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The pace of digital transformation is accelerating, with software defining the entire world, and cloud computing integrating with big data, artificial intelligence, 5G, and other new generation information technologies… H3C summarizes all these changes as the “arrival of the Cloud Intelligence Era.”
In simple terms, the core driving force of Cloud Intelligence is the word “intelligence,” primarily aimed at meeting the agile and efficient application needs of various industries and enterprises, ultimately unleashing more powerful data value. The question is, in a hybrid application environment, how can we meet the agile development characteristics that cover the entire lifecycle of cloud platforms (demand-resource-development-delivery) while also possessing the data value-added features based on intelligent services (collection-governance-analysis-application)? In 2021, to help more enterprises and organizations build an inherent cloud and intelligent architecture with true digital transformation capabilities, H3C upgraded its digital brain, redefining the entire development platform from the underlying architecture. Thus, multi-cloud boundaryless collaboration, native AI in ALL, proactive security across the board, and ultra-simple operations have become new labels for H3C’s underlying architectural support capabilities.Specifically, Cloud Intelligence is based on container cloud-native reconstruction, integrating management, control, and analysis functions through microservices. So, has virtualization become a thing of the past, replaced by new container clouds? Is that really the case? Do enterprises still need virtualization? H3C CAS demonstrates through practical actions that virtualization is not only important but is becoming the cornerstone of digital transformation.
Talking about Virtual Machines
“After more than a decade of growth, the CAS product line has developed rapidly, with an expected growth rate of 12-13% in 2021,” said Liu Yili, Vice President of H3C Group’s Cloud and Intelligent Product Line, in a media interview. As a mature application of cloud computing, CAS will not disappear; instead, it is creating new possibilities.It seems that the cloud computing field has never lacked concepts. With the emergence of the next generation of bare metal, represented by K8S containers, virtualization appears to be a “product of the last century.” Almost all enterprises are talking about containers and bare metal, making virtualization seem bleak on the surface. However, in practical applications, virtualization platforms are as essential as water, air, and sunlight; their importance is self-evident!Take the entire Unisplendour Cloud and Intelligent Business Group as an example. Although it has been less than a year and a half since its establishment, its performance has been impressive, achieving a revenue doubling goal. From specific growth points, in addition to the smart city and industry cloud business segments driving growth, CAS, hyper-convergence, and VDI cloud products have also contributed significantly to the cash flow increase. Especially CAS, which has ranked first in market share in the domestic virtualization market for six consecutive years.CAS was born in 2009 and has been commercially available for ten years. In 2009, it determined the direction of cloud computing virtualization technology, adopting the KVM open-source technology route; in 2014, it achieved full integration of computing, storage, and network virtualization in version 2.0, obtaining the “General Requirements for Virtualization Management” from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s Electronic Technology Standards Institute, opening a new chapter for cloud-network integration in government clouds; starting in 2016, CAS’s customer base surged, surpassing 500, covering over 100 sub-industries; in 2017, it ranked first in the comprehensive performance and functionality evaluation of China Telecom’s server virtualization procurement, achieving high reliability recognition with seven nines in China Telecom’s layered decoupling tests; that same year, CAS stood out in the virtualization market competition, becoming a mainstream player and occupying the top position; in April 2020, CAS released version 7.0, supporting unified management of X86 and ARM architectures, helping users achieve homogeneous and heterogeneous disaster recovery and agile cloud migration goals.It can be said that CAS is the earliest prototype of cloud computing, allowing H3C to transition from a traditional equipment manufacturer to a cloud computing development path. Ten years later, CAS still belongs to the infrastructure layer of cloud computing, with almost all cloud scenarios built on virtualization technology. So, why hasn’t virtualization been replaced? How should virtualization evolve in the era of container clouds?
