vBlades: Frequently Asked Questions

Q:		What is vBladeTM software? What does it do?
A:		Simply stated, a vBlade is a virtual "slice" of an Egenera Processing BladeTM (pBladeTM ) module running a hypervisor within the Egenera® BladeFrame® system. A virtual server (pServer) is created in Egenera PAN ManagerTM software by combining a logical server definition with virtual processing resources. With the introduction of vBlade software, Egenera customers can define pools of both physical and virtual pBlade modules, and deploy and manage virtual servers on either physical or virtual blades in the same exact manner, across the entire Processing Area Network (PAN). vBlade software is an entirely new way to manage both physical servers and virtual machines by providing a single environment for configuring, allocating, repurposing and managing both types of resources. vBlade software is inherently hypervisor-agnostic. The first implementation is based on XenEnterpriseTM from XenSource, Inc.  Egenera also plans to integrate other hypervisors into PAN Manager for future vBlade implementations.  Availability and timeline will be announced separately.
Q:		What is PAN Manager software?
A:		PAN Manager is Egenera's unique virtualization software that dramatically simplifies the data center by replacing hardware infrastructure with software and eliminating manual, resource-intensive systems administration tasks through integrated automation. Rather than tie specific operating systems and applications to a server, PAN Manager creates pools of compute, storage and network resources that can be dynamically allocated as needed. In conjunction with the BladeFrame system, PAN Manager delivers a fully virtualized computing infrastructure in an integrated, highly-available system. We call this "data center virtualization." PAN Manager also provides integrated, advanced virtualization services such as: N+1 hardware failover, disaster recovery, dynamic repurposing, logical partitioning, resource pooling and a full monitoring and management system.
Q:		How does Egenera differ from VMware?
A:		VMware provides complementary technology to Egenera's data center virtualization infrastructure. Egenera has support for a wide-variety of virtual machine products—including Xen (XenEnterprise from XenSource), VMware, Microsoft Virtual Server and SWsoft. In addition, Egenera announced plans to port VMware ESX Server to the Egenera BladeFrame system, complementing Egenera's virtualized computing architecture with the server virtualization capabilities of VMware ESX Server, and giving customers flexibility in hypervisor technology options. The difference between the two approaches to virtualization is that while hypervisors allow customers to run multiple operating systems securely on a single CPU, they don't address the complexity beneath the CPU and memory, which creates challenges when spanning servers and particularly for implementing disaster recovery. Egenera virtualizes the network and storage resources across servers at the data center/platform level, which is critical for larger, more critical applications, and for smaller applications that are leveraging hypervisor technology, and require high-availability and disaster recovery.
Q:		When will other hypervisor technologies be integrated?
A:		Egenera plans to integrate other hypervisors into PAN Manager for future vBlade implementations, but there are no announcements being made today.
Q:		How does Egenera fit into the virtualization ecosystem?
A:		Egenera provides technology that is both complementary and integral to the management of the virtual data center. Data Center Virtualization Egenera's PAN provides data center virtualization, or the ability to abstract CPU/memory resources from underlying hardware and network configurations. This enables processing resources to be pooled and dynamically assigned to applications based on business demands and service level agreements. It is complemented by: Server Virtualization with Hypervisors / Virtual Machine Technology (Xen, VMware ESX, Microsoft Virtual Server, SWsoft): Hypervisors and virtual machine technology provide processor virtualization, or the ability to logically sub-divide an individual server or blade. This allows multiple operating systems to run securely on the same server thereby raising utilization, essential for enabling server consolidation. Chip-level Virtualization (Intel "VT" and AMD "Pacifica"): "VT" and "Pacifica" enable operating systems to run on hypervisors such as Xen without requiring any changes to the guest operating system. They also enhance the performance of these virtual machines.
Q:		What value does the PAN bring to a virtual machine environment?
A:		Over the past several years, the use of virtual machine or hypervisor technology has become widespread on industry-standard (x86) servers as a means to securely consolidate numerous applications on a single box. Looking into the future, those hundreds of servers will become thousands of virtual machines. The large level of consolidation that is expected (10-20 VMs/server) necessitates that the infrastructure be highly-available. The PAN provides: Simplicity of management—a single and simplified solution for managing the partitioning of CPU/Memory resources, which is important as the sheer volume of virtual machines in the data center increases. High-availability and disaster recovery services now extend beyond physical resources to include virtual machines, which is important as the number of applications consolidated on single processing resources increases. Simplified I/O complexity that provides the flexibility to move virtual machines (reduction in physical complexity and need for clustered file systems).