified management infrastructure. In this exclusive interview, Microsoft's Brad Anderson and Larry Orecklin speak to Microsoft's plans for extending Microsoft System Center to manage Linux and UNIX on physical and virtual machines and enabling System Center Virtual Machine Manager to manage non-native hypervisors, such as VMware's. |
Two highly significant announcements are emerging at this year’s Microsoft Management Summit (MMS): In addition to Windows environments, the System Center family will manage various flavors of Linux and UNIX, both physical and virtual; and System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) will manage non-Microsoft hypervisors such as VMware’s. These and other major developments demonstrate the company’s determination to acquire a competitive advantage by adopting the openness mandated in Hilf’s statement.
In an exclusive interview, Microsoft’s Brad Anderson (general manager, Windows and Enterprise Management Division) and Larry Orecklin (general manager of System Center and virtualization) disclose groundbreaking announcements and discuss how System Center products will embody and advance Microsoft’s strategic commitment to support heterogeneous environments.
Manage Non-Windows Devices
Forster: What MMS System Center announcements do you consider important?
Anderson: One will be our support for systems other than Windows. We’ll be releasing into beta a Microsoft solution that
allows System Center to manage non-Windows
devices. We’re coming to market with
the infrastructure that allows System Center
to manage Linux, Solaris, and other flavors
of UNIX. We’ll provide that infrastructure
for partners to deliver incremental value
on top of System Center. We’re leveraging
the existing back-end systems of \[System
Center\] Operations Manager and \[System
Center\] Configuration Manager \[SCCM\]
and leveraging an open-source agent on
the managed device. We’re working with
the Open Pegasus community to deliver the
integration of that agent into our back-end
systems. That’s where we’ll start to expand
System Center capabilities to manage past
Windows.
Forster: Allowing System Center to manage
heterogeneous systems sounds like the old
“embrace and extend” philosophy.
Orecklin: I think it reflects a maturing of the
industry and of Microsoft. We recognize that
there will be heterogeneity in enterprise environments.
As we’ve become more adopted
and accepted in large data centers—we have
75 percent of the servers in data centers
today—we believe Windows is the best platform
to virtualize your data center. We believe
System Center is the best management platform.
So we want to ensure it’s as easy as
possible for customers to adopt that as their
standard.
Manage Heterogeneous
Hypervisors
Forster: Managing competing OSs is a radical
move for Microsoft, but the business advantage
is clear. How far will this new commitment
to heterogeneity extend?
Anderson: There’s another flavor of heterogeneity that we’ll also be putting into beta for
the next release of VMM. That’s the ability
to manage hypervisors other than Hyper-V.
We’ll be able to do the same types of activities,
tasks, and scenarios if a customer is using
a hypervisor from VMware, using ESX, in
the same way we manage Hyper-V. In the
same way we’re going to extend our reach to
monitor and manage more than Windows,
we’re going to do the same with hypervisors.
We’ll start with VMware and extend that over
time to include XenSource. This VMM beta
will have all the capabilities of intelligent
placement of virtual machines \[VMs\] on your
hardware, plus physical-to-virtual and virtual-
to-virtual migration. You’ll have all those
capabilities independent of whether you’re
using Microsoft’s or VMware’s hypervisor.
Learning Path Windows IT Pro Resources Microsoft Resources |
Forster: When you say virtual-to-virtual
migration, will you be able to migrate a
VM running on ESX to a VM running on
Hyper-V?
Anderson: The answer is absolutely yes.
Forster: When will this version be available?
Orecklin: We’re announcing the beta for
the next version of VMM at MMS. It will
be released to market in Q3, as soon after
Hyper-V as possible.
Forster: Why is interoperability so important
for System Center?
Orecklin: The key is that the hypervisor
will become ubiquitous. We believe management
is that key differentiator that will
allow customers to take an interesting fad
and make it highly leveraged and valued
in their environment. That’s why we want
System Center to be that point from which
you manage the environment. You may have
deployed ESX for a couple of workloads. We
do not want to force you to change that. But
as you add workloads, we want to make it as
easy and economical as possible to do that on
the Windows platform. And if, over time, you
want to change and migrate, fantastic.
