Zero Downtime by GoAhead Software

Posted by Holger Herbert, Director of Product Management, GoAhead Software

Uninterrupted service is a core requirement for carrier grade applications. The boom in virtualization in the converged space has contributed to a lot of buzz around virtualization in the telecom vertical. Standards are moved forward by the SCOPE alliance and the SA Forum, which supports a virtualization-friendly environment through the PLM standard for execution environments. Companies like VirtualLogix, have embraced the move toward virtualization and have integrated through these SA Forum middleware standards.

Though all of the buzz, some designs incorporating high availability and virtualization have emerged within the telecom universe. Many questions around performance, ROI and real time usage characteristics have emerged and telecom software architects, software vendors and hardware vendors have had to field lots of questions around virtualization. But how far are TEM’s going in implementing these?

While there are many decisions to be made in implementing virtualized environments, here are some fundamental areas that need to be thought through:

• Heterogeneous environments: Virtualization certainly touts many benefits in regard to its support of legacy environments and heterogeneous operating environments – all on a single hardware platform. At the same time deployment can affect performance and thus ROI and may affect “real-time requirements” that must be maintained. How does one weigh the benefits against migrating away from that old hardware legacy?
• Complexity: Does the complexity of implementing virtualization increase risk in your telecom deployment? How do you mitigate these risks?
• Performance: Do you believe the performance in regard to both transaction and failover would be adequate for your applications? How are you making the determination that your requirements are met?

We’d love to get your thoughts. Like many, we are curious if virtualization will bring massive innovation for TEM’s. Is it another tool in the deployment toolset to solve niche problems, as in converged markets, or are the barriers to entry too high for now? Let us know what you think, and how you use virtualization in telecom.

I and many others are looking forward to your thoughts!