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    7 Things ISVs Must Know

    About Virtualization

    July 2010

    V I R T U A L I Z A T I O N B E N E F I T S R E P O R T

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    7 Things ISVs Must Know About Virtualization

    V I R T U A L I Z A T I O N B E N E F I T S R E P O R T / I I

    Table of Contents

    Executive Summary .........................................................................................................................1Introduction.......................................................................................................................................1

    1. Applications just run!................................................................................................................22. Performance is excellent .........................................................................................................23. Virtualization can reduce your development and deployment costs .......................................24. VMware allows you to offer customers a lower TCO application ............................................35. Built-in services can be managed easily using VMware vCenter ............................................36. VMware vSphere simplifies making your applications Cloud-ready........................................47. Virtualization helps shorten sales cycles, lower support costs and improve

    customer satisfaction............................................................................................................5Next Steps........................................................................................................................................6

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    Executive SummaryThis paper describes facts about virtualization and important ways in which independent software vendors

    (ISVs) can benefit from supporting their applications on VMware vSphere.

    IntroductionMoving to a virtual infrastructure continues to be among the top-priority initiatives for enterprise customers.

    You can take advantage of this opportunity by letting current and potential customers know that you support

    their choice to simplify their IT operations with the leader in virtualization, VMware.

    There have been many articles published that describe how customers are using virtualization to run large-

    scale applications and data centers more efficiently, make more effective use of resources, and save

    money. In this document, we will focus on specific benefits that virtualization and support for applications

    running on VMware vSphere can bring to an ISVs business and their customers:

    1. Applications just run!VMware vSphere provides a robust, high performance platform for

    applications running in virtual machines that replicates the environment of practically any x86 operating

    system and physical hardware platform. VMware rigorously tests, certifies, and supports the broadestset of operating systems to run on VMware vSphere. This means most applications run as well or better

    on VMware vSphere as physical hardware, and typically dont require any changes.

    2. Performance is excellent Todays virtual machines can support the most demanding applications

    thanks to enhancements to our award-winning hypervisor. Application scalability limitations can be

    removed by scaling out on multiple virtual machines and enabling multiple instances to share a single

    server.

    3. Virtualization can reduce your development and deployment costsApplications can be

    developed and deployed at a lower cost per application, using less hardware across all environments

    and simplifying administrative processes using automation and libraries of virtual machine configurations

    in development, test, and production phases.

    4. VMware allows you to offer customers a lower TCO applicationServer consolidation, fast server

    provisioning, automation, and better manageability of applications allows applications to run at maximumservice levels with lower implementation costs and operating expenses.

    5. Built-in services can be managed easily using VMware vCenterFrom the desktop to the

    datacenter, industry-leading products, tools, solutions, and services in the VMware suite simplify many of

    the tasks needed to build, test, and deploy enterprise applications. Environments with VMware

    vMotion, HA, DRS, and Site Recovery Manager provide simple-to-use options for cost-effective high

    availability, disaster and site recovery to support customers service levels and business continuity plans.

    This can provide you with an important competitive differentiator.

    6. VMware vSphere simplifies making your applications cloud-ready VMwares customer-proven

    virtualization solutions can uniquely accelerate an organizations transition to the cloud, enabling IT to

    efficiently pool on-demand, self-managed virtual infrastructure, while preserving existing investments.

    ISV applications that run on VMware vSphere have a solid, scalable infrastructure platform that lets

    customers deploy and manage applications in the same way, whether in a companys internal privatecloud or in vSphere-compatible external public clouds.

    7. Virtualization helps ISVs shorten sales cycles, reduce support costs and improve customer

    satisfactionRapid prospect lock-in, fast deployment of your software, and easier customer issue

    resolution are some of the ways in which virtualization revolutionizes the customer experience and can

    result in more sales for your organization.

    The following sections provide more details on each of the top 7 things ISVs need to know about

    virtualization using VMware vSphere.

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    1. Applications just run!

    VMware vSphere provides a robust, high performance platform for applications running in virtual machines

    that replicate the environment of practically any x86 operating system and physical hardware platform.

    VMware rigorously tests, certifies, and supports the broadest set of operating systems to run on VMware

    vSphere.

    Just like a physical computer, a virtual machine hosts its own guest operating system and applications, and

    has all the components found in a physical computer (VGA card, network controller cards, hard disks etc).

    As a result, virtual machines are completely compatible with all standard x86 operating systems,

    applications, and device drivers; so you can use a virtual machine to run all the same software that you

    would run on a physical x86 computer. Our platform is designed so that applications run on a supported

    guest operating system exactly as they do on a physical system.

