Scale-Up Itanium Virtualization
More density...Better manageability...Lower Cost
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Overview
Parallels Solution
Resources & Evidence
Itanium® systems are key components of the overall total enterprise solution for data centers. Itanium-powered servers often host the most mission-critical applications and workloads that businesses depend on. Itanium-based systems provide optimal performance, high-availability and effective cost management, that enable the delivery of service levels that enterprises expect. Itanium systems are often deployed side-by-side with other x86 and x64 servers in the corporate IT infrastructure.
Itanium-based systems are optimized to run high-scale Linux and Windows environments that are highly leveraged in the data center for specific enterprise workloads including:
- Large-scale databases and data warehousing
- Large memory footprint applications
- Performance-sensitive applications which support large number of users
Today’s Itanium 2 processors include Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT) technology extensions, which provide silicon-level support for fundamental virtualization features and functionalities. The combination of Itanium systems and virtualization brings about tremendous benefits to the data center. Yet few virtualization vendors have supported Itanium systems, effectively minimizing the full benefits for customers who implement this platform. Additionally, because hypervisor-based virtualization technologies do not work well with performance-sensitive workloads, customers have, to date, limited the adoption of hypervisor-based virtualization in their IT environment.
Key Areas of Concerns:
- How to maintain or improve the performance of virtualized Itanium systems
- How well do existing Itanium-based servers handle virtualized workloads
- How to streamline an IT infrastructure based on Itanium that consists of multiple OSes
- How to effectively manage a virtualized Itanium-based IT infrastructure
Key Objectives:
- Implement virtualization onto existing hardware and optimize the organization’s existing Itanium investments
- Leveraging the optimal performance from virtualized Itanium systems running Windows or Linux
- Simplify the organization’s software environment and management without comprising IT flexibility and service levels
Due to the fact that Parallels Virtuozzo Containers is implemented on top of Windows or Linux, it offers the lowest overhead of any can virtualization solution, as optimized operating system instructions are passed to the underlying Itanium 2 processors to deliver superior I/O performance to the applications being executed. This enables IT organizations to consolidate and manage performance-sensitive workloads with greater flexibility.
Because customers deploy Itanium servers in mission critical environments, Parallels understands that it must deliver a tested and validated product and the high level of support. Parallels Virtuozzo Containers has been validated on the following OEM Itanium servers:
- HP Integrity
For more information on Parallels support of the HP Integrity platform, see the HP partner page. - SGI Altix
For more information on Parallels support of the SGI Altix platform, see our SGI partner page.
Parallels Virtuozzo Containers and Itanium-based Systems
By virtualizing the OS instead of the hardware, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers enables each physical Itanium-based server to host multiple virtualized servers and applications. Because Itanium-based servers are high-performance systems and Parallels Virtuozzo Containers can scale to take full advantage of the full resources available to the Windows or Linux operating system, data centers can achieve maximum utilization for each virtualized Itanium system to drive enterprise workloads for optimal service levels.
Parallels Virtuozzo Containers provides a lean and efficient virtualization architecture that allows organizations to host large numbers of Windows or Linux applications and heavy server application workloads on each physical server while reducing complexity and simplifying IT management. The relatively low cost of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers complements the flexibility and affordability of Itanium-based servers, giving organizations the flexibility and performance they need without stretching their IT budgets.
Parallels Virtuozzo Containers and high-performance Itanium systems make up a robust solution combination by providing key benefits such as:
- High consolidation ratio/density
An average of 3x the number of virtual servers can be consolidated on each hardware node. - Native performance
The only virtualization solution that effectively consolidates performance-sensitive workloads such as databases, without degradation of performance. - The best manageability
The only solution to decrease OS and server sprawl as well as management time. - Dynamic resource allocation
IT administrators can change system resource parameters in real-time for immediate performance impact. - High-availability
The solution that is relied upon for optimal system and application uptime and reliability to improve business continuity.
Resources
White Paper: Advanced Virtualization and Workload Management on Itanium® 2-based Servers
An Itanium Solutions Alliance white paper that covers the deployment of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers on high-computing Itanium® 2-based servers. The paper includes a discussion on both technologies and recommended usage models.