Religious Issue #5: Application Design
When it comes to providing a virtualized platform for servers, we always need to consider the application. In my experience, I’ve been on each end of the spectrum in terms of designing the application and the impact it brings to the virtualized platform.
One of the options we’ve always had is to have an application that is designed with redundancy built-in. These are the best, as you can meet so many objectives without going through major circus acts on the infrastructure side. Key considerations such as scaling, disaster recovery, separating zones of failure and test environments can be built-in if the right questions are asked. This can usually come with the help of technologies such as load balancers, virtual IP addresses or DNS finesse.
The issue becomes how clear do the benefits need to be before a robust application coupled with an agile infrastructure is a no-brainer? There is usually higher infrastructure and possibly higher application costs to design an application that can cover all of the bases on its own, yet frequently this can be done without significant complexity. Complexity is important, but the benefits of a robust application can outweigh an increase in complexity.
Whether the application be a pool of web servers spread across two sites or more involved as something that includes replicated databases with a globally distributed file content namespace, the situations will always vary but there may be options to achieve absolute nirvana. If the application is able to cover all of the bases, then the virtualized platform doesn’t become irrelevant.
The agile platform can still provide data protection, as well as on-demand scale if needed. I won’t go so far as to call it self-service, but you know what I mean. I’ve been successful in taking the time to ask these applications and dispel any myths about virtual machines (like – DR is built-in). Do you find yourself battling application designers to bake-in all of the rich features that complement the agile infrastructure? Share your comments on the application battle below.
Posted by Rick Vanover on 11/02/2010 at 12:48 PM