    Over 170,000 customers run thousands of applications on the VMware virtualization platform today in

    development, testing, production, and disaster recovery environments.

    2. Performance is excellent

    VMware continually improves the performance of VMware ESX, our award-winning hypervisor, with each

    successive release. Todays virtual machines can support the most demanding applications, thanks toperformance capabilities such as:

    8 virtual CPUs and 256 GB of memory per virtual machine

    Performance overhead as low as 5-10% for most of todays applications

    ESX support for greater than 200,000 IOPS

    40 Gbps network bandwidth

    At these levels of performance, more than 95% of the 700,000 applications we have measured in our

    customer base deliver comparable levels of performance running in a virtual machine as on physical

    servers, including the majority of large 8-CPU databases.

    Hardware is continuing to evolve down the path of packing an ever-increasing number of processor cores

    per chip. Unfortunately, very few applications are sufficiently multi-threaded to truly scale to the full capacity

    of these servers. Application scalability limitations can be removed by scaling out on multiple virtualmachines and enabling multiple instances to share a single server. The full CPU capacity of large multi-core

    servers can be leveraged while better utilizing memory and preserving isolation between instances.

    3. Virtualization can reduce your development and deploymentcosts

    Virtualization with VMware vSphere can lower an ISVs overall development costs and speed delivery of

    applications to market. Software development and testing can be accelerated as developers, testers and

    trainers can provision their own machines to rapidly prototype new applications, test software releases on a

    broad range of system configurations, and capture, reproduce and resolve defects more easily.

    VMware vSphere and vCenter Lab Manager provide self-service provisioning and management capabilities

    to internal development teams and are ideally suited to support a broad range of use cases including:

    Support and Helpdesk Operations Troubleshoot customer problems more quickly and improve

    mean time to resolution.

    Training and Education Rapidly provision lab environments for hands-on training classes.

    Product Demos Demonstrate complex application environments in a reliable and repeatable manner.

    Software Evaluations Improve lead conversion rates with online evaluation portals powered by Lab

    Manager.

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    Policy-based access control reduces administrative burden for IT, lowers infrastructure management costs

    and empowers project teams to deliver applications more quickly with greater agility. And with streamlined

    workflows and improved team collaboration, ISVs can get to the market faster with new applications.

    Lab Manager also addresses key use cases and business challenges for ISV application release

    management, for example:

    Rapid provisioning of a multiple virtual machine application system onto a pool of ESX servers,

    managing releases of a multiple virtual machine application system through various phases of testing

    and eventual deployment into production (exploiting network fencing).

    Making significant changes to a production application system by cloning it back into a test environment,

    and improving communication among different teams on multi-tier configurations, debugging and fixing

    problems (with use of LiveLink and network fencing to separate out similar configurations).

    Maintaining a library of current and past configurations of the ISV application, fulfilling regulatory

    requirements by archiving versions of ISV systems.

    Integration with leading test and build management tools provides additional automation benefits to allow for

    continuous testing and integration of software applications. This capability shortens delivery schedules and

    increases software quality. Application owners can create faithful replicas of production systems for patch

    testing and seamlessly transition updated system configurations across testing, staging and production

    environments connected to different networks, server and storage systems.

    4. VMware allows you to offer customers a lower TCO application

    Server consolidation is only one of many ways in which customers can save money by deploying

    applications in a virtual infrastructure. The VMware platform also provides faster provisioning, automation,

    and better manageability of applications, allowing applications to run at maximum service levels with lower

    implementation costs and operating expenses. Deploying applications on VMware vSphere allows

    customers to:

    Cut capital and operating costs while increasing IT service delivery without being locked into limited

    choices of operating systems, applications, and hardware.

    Reduce hardware and operating costs by as much as 50% and energy costs by 80%, saving more than

    $3,000 per year for every server workload virtualized.

    Reduce the time it takes to provision new servers by up to 70%.

    Decrease downtime and improve reliability with business continuity and built-in data disaster recovery.

    Deliver IT services on-demand now and in the future, independent of hardware, OS, application or

    infrastructure providers.

    Automate management tasks such as staging, lifecycle, and site recovery.

    Allocate infrastructure resources dynamically to each application.

    Customers can maximize their hardware and software investments across servers, network, storage,

    operating systems, and applications. VMware vSphere has scalability and density advantages that result in

    lower cost-per-application, even lower than with other vendors so-called free products.

