Less like an operating system, more like middleware?

At least one analyst considers the increasing virtualization of the data center as less operating system-like and more akin to data center middleware.

"VMware and Cisco are describing a near future where our data centers are made of components ... which can be easily provisioned," said Alessandro Perilli, an independent industry analyst for virtualization.info, an online news digest about virtualization technologies. "This provisioning can be partially or completely automated."

In Perilli's scenario, devices that make up the individual storage, server or network infrastructures no longer dominate the view of the data center because each often requires the expertise of specialists. Rather the applications required by the business units or—in the case of a service provider—customers determine the setup of the data center. Those traditionally siloed operations become "mere bounds of an application, which change dynamically, depending on workload," he said.

According to Perilli, an "autonomic" data center requires two pieces: the infrastructure to be dynamically manipulated and the management middleware that performs the manipulation.

In the case of the new release of VFrame, VMware owns the virtual infrastructure and Cisco has expertise in the management middleware, "which can apply to physical and virtual infrastructures indifferently," he said.

The obstacles to ubiquitous virtualization

Likewise, VMware's Byun said his company doesn't use the term "operating system" to describe the direction its technology is heading. "VMware provides a core set of tools, but on top of that, there's so much to do," which presumably is done by VMware's 600 partners.

And that provides a barrier to the concept of virtualization becoming some kind of data center mastermind. Running IT in a sizable organization requires multiple vendors, technologies and implementations, making the job highly complex. "Even the best product in the market would be unable to provide an omni-comprehensive solution which fits every customer's environment," said Perilli. Massive time and money would be required to adopt the mandatory technologies essential in building the autonomic data center.

Along with technology requirements, virtualization changes the nature of the relationships among data center personnel. Whereas previously a database administrator might requisition the storage and server administrators for the resources required for a given operation, Byun said, "it doesn't happen that way anymore."

Now resources are provided as pools and administrators provision it whatever way they want. "It turns more into a batch process," he said. "It's something some of our customers are getting used to"—to the point where a new role is emerging, that of the virtual infrastructure expert who sits "very close to the storage, networking and server disciplines."