CES 9 Virtualization. Reducing costs and improving operations in service provider IT environments

Transcription

1 CES 9 Virtualization Reducing costs and improving operations in service provider IT environments

2 AMDOCS FINANCIAL SERVICES 2 Contents 1. VIRTUALIZATION Introduction What is Server Virtualization? Why Now? The Case for Virtualization Virtualization Vendors Virtualization Challenges in the Service Provider Environment Amdocs Proactive Approach to Virtualization Support Looking Forward Summary...9

3 AMDOCS FINANCIAL SERVICES 3 1. Virtualization 1.1. Introduction Service provider IT departments are being squeezed from two sides. While demand on their computing resources is spiraling as service providers add more and more resourcehungry services to their portfolios, at the same time they face relentless pressure to constantly reduce CAPEX and OPEX. Virtualization is one of the most effective tools available today for addressing growing demand and cost restraints, as it is proven to reduce management and administration costs, and optimize exploitation of existing computing resources What is Server Virtualization? Server virtualization involves using software known as a hypervisor that behaves as computer-on-software. The hypervisor installed on a physical server is able to use and distribute the server s physical resources to logical software based instances called virtual machines. The virtual machine is run and manipulated by the hypervisor and is configured to utilize physical resources. Each virtual machine can have its own specific allocation of resources. Simply put, the hypervisor virtualizes the physical resources to the virtual machine it manages. Certified on VMWare 5.X, Amdocs CES 9 products can be deployed on virtual machines, allowing our customers to enjoy the improved availability and operational efficiencies of managing a virtualized data center. The virtual resources allocated in each virtual machine include hard disk, network interfaces, memory and CPUs. Each virtual machine has a virtual hard disk where the operating system and relevant applications are installed. The virtual machines behave just like physical servers, despite being just logical software units. The virtualization process is transparent to the application and to the operating system.

4 AMDOCS FINANCIAL SERVICES Why Now? Using virtualization, service providers can harness the computational power and core density of Intel s latest XEON CPUs (the E5, E7) to run high-density virtual machines on physical blades, consolidating many physical servers to virtual machines that run on fewer blades and hardware. Additionally, the continuing decline in cost of memory and the availability of powerful tools that simplify administration have made virtualization more attractive. A physical blade running a hypervisor can run multiple virtual machines on a two-socket CPU server up to 1.5 virtual machines per core which translates in today s modern E7 CPUs to 30 virtual machines (E7 10 Core CPU x 2 x 1.5) per server. Virtualization of physical servers, operating system and applications into virtual machines achieves server consolidation. Less and less physical hardware is required to run the workloads as multiple virtual machines run on the same physical servers. As most applications are configured for maximum loads and have a lot of idle time, and accordingly do not use their full CPU and memory capacity, invariably there is room and processing power available for virtual machines to run concurrently on the same physical server, achieving efficiencies and economies of scale. 10 μm CPU process technologies $100 DRAM $/GB 1 μm $ nm $50 10 nm $ $ Figure 1: X86 power growth and memory price decline

5 AMDOCS FINANCIAL SERVICES The Case for Virtualization Virtualization reduces costs and improves operational efficiencies through: Server consolidation High availability and disaster recovery Elasticity Simplifies administration Reduced power requirements 1.5. Virtualization Vendors In recent years VMware has established itself as the de-facto standard for server virtualization in the X86 server market while Intel s CPU architecture has matured and advanced, increasing its core density and CPU computational power and stability. challengers leaders Deploying virtualization typically: Reduces administration by up to 30% Reduces hardware costs by up to 50% Reduces storage by up to 50% VMware Microsoft However, while the value proposition of virtualization is clear, and the industry trend towards virtualization is already well-established, implementing virtualization in missioncritical high volume service provider environments requires careful consideration. Not every application is suitable for virtualization. Certainly for service providers mission critical ability to execute Oracle Parallels Red Hat Citrix Systems applications, virtualization should be introduced only after detailed planning and testing, as any failure could result in substantial financial losses. niche players visionaries completeness of vision As of June 2012 Figure 2: Gartner s X86 virtualization magic quadrant

6 AMDOCS FINANCIAL SERVICES 6 VMware offers not just server consolidation but also a complete operating system and framework that provide the foundational building blocks for virtualization. It can be used to provide elastic and scalable IT infrastructure in-house as well as infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud support. Amdocs, the world-leader in BSS-OSS, has cooperated with VMWare, the world-leader in virtualization, to identify together the optimal strategies service providers should adopt to benefit from virtualization across applications, databases and servers, in production environments. Amdocs will continue the drive for virtualization on top of additional X86 server virtualization vendors based on market demand and technological developments Virtualization Challenges in the Service Provider Environment As the majority of products in the service provider environment are based on standard application or web servers providing online services in addition to pure Java batch processes, virtualization is an attractive and readily implementable solution for growth, performance, economies of scale and cost reduction. With respect to what is known as Hard Real-Time Applications, deployment of virtualization is more challenging. These are low latency applications, such as complex realtime event processing that cannot tolerate even the slightest latency jitter since it could trigger considerable loss of revenue due to failed transactions.

