Virtualisation promises to solve this by allowing individual server computers
to pretend to be several ‘virtual’ servers at once. This ensures that each
expensive bit of hardware is used efficiently. As virtual servers are software
creations, new ones can be started just like a program on your PC. No need to
order new hardware or wait for it to arrive.
HP Labs are working on the challenge of scaling this simple model (one
computer, several virtual servers) into a virtual data centre (many computers,
many virtual servers). It’s a tough problem. For example; what happens if a
virtual server suddenly needs a lot of extra horsepower, perhaps in response to
a surge of visitors on a website or rolling up accounts at the end of the year?
How do you ensure that each new virtual server is right for the job and properly
secure? What if a job requires several servers working together?
One of the answers is SmartFrog, developed at HP Labs. It is a framework,
including a language, a software engine and a set of components, for describing
how to build complex systems, such as clusters of interrelated servers. Give it
a recipe for a typical business setup, say a sophisticated database running on
several servers, and it builds properly-configured virtual servers
automatically. It has been specially constructed to deal with the configuration
of massive-scale systems. |
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