Are Hyper-V and App-V the new Windows Servers?
Summary: Is it time for a major computing paradigm shift? A world in which we no longer think of servers and operating systems could be just around the corner.
Bear with me, if you will, for a moment while I put forth an interesting idea concerning Microsoft's future in the cloud computing business marketplace. I believe that traditional server operating systems (OSs) will go out of style long before desktop format computing will and there's a very good reason for that: We just don't need standalone servers anymore. Yes, I realize that's a pretty strong statement in any arena but, as I wrote above, bear with me while I discuss this salient point with you. I think that Microsoft will replace standard, standalone Windows Server with Hyper-V and App-V. And, you'll probably select which one you want to use during installation. Windows vServer 2015 or Windows Application Server 2015?
Click. Restart. Deploy.
Once your system is up and running, you can select through a series of Roles for your new Server, if you selected Windows Application Server 2015, such as Remote Desktop Server, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, Communications Server, Media Server, Active Directory Server, Office Applications Server or Custom Applications Server. The Custom Applications Server would allow you to deploy applications that don't fall into one of the other categories.
The Server OS itself is an application. It's little more than (or hopefully a little less than) Server Core.
Of course, you could deploy either major server type onto physical hardware or into virtual machines.
What other types of servers do you need that you couldn't install via Roles?
I hope you didn't say File or Print. Those services move under application server configurations. Hopefully no one but small companies are still using Windows Servers as File/Print servers.
This scenario of having the choices of Hyper-V or Application Server doesn't currently exist, except in my mind. But, I think it could exist. And, I think Microsoft is smart enough to realize that traditional server deployments are getting a little long in the tooth. Today's businesses, especially those interested in cloud services, want agility. Agility means changing the way you do business. It means changing the way you think about servers, services and infrastructure.
You have to forget traditional terminology and traditional paradigms.
You have to learn a new vocabulary.
You'll deploy services and applications as workloads. You won't install applications onto desktop computers or desktop computing devices, you'll stream applications to them.
Microsoft could usher in a brave new world of computing with a new server paradigm. The stage is set for it. The shift has to be in how they construct the OS. It has to be trimmed down to a simple application container and that's it. The OS becomes a container onto which an application workload is deployed.
And, from my introspection, you'd only need those two choices: Hyper-V or Application Server. Because either you're building an application container or you're building an application container host system.
Whether Microsoft can or will make the transition to this new cloud-oriented computing model is anyone's guess but it certainly seems like they're pulling the hammer back on such technology. With the migration to Windows 8 and Windows Server 8 still looming in the not-so-distant future, it's anyone's guess as to what's next.
What do you think of my fictional scenario? Do you think this is a good direction for Microsoft or is it just my own personal fantasy? Talk back and let me know.
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Talkback
All that
Everyone has a desktop pc, the reason an app isnt streamed from a server rather than it being installed on a server is because it costs an extra ??50-80 per person for a CAL.
I do not get the gist of the article
Yes
HUh What?
nobody uses windows server for file and print?
Yeah
Apparently he's hasn't taken databases into consideration
Let me address the nay-sayers first: Yes it "is" possible to run databases on a virtual server. However, to have reasonable I/O from the disk, you'd have to isolate the database from the rest of the VMs hitting the disk. That mean Raw Data Mappings. Now that you have RDM, you can't dynamically move that VM to another host.
So, boys and girls. What do you get when you create RDMs for a VM which no longer can be moved dynamically? A stand alone server!
If you've got a tiny database, sure; virtualize it. If you have large transactional databases and management insists on virtualizing them, update your resume.
Actually,
Agreed...
databases?
Depends on the level of integration with arrays in the future...
The other is performance on a shared disk. I would argue that this is not a datastore level issue as most arrays will have multiple LUNs presented as datastores from a wide striped disk group so the sharing is at a wider level. Storage DRS makes a start in this area by having tiered levels of service from the disk that can map to what is provisioned from the array. The next logical step is to have a future feature such as Storage IO Control, setting QoS so that the most important and latency sensitive applications do not stutter from other VMs hogging disk queues. From the VM administrator point of view you just set the disk level importance of your VM and let the integration between the hypervisor and the storage do the rest. A natural evolution from where we are today.
