A Standard Between AMD and Intel

Intel and AMD based servers are very different at the low, hardware level and because there is an increasing need to make those servers cooperate with each other when it comes to splitting a workload between them, a number of system integrators and vendors like Dell is preparing a new standard that should act as a bridge between the two hardware platforms in a virtualization environment.

While both chip manufacturing companies are supporting the workload shifting between different generations of processors, they currently do not support the movement between different architectures, so this standard comes as a bridge between the two hardware platforms. Opteron processing units from AMD already offer the possibility to transfer workloads between servers and Intel launched its own VT FlexMigration technology some day ago. The migration of virtual machines from one generation of processors to another poses some problems as the different CPUs are offering different features and some of these features may have drawbacks when it comes to older central processing units.

The easiest method of transferring workloads now is to scale down some of the features until a common ground is found, but this is just a good starting point as Sally Stevens, director of Dell's enterprise marketing product group, said in an interview to the news site vnunet.com[http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2198244/standard-bridge-virtual-gap-amd]. "The real [advantage] is going to be a capability to move across processor types, not just future and previous generations," she said. While the two central processing units manufacturers are the ones that can make the virtual workloads migration a more easy process, it is very unlikely that they will come to such an understanding anytime soon.

While Sally Stevens declined to offer more details, she said that the server builders will take up the challenge and design a standard that will allow the migration. Dell is not the only company interested in such a standard as the virtualization solutions provider XenSource is also interested in that process. Simon Crosby, chief technology officer at XenSource declared that the two processor manufacturers are very unlikely to come to an understanding and prepare an open standard as both of them are working on different roadmaps. While some companies are interested in such a standard, Gorden Haff, a principal IT advisor at analyst firm Illuminata, thinks that the whole issue is just a "nice to have" matter and that most enterprises will not really move their workloads between architectures on a frequent basis.