WHITEPAPER. Beyond Infrastructure Virtualization Platform Virtualization, PaaS and DevOps

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1 WHITEPAPER Beyond Infrastructure Virtualization Platform Virtualization, PaaS and DevOps

2 Table of Contents 3 Business Demands and IT Challenges 6 State of the Art 6 Use Case: Large Bank 7 Use Case: Large Insurance Company 7 Use Case: Leading Technology Company 7 Conclusion

3 Beyond Infrastructure Virtualization Platform Virtualization, PaaS and DevOps Business Demands and IT Challenges Infrastructure virtualization will no longer get the job done by itself in the competitive, globalized business environment. In a typical application services stack, agility and costefficiency are hindered above the Infrastructure layer in the platform and application services layers. Infrastructure virtualization remains the right foundation, but the next logical step for application services is extending virtualization to the platform layer for Platform as a Service (PaaS) and to enable continuous delivery of application services (DevOps). TIBCO Silver Fabric is an enterprise-class platform technology that enables PaaS and DevOps for any platform, in any type of cloud. Business demands give rise to following specific IT challenges: Highly reliable, yet also cost-efficient infrastructure Agile delivery of infrastructure and platform services Continuous delivery of fast-changing application services In response, the following innovative solutions have evolved: Infrastructure Virtualization Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Automated configuration management Automated distributed orchestration Platform as a Service (PaaS) Continuous application service deployment (DevOps) 3

4 WHITEPAPER Infrastructure Virtualization Traditional delivery of the software stack consists of the operating system layer tightly coupled to underlying hardware. Infrastructure virtualization interjects a new abstract layer between the OS and hardware called the hypervisor which decouples the two. Figure 1. Virtualized software stack Infrastructure virtualization offers these key benefits: Underutilized physical servers are consolidated for cost savings High-availability (HA) in the case of hardware failures Agile creation of new VMs However, infrastructure virtualization does not address key challenges in the configuration management, orchestration, runtime management, health and performance monitoring of middleware platforms, and the continuous deployment of application services. Nor does it offer any automated elasticity in the delivery of application services in the face of varying demand. Attempts to address infrastructure virtualization limitations by creating numerous golden images has only led to a proliferation of images, causing a drag on productivity and cost efficiency. 4

5 Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) An alternative to virtualization is to use an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering from a public cloud vendor such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Rackspace. This of course requires software stacks configured and run in the public cloud. Infrastructure virtualization technology can be used to enable IaaS within a private cloud inside an enterprise data center, behind the firewall. Automated Configuration Management The impetus behind automated configuration management is use of model-driven software constructs to automate system administration tasks traditionally performed manually using home grown scripts. This obviates the need for a large number of golden images as one could start with simple OS images, create a baseline virtual machine, and configure the complete software stack inside the virtual machines using automated configuration management. Automated Distributed Orchestration In order to create logically inter-connected distributed stacks required by business application services, automatic configuration management tasks need to be orchestrated in parallel across a number of different machines. This orchestration needs to be automated and synchronized. Platform as a Service (PaaS) An alternative to the methods above is to use a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering in a public cloud. This typically requires migration of application services to the target PaaS and thus involves significant application services development efforts. An alternative to using public PaaS offerings is to build a private PaaS offering, based on your choice of IaaS layer and platforms. Continuous Deployment of Application Services (DevOps) The most recent innovation in the delivery of the application services is the idea of continuous deployment of application services into automatically managed platforms through seamless coordination between development engineers and IT. 5

6 State of the Art Silver Fabric combines the innovations discussed above and adds platform virtualization. Silver Fabric virtualizes the use of any platform in any cloud for complete freedom to select any cloud provider, private or public, which best meets desired service level and economic requirements. Silver Fabric enables the following key capabilities: Platform virtualization Automated configuration management of platforms Automated distributed orchestration of platforms Automated runtime management of platforms and application services Automated health and performance monitoring of platform and application services Automated elasticity in platform and application services IaaS management Network management Continuous deployment of application services Use Case: Large Bank A large bank was in flux. The middleware platform for a critical set of business application services had been discontinued by the vendor. IT wanted to migrate to a supported Java EE platform, but had not decided which. In addition, the bank was not sure they wanted to change their application services infrastructure. Certain they wanted to reduce redundant infrastructure dedicated to peak load and disaster recovery, they wanted a solution that would allow flexibility, elasticity, and cost efficiency, and not limit any options. The bank selected Silver Fabric. After deciding on one Java EE platform, the bank used Silver Fabric to successfully migrate application services to the platform. The bank relied on Silver Fabric to retire all infrastructure dedicated to disaster recovery and reduce the infrastructure dedicated to peak load. During implementation, the bank merged with another large financial institution and had to consolidate multiple data centers. The bank used Silver Fabric to relocate hundreds of application services from one data center to another, migrating services from Solaris SPARC hardware to Red Hat Linux VMware virtual machines, and finishing the entire project in six hours over a weekend for minimal disruption to ongoing services. For the bank, the capabilities provided by Silver Fabric were unprecedented. 6

7 Use Case: Large Insurance Company A large insurance company ran its most critical business application services on Solaris-x86 physical infrastructure, which needed to be retired. They also needed to migrate to Red Hat Linux on VMware virtual machines. In addition, they faced unsustainable growth of their physical server count, and were running out of data center space. The company initially started a Silver Fabric implementation on Solaris-x86 physical infrastructure, then migrated to Red Hat VMware virtual machines. Using Silver Fabric and VMs, they were able to reduce physical servers by 44 percent. More importantly, they were able to put in place a sustainable expansion plan for infrastructure needed to run application services. The most critical factor in bringing infrastructure growth under control was the company s ability to leverage Silver Fabric for reducing infrastructure dedicated to hardware and software failure scenarios and peak load. Use Case: Leading Technology Company Unable to stay current with the latest release of various middleware platforms, this technology company couldn t provide agile platform services to its application services teams. They were also under cost pressures to migrate off a Solaris SPARC platform to Linux VMware, but were reluctant to give up the superb reliability and performance of the SPARC infrastructure. They were looking for a way to consolidate servers without using any virtualization technology. Using Silver Fabric, the company was able to cut time-to-delivery of platform services to application services teams from days to hours to minutes. They were able to consolidate servers without using any hardware virtualization technology. Conclusion Silver Fabric is a major innovation that offers solutions to key IT challenges in the agile, cost-efficient delivery of application services to businesses. It provides complete freedom in the current and future selection of infrastructure, platforms, and clouds used to deliver application services to business. TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ: TIBX) is a provider of infrastructure software for companies to use on-premise or as part of cloud computing environments. Whether it s efficient claims or trade processing, cross-selling products based on real-time customer behavior, or averting a crisis before it happens, TIBCO provides companies the two-second advantage the ability to capture the right information, at the right time and act on it preemptively for a competitive advantage. More than 4,000 customers worldwide rely on TIBCO to manage information, decisions, processes and applications in real time. Learn more at Global Headquarters 3307 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto, CA Tel: Fax: , TIBCO Software, Inc. all rights reserved. TIBCO, the TICO logo, TIBCO Software, and TIBCO Silver Fabric are trademarks or registered trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and company names and marks in this document are the property of their respective owners and mentioned for identification purposes only. 7 exported06may2013