Wind the clock forward and all current server based application should be virtualised as the reasons for not doing so are removed year after year. And this document is just arguing that server roles and applications will then naturally become appliances which will only ease deployment, management and support.
Well said
It's already here, just not on Windows.
Wow, the truth hurts, doesn't it?
Disagree
<b>I completely disagree...</b> my company currently uses video encoding cards in servers that are meant to stream and distribute internal corporate propaganda to employee's browsers. Where exactly do I plug a PCI-e adapter into a VM? This is one over-simplified example but I can give plenty more. What about applications that are not certified by their vendor to run in a VM (yes these do exist!)? What about large enterprise applications such as business intelligence and database that under-perform by a huge margin on VM? Or applications that use so much CPU and memory resources, that you can only get a 2 to 1, or 1 to 1 VM to host ratio (such that there is no point in virtualizing)?
I could keep going, but I think you get the point.
Sorry, but your premise is very naive.
Disagree with your Disagree :)
HTML 5 Application Delivery
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBxm5CBPeG8
http://www.strobecorp.com/
VMDirectpath
http://vmwaredevotee.com/2010/08/26/vmdirectpath-io/
This thread will give you an idea of what can work and what sort of capabilities you can expect. - http://communities.vmware.com/thread/297072?start=60&tstart=0. Video cards aren't officially supported, but they can be made to work. If you do go this route it would best to do it with server class hardware as many of those having VMDirectPath issues are using desktop machines.
High CPU/Memory Servers
ESXi 5: 32 vCPUs, 1TB vRAM (Capped at 96GB for licensing)
Most performance issues around virtualized applications come from storage I/O issues. Why virtualize & run 1 BIG VM on a host? You can vMotion to newer, faster hardware as soon as it's available. If you loose the host, it will be automatically restarted on another machine.
Check these out...
http://www.vmware.com/solutions/business-critical-apps/index.html
http://www.vmware.com/technical-resources/performance/benchmarks.html
Just trying to help... :)
Disagree with your disagree to my disagree...
Believe me, I am well aware of VMware's product capabilities, and you don't have to sell me on the merits of virtualization. As much as I am pro-VM, I don't believe it fits every IT scenario and I have learned this first hand. Globally, we have more than 30k servers, about 60% of which are VMs running on VMware. We have one of the largest Lab Manager implementations of any VMware customer. We have VMware engineers that sit onsite right next to our own support teams.
In our environment, we run our own large enterprise software and a new in memory database technology that can use as much as 2TB of RAM. These either don't run well, or don't run at all on VM - we've tried. Our storage solution is NFS to NAS over 10gig ethernet. Storage is not the bottle neck unless you get excessive swapping and the balloon drivers use up too much RAM.
vMotion and even DRS are great technologies, and VMware is a very stable clustered solution - however... it is not flawless. Depending on your consolidation ratio, when you lose a single host you can potentially lose a lot of guest systems. In other words, the scope/scale of outages are much higher in a virtualized environment. When HA and vMotion fail (as rare as it may happen), you essentially have a single point of failure, and in our environment that can mean 60 guest servers go down hard. I'm not bashing VMware and you have valid points, but in my opinion virtualization is not a one-size-fits-all.
The main point of my original mail, is to dispute the author's position that physical servers will go away. I don't believe this. But thanks for the interesting conversation anyway!
Lemme take a shot....
So you're a deluded SCO employee?
Nothing new here
One of our customers recently converted from running SQL Server as part of Server 2008 to running it in a VM that has exclusive access to 2 cores and 4GB RAM. Performance went up a lot, an order of magnitude improvement on some functions.
here we go again...
What part of 'crashed server' don't you get? We've been down the two routes of isolated stand-alone, and this so-called 'cloud' which nothing more than thin client. I don't want to be left out in the weeds with a dead connection to any applications I want to run. On the other hand, the handhelds do not have the storage (currently) to hold all the apps and data. So... we do what we've always been successful at - MIXED MODE. duh. [one size does NOT fit all]
Not Likely... but anything's possible
Cheaper streaming