Dynamic Behavior And Optimization; Discovery And State Information; Managing Virtual And Physical Resources; Isolation And Encapsulation - Compaq BL10e - HP ProLiant - 512 MB RAM Introduction Manual

and vice-versa. Server virtualization in this context refers to the broad set of technologies that
abstract an entire physical server and allow its resources to be pooled and shared.

Dynamic behavior and optimization

Customers in large environments of enterprise data centers or hosting providers may need to address
the dimension of dynamic behavior. The goal of a dynamic infrastructure includes the ability to
change configurations, connections, and functions of infrastructure elements over time. This dynamic
behavior could be in response to a single exception condition or planned events such as optimizing
for throughput or energy consumption.
The capabilities in this layer typically require more software content than the capabilities in the
foundational layer, and require more integration between the disciplines of server, storage, and
network engineering/management. Server, storage, and networking hardware should be engineered
with the end state of a dynamic infrastructure in mind. The physical elements should increasingly
incorporate technologies to facilitate isolation, modularity, and increased resilience where
appropriate.
To change configurations and infrastructure elements dynamically, the data center must have
capabilities for:
• Collecting discovery and state information

• Managing virtual and physical resources

• Isolating and encapsulating resources
• Analyzing and optimizing resources
• Automation
• Resilience and availability

Discovery and state information

Administrators need to be able to collect information about the infrastructure elements, their state, and
their relationships before they can intelligently manage the infrastructure. While much of this
information is included within foundational management capabilities, additional information—
particularly resource trend information and information about the interrelationships among the
elements—is unique to dynamic control behavior.
Managing virtual and physical resources
Historically, virtual and physical resources have been parallel constructs, using different management
tools that behave differently and show disjointed views of the data center elements. Converging the
behavior and management of virtual and physical resources is critical in implementing a dynamic
data center infrastructure. In an ideal world, virtual and physical servers would be viewed as
equivalent objects, with identical behavior, as would virtualized storage pools and network resources.
Administrators should have design tools that allow a complex infrastructure of virtual and physical
devices to be composed into "templates" and then assembled into specific solutions.
While energy-aware optimization for workload placement on both physical and virtual machines is a
reality today, work is needed on integrating workload and placement awareness into the entire chain
of data center power and cooling operations. This is a longer-term solution that will probably be
available within several years.

Isolation and encapsulation

Isolation and encapsulation have been fundamental underpinnings of software architecture for several
decades, but remain elusive in the realm of physical infrastructure. An ideal architecture could
encapsulate selected regions of the infrastructure so that changes were isolated and encapsulated—
essentially masking changes in one domain from the rest of the environment. For example, while
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