Anderson: I’d submit that you cannot achieve
the benefits promised by virtualization without
that strong management solution. It
enables you to recognize the savings. Customers
want one cohesive, unified way to
manage the virtualized environment and the
physical. We’ll be able to do that in Windows,
non-Windows, with Hyper-V, as well as other
hypervisors.
Orecklin: It’s all about infrastructure and cost. Think about the skill sets of your readers. They only need one tool to get their job done. They don’t have to think about scaling up on different kinds of tools and worrying about is this physical or virtual; is it this environment or that environment?
Server Application Virtualization
Forster: Hyper-V is receiving lots of attention,
but Microsoft has also recently made
announcements about other layers of the
virtualization stack. How does System Center
relate to your overall virtualization strategy?
Anderson: We can manage all the way from
bare metal through the application or services
running inside a VM. Other solutions tout
the ability to manage your virtual machine
environment, but the reason you deploy a
VM is because you have a service or application
inside it. We have all the models and
knowledge about the applications running
in the VMs. We understand Exchange’s needs
and SQL’s needs. There are 200 management
packs that are available that run in conjunction
with Operations Manager. So our vision
is to do your VM management, understanding
the needs, characteristics, performance,
and capacity of the application in the VM.
Forster: Last February, you announced that
Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly
Softricity products) would support
virtualized applications on Windows Server,
in addition to client-side applications.
Anderson: The focus was how we isolate
the application from the OS. How do you
take that to the enterprise? SoftGrid will also
support server applications, so we’ll be able
to separate the application from the OS on
the server. Now you’ll have that flexibility to
move applications between servers by keeping
them separate.
Forster: How does that affect IT?
Anderson: The number of images IT will
have to manage will be dramatically lower.
The combination of hardware virtualization
and application virtualization will mean IT
will have a very small number of OS images—
literally a handful. And then they’ll have a
set of images based on VHD \[Virtual Hard
Disk\]. We’ll align the formats for hardware
virtualization and application virtualization,
and you’ll have a set of images of just the application Then, you’ll be able to bring
those together. So think about that from a
servicing model. If you need to patch the OS,
you only have to patch a handful of images
because the applications are separate. If you
need to patch an application, you patch the
single application and don’t have to update
the OS.
Continue on Page 2
Forster: What are the implications for System
Center?
Anderson: At MMS, we’re demonstrating the
combination of Microsoft Application Virtualization
version 4.5 and how it integrates
with the SCCM 2007 R2 release. With Softricity,
you package—we call it “sequence”—the
application. Now from within the Sequencer,
you’ll be able to automatically publish that
application into SCCM, just like you can any
other MSI application. SCCM will automatically
replicate those applications around the
world, down to your end devices, and put
them in your cache. So when the end users
click on the application, they won’t know if
the application is virtual or standard. The other thing we’ve done is taken the ability
to stream down the bits required to get an
application running and then bring the other
bits. This streaming server now becomes a
role inside SCCM.
Forster: How do you summarize the focus of
MMS this year?
Anderson: There are all these different computing
models and ways of accessing data
and applications. System Center can give you
one consistent way to get to your applications
and data, the things you need to do your
work, anytime, anywhere. And we’ll manage
all that intelligently. The goal is a consistent
working experience, independent of device
or location.
The Big Picture
Microsoft is moving from fear of opensource
competition to a newfound
confidence in the value proposition of
a consistent and unified management
infrastructure across servers, clients, and
applications. (For Anderson’s and Orecklin’s perspective on the “Dynamic Desktop”
aspect of the new strategy, see the
Web-exclusive sidebar “System Center and
Anytime, Anywhere, Any-Device Management,”
InstantDoc ID 98434.) This revolution
has been developing for the past
couple of years. But the breakthrough
came when Microsoft realized that virtualization
creates an opportunity to embrace
competition while defining a competitive
edge based on a unified management
infrastructure. Combine that with emphasis
on playing nicely with (some) competitors,
Software + Services, a platform
orientation, and reliance on established
Microsoft skill sets, and the company looks
to have a new determination and energy to
dominate the market.