I can’t virtualize “that” piece of my Network!

It’s interesting to see the different opinions of Network Virtualization as it continues to evolve.  The phrase “I can’t virtualize that” is specifically quite interesting to me.  To elaborate I will explain a select view of the evolution of Server Virtualization.

Roughly 8 years ago when Server Virtualization (e.g. VMware ESX) was becoming the “thing” within Datacenters it was new to most server admins, some embraced it, some were afraid of it, others had mixed feelings.  Often times I would here from clients, engineers, & architects “Well, we can only Virtualize our DEV/TEST environment, not Prod.  Prod needs dedicated bare metal/servers.”  That then migrated to more of a “We have our Production App and Web servers virtualized but we need to keep our SQL server dedicated”. Which leads us to the current time where most have their entire footprint virtualized in a private, public, or hybrid Cloud.

The evolution has moved from an (We don’t need that) –> (We only need it here) –> (We need it everywhere).  One huge driving factor for this is TCO.  It is by far more cost efficient to run VMs than physical dedicated servers.

Now as it pertains to Network Virtualization I do realize there is more complexity and dependencies on the Network, however we are in that phase of “We only need it here”.  With Virtual Firewalls, Loadbalancers, Switches, & Routers we have a Greenfield in front of us!

I feel that Network Virtualization (SDN) is where Server Virtualization was 8-10 years ago.  Don’t be afraid of SDN embrace IT!