7 AMDOCS FINANCIAL SERVICES Amdocs Proactive Approach to Virtualization Support Amdocs has already taken several steps towards adopting virtualization for our products: Extensive validation of Amdocs products on a virtualized environment to understand the impact of the overhead and usability of virtualization over a regular deployment. Certifying the use of virtualization - Amdocs is pursuing certification as follows: Certification of non-production environments already achieved in previous Amdocs CES releases. Certification of non-real time products for the production environment - This is the emphasis of the CES 9 release. Certification covers Amdocs products for CRM, Ordering, Multi-Channel Self Service and OSS. Implementation of virtualization for these is expected to reduce hardware costs by up to 30%. Certification of advanced virtualization features such as resource load balancing across hosts, live migration of virtual machines and other high availability features that may have an impact on the performance of Amdocs applications. Amdocs has optimized the deployment of these features to best leverage them with minimal impact application behavior. Preparation for certification of database and real-time applications - Amdocs will certify additional parts of our portfolio for virtualization in the future, and will continue to examine the applicability of the various aspects of virtualization to all parts of our portfolio as the technology develops. With CES 9, Amdocs will issue a best practice document that will describe how best to right-size deployments

8 AMDOCS FINANCIAL SERVICES Looking Forward Over the years, data centers have become largely fragmented environments with numerous types of proprietary software hosted inside specialized hardware components. Server virtualization is the first step in simplifying this inherently complex and rigid infrastructure. However, many data center operations remain constrained by dependencies between software and specialized hardware. The result is inflexible, non-scalable, complex to operate and thus costly data centers. Figure 3: Virtualization direction - software-defined datacenter The initial phases of virtualization made the creation and provisioning of virtual machines an easy and fast process. However the requirements around deploying workloads in a production environment add complexity that is related to networking, storage, security, availability and monitoring needs. Virtualization enables a vision of a software-defined data center. Such a data center will expedite the process of provisioning workloads. In a software-defined data center the entire infrastructure will be virtualized and delivered as a service, while the control of the data center is entirely automated by software. Resources that have traditionally been proprietary, dedicated, and hosted - computers, storage, networking, security, and availability - can be pooled, aggregated, and delivered as software, and delivered on-demand. This approach offers automation, flexibility and greater efficiency in the way IT services are delivered. VMware is a pioneer in the transformation towards the software-defined data center era. The software-defined data center strategy is based on virtualizing applications, hardware network appliances (switches and routers, firewalls, load-balancers, WAN accelerators, etc.), and storage equipment, while also providing homogeneous infrastructure delivered across pools of standard x86 hardware, a unified platform optimized for the entire data center fabric, self-programmable infrastructure to dynamically adapt to changing demands, and softwarebased architecture that accounts for resiliency.

9 AMDOCS FINANCIAL SERVICES Summary As IT departments face increasing pressure to reduce CAPEX and OPEX, virtualization technologies enable IT departments to reduce hardware server spending and operating costs, decrease power and cooling needs, and gain administration efficiencies - which all help reduce TCO. By certifying our portfolio of products on top of VMware 5.X for production use and by cooperating closely with VMware, Amdocs will deliver leaner and more competitive solutions to our customers that, with built-in tools, are easier to deploy. This will ensure that our customers maximize the benefits from virtualization.

10 About Amdocs For 30 years, Amdocs has ensured service providers success and embraced their biggest challenges. To win in the connected world, service providers rely on Amdocs to simplify the customer experience, harness the data explosion, stay ahead with new services and improve operational efficiency. The global company uniquely combines a market-leading BSS, OSS and network control product portfolio with value-driven professional services and managed services operations. With revenue of $3.2 billion in fiscal 2012, Amdocs and its 20,000 employees serve customers in more than 60 countries. Amdocs: Embrace Challenge, Experience Success. For more information, visit Amdocs at Amdocs has offices, development and support centers worldwide, including sites in: THE AMERICAS: ASIA PACIFIC: EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: BRAZIL AUSTRALIA Austria ISRAEL SPAIN CANADA CHINA CYPRUS kazakhstan SWEDEN COSTA RICA INDIA CZECH REPUBLIC THE NETHERLANDS UNITED KINGDOM MEXICO JAPAN FRANCE POLAND United Arab Emirates - Dubai UNITED STATES Philippines GERMANY RUSSIA Singapore IRELAND SOUTH AFRICA Taiwan THAILAND VIETNAM For the most up-to-date contact information for all Amdocs offices worldwide, please visit our website at Copyright 2013 Amdocs. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction or distribution other than for intended purposes is prohibited, without the prior written consent of Amdocs. The trademarks and service marks of Amdocs, including the Amdocs mark and logo, Intentional Customer Experience, CES, Clarify, Ensemble, Enabler, Return on Relationship, Intelecable, Collabrent, XACCT, DST Innovis, Stibo Graphic Software, Qpass, Cramer, SigValue, JacobsRimell, ChangingWorlds, jnetx, OpenMarket Inc., MX Telecom Inc., MX Telecom Ltd, Streamezzo, and Bridgewater Systems are the exclusive property of Amdocs, and may not be used without permission. All other marks are the property of their respective owners. Created 01/2013