    5. Built-in services can be managed easily using VMware vCenter

    A reliable industry-proven hypervisor is a critical foundation of a virtualized infrastructure, but it is not a

    complete solution by itself. Organizations need an IT platform that delivers the right infrastructure, services,

    and built-in tools to manage applications and perform operations such migration, aggregation, allocation and

    power management. VMware vSphere is the only virtualization platform that delivers all of these built-in

    services:

    Migration: Live migration of virtual machines with VMware vMotion

    Aggregation: Shared Pools of Resources

    Allocation: Elastic Pool of Resources

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    Power Management: Intelligently Save Power

    Availability: Flexible, Uniform High Availability

    Many mission-critical applications need enhanced availability capabilities to protect against planned

    infrastructure downtime and provide resilience to unplanned downtime across all aspects of the hardware

    server, component, storage, network and software. VMware's offering does this with wide ranging

    capabilities to protect applications from:

    Total site failure VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

    Planned downtime VMware vMotion, VMware Storage vMotion

    Unplanned downtimeVMware HA (host and virtual machine failure monitoring), virtual machine-level

    fault tolerance, NIC teaming

    Improved business continuityEnvironments with VMware vMotion, VMware HA, VMware DRS, and

    VMware Site Recovery Manager provide options for cost-effective high availability, disaster and site

    recovery

    VMware vCenter Server also gives administrators control over key capabilities such as VMware vMotion,

    Distributed Resource Scheduler, High Availability and Fault Tolerance. A powerful orchestration engine

    gives administrators the ability to create and easily implement best practice workflows. With proactive

    management, VMware vCenter Server allows customers to meet business requirements and improve

    service levels by dynamically provisioning new services, allocating resources and automating high

    availability.

    6. VMware vSphere simplifies making your applications Cloud-ready

    Over the past decades, IT infrastructures have become increasingly complex and difficult to manage and

    maintain, draining valuable IT resources and leaving little time to support strategic business projects. Cloud

    computing is a new approach that reduces IT complexity by leveraging the efficient pooling of on-demand,

    self-managed virtual infrastructure consumed as a service. Cloud computing also expands IT infrastructure

    beyond the boundaries of an organizations data center (private cloud) to include public clouds of IT

    infrastructure that is off-premise. Public cloud IT infrastructure, such as that provided by a hosting or service

    provider, expands IT capacity to deliver applications, on demand infrastructure, or software as a service

    (SaaS). By freeing IT data center resources from time-consuming maintenance and brittle infrastructure,organizations can move to a more dynamic and scalable IT service delivery approach that better supports

    business goals.

    Today, CIOs of most major businesses are being pressured to provide more cloudlike IT and to develop

    strategies for moving more of their applications and IT infrastructure to the cloud. VMwares customer-

    proven virtualization solutions and vSphere 4 uniquely accelerate a companys transition to private cloud

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    infrastructure while preserving existing investments. For public clouds, VMware provides three distinct

    advantages that serve both customers and ISVs:

    ChoiceVMware has partnered with thousands of hosting and cloud computing vendors to enable

    delivery on a common virtualization platform. This gives customers choice in deploying applications in

    either a private or public cloud, allowing easy transitions between providers. The VMware cloud platform

    also provides customers the same broad choice of available hardware, operating system, and otherapplication stack services, whether theyre running applications in a private or public cloud.

    Reliable TechnologyLeveraging key technology advancements found in VMware vSphere,

    customers get the assurance that applications can be managed, moved and operated in the cloud, the

    same way they are onsite.

    Application CompatibilityWith almost 1000 applications in our Virtual Appliance Marketplace,

    customers can easily deploy these virtual applications in a private or public cloud. More importantly, the

    applications that run in your datacenter today will work the same in a VMware public cloud, and do not

    require any rewrites or special optimization.

    What benefits the customer here also serves the ISV. ISVs that provide support for their applications to run

    on vSphere 4 have a proven solid, scalable infrastructure platform, which lets their customers deploy and

    manage applications in the same way, whether in a companys data center, private or public cloud. As a

    result, ISVs can almost certainly gain more sales from customers who are seeking out application providersthat are ready-made for cloud computing.

    7. Virtualization helps shorten sales cycles, lower support costsand improve customer satisfaction

    Close more deals and revolutionize your customers experience by taking advantage of the following

    benefits of virtualization:

    Rapid prospect Lock-in

    Provide off-the-shelf customized virtual machines for demos

    Provide on-demand customized virtual machines for evaluations

    Capture customer customization for rollout to production environmentsFast implementation

    Ship your application as a ready-to-run virtual machine

    Deploy on any available hardware

    Launch in minutes

    Easier Customer Issue Resolution

    Recreate customer environments in minutes

    Replay virtual machines to reproduce issues

    Patch applications remotely

    All of these features can help you move through the sales cycle faster. By delivering your application as apreconfigured, ready-to-run virtual machine, not as a CD of uninstalled software, you will improve your

    customers experience and help eliminate installation and support headaches.

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