John W. Thompson, CEO of Virtual Instruments met with SiliconANGLE founder John Furrier and Wikibon Co-Founder Dave Vellante at VMworld 2011 to discuss virtualization and what his company does. Thompson opened the interview with the following statement: "What's clear is that the economics around virtualization are proving to be true." He went on to say that while VMware was undoubtedly a leader in the x86 environment, the virtualization phenomena is spreading across all the layers of the stack. The storage layer, the switch layer, and the server layers are all being virtualized. And while the concept of virtualization isn't new, having it applied to all of those tiers is, in fact, a new trend. It gives customers better economics, but also new challenges to deal with, particularly around performance and availability management.
Thompson gave some history as to how Virtual Instruments (VI) evolved and explained what VI's technology does. He said their focus is on monitoring the end to end transaction performance of a given set of I/O activities from the virtual server through the switch fabric, to the array and back. He said that as environments become more virtualized, there is a more critical need for deep level performance monitoring capability. He said, "Our technology peers in very deeply, and gives you granular latency level performance insight that no other vendor in the industry provides."
Thompson used PayPal as an example of one of VI's most impressive deployments. PayPal's head of storage infrastructure said that prior to VI, they would experience one to two outages a year, and since they implemented VI's technology, they have had no outages at all. Thompson attributed that to " . . . the insight we give them on where problems might be looming, that they can take corrective actions on before they become an outage."
Thompson emphasized that VI is a monitoring company -- they don't do configuration management or capacity planning. He explained that VI's tools complement what the customer already has. Thompson said he doesn't view them trying to expand into those aforementioned spaces either because their focus is already a big enough problem for customers that will provide them with plenty of room for growth.
Thompson discussed the announcements VI made at VMworld 2011, which centered around their next generation software platform, Virtual Wisdom 3.0, as well as their next generation hardware platform, which consists of an 8gb fibre channel probe that attaches between the switch fabric and the storage array to give customers real-time monitoring capabilities.
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John W. Thompson, Virtual Instruments | VMworld 2011
John W. Thompson, CEO of Virtual Instruments met with SiliconANGLE founder John Furrier and Wikibon Co-Founder Dave Vellante at VMworld 2011 to discuss virtualization and what his company does. Thompson opened the interview with the following statement: "What's clear is that the economics around virtualization are proving to be true." He went on to say that while VMware was undoubtedly a leader in the x86 environment, the virtualization phenomena is spreading across all the layers of the stack. The storage layer, the switch layer, and the server layers are all being virtualized. And while the concept of virtualization isn't new, having it applied to all of those tiers is, in fact, a new trend. It gives customers better economics, but also new challenges to deal with, particularly around performance and availability management.
Thompson gave some history as to how Virtual Instruments (VI) evolved and explained what VI's technology does. He said their focus is on monitoring the end to end transaction performance of a given set of I/O activities from the virtual server through the switch fabric, to the array and back. He said that as environments become more virtualized, there is a more critical need for deep level performance monitoring capability. He said, "Our technology peers in very deeply, and gives you granular latency level performance insight that no other vendor in the industry provides."
Thompson used PayPal as an example of one of VI's most impressive deployments. PayPal's head of storage infrastructure said that prior to VI, they would experience one to two outages a year, and since they implemented VI's technology, they have had no outages at all. Thompson attributed that to " . . . the insight we give them on where problems might be looming, that they can take corrective actions on before they become an outage."
Thompson emphasized that VI is a monitoring company -- they don't do configuration management or capacity planning. He explained that VI's tools complement what the customer already has. Thompson said he doesn't view them trying to expand into those aforementioned spaces either because their focus is already a big enough problem for customers that will provide them with plenty of room for growth.
Thompson discussed the announcements VI made at VMworld 2011, which centered around their next generation software platform, Virtual Wisdom 3.0, as well as their next generation hardware platform, which consists of an 8gb fibre channel probe that attaches between the switch fabric and the storage array to give customers real-time monitoring capabilities.
