MagnumSC Features
What Is MagnumSC?
MagnumSC is a line of drop-in server consolidation appliances powered by a Linux-based Virtuozzo technology. Combining state-of-the-art hardware and zero-overhead software for consolidating and partioning servers, MagnumSC is ideally suited for performance-demanding enterprise environments. Unlike competitive solutions, MagnumSC does not emulate a virtual machine with its own kernel and OS image. Single kernel image is providing multiple Virtual Environments (VE), running Linux.
Key MagnumSC Features:
Mainframe-inspired logical partitioning.
Full SMP support for high scalability.
Advanced service-level guarantees.
Dynamic resource management.
High-performance virtual networking.
No virtual machine overhead.
Fast and easy migration to another appliance.
Easy-to-use GUI management tools.
API for provisioning, automation and monitoring.
What Could MagnumSC Do for the Enterprise?
With MagnumSC enterprise could minimize the total cost of ownership (TCO) of its IT infrastructure by consolidating applications and services onto highly reliable, easily manageable and highly scalable platform. It goes beyond the simple stuffing of many applications into one physical server. Applications are easily deployed into standardized, secure, isolated Virtual Environments. Virtuozzo, the technology behind MagnumSC, allows you to deliver a guaranteed amount of server resources (such as CPU, memory, network bandwidth, disk space) to each Virtual Environment and to limit the amount of resources consumption. One unique feature of MagnumSC is dynamic resource management; you do not need to restart a service if you want to change the amount of memory or disk space assigned to it.
How Does MagnumSC Improve Efficiency?
Virtuozzo resource sharing technology allows you to share CPU, memory and disk resources dynamically between the Virtual Environments running on the MagnumSC platform. Virtual Environments do not consume all the configured resources at start time; instead, they dynamically request allocations when needed. A single MagnumSC M230 appliance is capable of running up to 2,000 Linux servers, configured for Web services.
How Does MagnumSC Improve Security?
Virtual Environments are fully isolated from each another and from the MagnumSC itself. A security compromise in one of the VEs does not influence the other VEs, preventing denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. Each VE has its own firewall protection from the outside world. Standardized Virtual Environments also can greatly simplify the task of keeping the system up-to-date with the latest security patches.
How Does MagnumSC Improve Manageability?
Standard MagnumSC models include a powerful GUI management and monitoring tool, Virtuozzo Management Console (VZMC). By using it, administrators can effectively provision, manage and monitor any number of MagnumSC appliances. In addition, all VE actions are scriptable, so system administrator can easily implement unattended operations. One of the most interesting MagnumSC features is the ability to move a VE from one physical box to another with very little downtime. This could make complex hardware upgrade/maintenance tasks a breeze: Just move all servers to another box and return them when done. It is as easy as dragging and dropping the icons in VZMC.
What Is the Difference Between a Virtual Machine and a Virtual Environment?
Virtual Machine (VM) emulates a full-blown computer with a Guest operation system running on top of it. While VM is an interesting concept, it is not suitable for server consolidation. Main areas where Virtual Machines can't compare with Virtual Environments, created by Virtuozzo are:
- System Scalability - it is not possible to run a large number of VM on mass-market Intel hardware, due to inefficient static resource allocation and growing problems with maintenance.
- System Performance - VM introduce a lot of overhead. They usually claim that "measured" overhead is low, but in reality under heavy load the performance is far from optimal.
- VM Scalability - While a Virtual Environment could use all the available hardware resources when needed, VM typically can't use more resources than was initially allocated, even if other VMs in the system are not using them at the moment. This makes a process of sizing more difficult, and limits the usability of VM for handling peaky loads, such as media-on-demand.
What Guest Operating Systems are Supported?
Unlike VMware, MagnumSC does not use a guest OS concept. Virtual Environments can run any RPM-based Linux distribution. Standard MagnumSC models include Red Hat 6.2, 7.1 and 7.2.
What Applications are Supported?
Everything that runs on Linux is supported. Some intentional limitations exist, though. For example, you can't sniff an Ethernet or reset the hardware clock. You can compile your own applications or install RPM packages. For rapid deployment and ease of maintenance, applications can be converted into templates that are shared by many Virtual Environments.
|