The Relationship Between Virtualization and Containers
“Customers are very rational in the actual solution design and equipment selection process; stability and security are the primary factors,” Liu Yili believes that a significant reason customers still choose CAS is that virtualization can better ensure the stable operation of business. CAS has served the market for ten years, and its stability is beyond doubt. Especially for enterprises with insufficient development capabilities, virtualization is the best choice for cloud migration, providing the shortest route to help enterprises quickly move to the cloud. Virtualization can quickly pool resources, thereby improving resource utilization. Moreover, with the development of new generation information technologies, virtualization is continuously evolving, forming a synergistic effect with cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence.Simply put, when users purchase CAS, they are not just buying a virtual machine but an entire system that can create a synergistic effect across different levels, including computing, networking, and storage. CAS has dedicated APIs that allow users to experience storage, network security, and disaster recovery backup embedded within the platform itself, including distributed storage, which is part of the architecture platform, enabling seamless integration of storage and virtual machines for rapid business migration.In fact, a significant reason most users choose virtualization over containers is the development challenges involved. Container clouds are not just about deploying a container cloud platform; they involve how to containerize applications. Each application runs on Windows and Linux systems, and enterprises without sufficient development capabilities cannot manage this. Additionally, how to ensure that containerized applications achieve the same functionality as non-containerized applications is a significant issue. If moving to a container cloud is not better than not moving at all, the possibility of going live can be ruled out. However, containers are indeed an important technological direction. For enterprises with strong technical capabilities, container clouds can leverage the environment-agnostic characteristics of containers to achieve network interoperability and unified management of private and public cloud services. Companies in the internet and finance sectors have already taken the lead in achieving cloud-native and containerized applications. So, how does CAS cover containerized business scenarios?“Whether in public or private clouds, from the perspective of underlying technology development, both are moving towards containerization and microservices, so virtualization must also keep pace with the times and support containers. CAS has added container functionality on top of the original virtual machine foundation,” said Cheng Chiwen, head of CAS product development at H3C Group’s Cloud and Intelligent Product Line. He believes that whether virtualization or containers, customers do not care much about the underlying technology as long as it can achieve business goals and help solve actual business problems. For example, in a large government project collaboration, if many servers need to be added suddenly, customers may not know what happens at the underlying level; in fact, the underlying technology is based on the elastic expansion capability of virtual machines, adding many intelligent applications, including intelligent operations and intelligent predictions for virtual machines.Especially in version 7.0, H3C has achieved unified management of containers and virtual machines. If users have container needs, they can deploy directly. Additionally, for scenarios with high hardware virtualization requirements, H3C has specifically launched intelligent acceleration cards, allowing host computing power to achieve zero loss. In simple terms, some network storage resources can be processed on the card. In summary, different customers have different choices. Some enterprises choose virtualization, some choose containers, while more enterprises are considering how to find the best balance between the two.“From a certain perspective, containers are actually a lighter form of virtualization, just without the back-and-forth hassle, all managed by one system. Therefore, any technology is driven by demand, and the emergence of containers is primarily driven by the trend of microservices architecture. As for whether it will replace virtualization, at least in the short term, it certainly will not!” Liu Daogui, head of CAS product management at H3C Group’s Cloud and Intelligent Product Line, added that H3C has achieved comprehensive integration of underlying technologies, whether virtualization, containers, or a combination of both, providing users with more choices.
Embracing KVM to Build a Virtualization Platform Closer to Business Scenarios
When it comes to virtualization, we cannot ignore VMware. So, what distinguishes H3C’s virtualization from that of other vendors? We must start with the technical schools of virtualization!Generally speaking, virtualization can be divided into five categories: desktop virtualization, network virtualization, server virtualization, hardware-assisted virtualization, and application virtualization. In server virtualization, H3C has its core competitiveness. The biggest difference between H3C and VMware is the different technical routes. H3C embraces KVM, which is an open-source technology architecture, while VMware is based on its own system.Why did H3C choose KVM? “Many users have very large cloud computing applications and prefer to choose open-source technology and open systems,” Liu Daogui said. Regardless of the technology, it ultimately sinks down from the cloud management platform, and KVM can protect users’ investments, allowing for deeper customization services and better scalability. This includes OpenStack, along with the increasingly popular K8S (Kubernetes), which can be integrated together.It has been proven that KVM gives CAS the strongest stability. After ten years of honing, H3C has continuously optimized and innovated along the open-source path. CAS has optimized over 2 million lines of code, creating the most user-friendly virtualization platform, serving thousands of customers, with successful cases across various industries, including government clouds, enterprise clouds, education clouds, energy clouds, healthcare clouds, and financial clouds. Moreover, not only does CAS embrace the KVM route, but some other domestic giants have also shifted from the Xen route to KVM.Therefore, whether from user demand, application environment, or specific technical routes, CAS has strong irreplaceability. Especially the unique characteristics of the virtualization platform, such as zero loss, multi-mode computing capability, ultra-large-scale deployment, security stability, reliable business, and full computing power integration, are precisely the core capabilities most needed for enterprises’ digital transformation.