Presentation by Rob Steward, Vice President of R&D at DataDirect Technologies given at Virtualization World 2008 in NYC. Covers the basics of what is virtualization, what is good about it, what is not good about it, and specifically how you plan for Data Access within virtualized Environments.

1. Don’t Let Inefficient Data Access Undermine Your Virtualization Goals Rob Steward VP, Research & Development DataDirect Technologies

2. Agenda What do I mean by the term “Virtualization”? What is so great about it? What is not so great about it? How do I plan for Data Access in Virtualized Environments? Wrap-up

3. What is Server Virtualization? Virtualization allows multiple operating system instances to run concurrently on a single computer; it is a means of separating hardware from a single operating system. This is what most of us think about when we hear the term Virtualization, but it is really more than this

4. Types of Virtualization Technologies Hardware Virtualization VMWare ESX Server, Xen based technologies, Viridian (Windows Server 2008), etc. OS is fooled into thinking it’s on its own machine.

5. Types of Virtualization Technologies OS Virtualization Solaris Zones, Virtuozzo, Windows Virtual Server, VMWare (free) etc. OS has a shell and runs other instances of itself or other OS.

6. Types of Virtualization Technologies Application Virtualization Repackaging an application into one big “bundle” that runs under application virtualization software. The “bundle” contains ALL application dependencies. Thinstall, InstallFree, Xenocode, etc.

7. Types of Virtualization Technologies Java VM Virtualization BEA LiquidVM runs directly on top of VMWare Hypervisor No Operating System at all!

8. Types of Virtualization Technologies Many, many others including: Desktop virtualization (Citrix, Callista) Storage virtualization Network virtualization Etc… Data Virtualization - Logical to physical mapping Semantic mapping ORM etc.

9. Fully Utilize Hardware IDC says server utilization averages 8-10% The average server spends most of its power consumption heating the room… Consolidate applications Decrease Power, Cooling, and Space requirements Decrease machine administration costs Increase Availability/Reliability Increase isolation for applications Failover capability What is so great about Virtualization?

10. What do I hear from customers? The value of virtualization is real! Entire data centers are disappearing Test and Dev environments can also benefit greatly Management of many VMs can become difficult Installation, configuration, deployment, on a larger scale Performance of applications suffers if data access is not properly planned for these environments Data Access is a HUGE part of our overall application performance Bottlenecks in virtualized environments often end up in the database middleware

11. What is not so great about Virtualization? “Virtual Server Sprawl” After years of consolidating onto single large machines, we are now creating many, many , smaller “machines” Keeping up with many more configurations can become a nightmare

12. What is not so great about Virtualization? Software interoperability Some software is tied to individual machines or particular kinds of hardware Some vendors will not support their software in VM environments Where is my machine? Dynamic virtualization allows for virtual machines to move from one physical machine to another while running Test and Dev environments using VM images to “store” configurations for temporary use

13. What is not so great about Virtualization? Application performance can suffer due to hardware constraints Network I/O Processor Memory Disk I/O The promise of Virtualization IS to make hardware the bottleneck!

14. You need tools for managing virtual machines One big trend we see is setting up a complete OS stack to support a single application There are a lot of new tools on the market today to manage virtualization environments You will need to install and upgrade the same software many more times Even with base images, you have to keep up Difficult configuration of database clients multiplies already difficult problems of managing and maintaining a large set of Virtual Machines.

15. Check with your software vendors before virtualizing Make sure the software supports the specific VM environment(s) you want to use VMWare Solaris Zones AIX LPARs HP Partitions Red Hat EL 5 Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V …

16. Choose your data access middleware carefully Data access middleware performance and scalability are even more key in VM environments With well tuned applications, 75%-95% of the time is spent in the data access middleware and on the network! Data access middleware needs to be tunable Runtime options to control network buffer sizes, etc. often need to be tweaked in VM environments Data access middleware can cause VM management nightmares Look for middleware that supports multiple database versions, has a small footprint, and requires little configuration

17. How Database Middleware Works

18. What’s really going on?

19. Can data access middleware really affect performance?

20. Oracle ODBC Example Even in the case where performance is similar, it can change dramatically on a VM

21. Oracle ODBC Example Higher numbers mean more data processed with the same amount of CPU

22. Oracle ODBC Example Lower numbers mean better scalability

25. Questions?