Knowledge Is Efficiency
While database neutrality is important in choosing a data connectivity supplier, so is a deep, detailed, and up-to-date knowledge of whatever database and database version you happen to be connecting to, as well as the inner workings of the operating system platforms and the latest versions of the connectivity standards in use. This requires that the middleware vendor maintain close partnerships with both database and operating system vendors, as well as active involvement with IT standards organizations.

Intelligent, current, and well-informed implementation of standards, programming languages, and protocols on the part of data connectivity components can contribute to resource usage efficiency in any number of ways. Let’s say, for example, that a database vendor protocol offers a choice in approaches for executing SQL: the first employing one round-trip over the network and the second employing two. The one employing two round-trips actually makes for a more straightforward match to the database connectivity API and is therefore simpler to implement. However, developers who strive for maximum efficiency and performance will make the extra effort to design database connectivity middleware that takes the single round-trip approach. Besides gaining performance, eliminating the additional round-trip reduces the database connectivity component’s usage of the network – which, you’ll recall, is one of the discrete resources for which multiple virtual OSes and applications must compete.

An intimate working knowledge of the latest technology and features of a target database also allows a data connectivity supplier to leverage any advantages favorable to virtualization. Some suppliers offer in their products a variety of external options that let users control efficiency and resource usage from a data connectivity standpoint. Better still are suppliers who incorporate both specialization in data access and its diverse uses with these external controls to provide wizards that guide less-knowledgeable staff in configuring the connectivity components for their particular application and environment.

Optimizing data connectivity middleware for your virtualized environment, however, doesn’t require that you familiarize yourself with the often arcane details of ever-evolving connectivity and systems integration standards as well as database and OS platforms. The intelligent approach to take with data access is to enlist a third-party supplier that has dedicated expertise in this area. That supplier will be able to assess your planned or existing virtualized environment and recommend a data connectivity middleware solution that will make the most efficient use of your server systems’ hardware-based resources, thereby optimizing your virtualization strategy.

To sum up the important factors to look for in choosing a data connectivity solution and/or vendor for your virtualized server environment:

• Highly efficient architecture: In keeping with your goal of maximizing the use of your server hardware by running multiple VMs on it, you want connectivity middleware that makes the most efficient use of hardware-based resources such as CPU, memory, and network I/O capacity. Tests conducted by DataDirect labs have revealed as much as a sevenfold difference in CPU usage efficiency between different data connectivity components available on the market.
• Wire protocol: Data connectivity components that use the native database client protocol eliminate client libraries, reducing both administrative efforts and traffic over the network.
• Support for a wide variety of operating systems and virtualization technologies: Look for middleware vendors that actively test and support their software on VMware- or XenSource-based products rather than simply claiming that it should work.
• Involvement in standards bodies: A middleware vendor closely involved in the development of standards such as ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET is more likely to be first to market with features that leverage any new efficiency-enhancing capabilities in the latest versions of those standards.

The best route to meeting these criteria for data connectivity solutions in virtualized environments is to look for a connectivity middleware supplier that has data connectivity as its core specialty. You want an independent vendor that is thoroughly steeped in the very latest technological nuts and bolts of any database, operating system, applications platform, and connectivity standard they support. Ask about the vendor’s IT partnerships and involvement in relevant standards bodies.

Whatever your specific details and goals are in your approach to virtualization, don’t neglect the data connectivity layer of your system stack. It can make all the difference in getting the most out of your virtualized server environment.

Data Connectivity Can Spell Virtualization Success
To illustrate the difference that incorporating a high-performance data connectivity solution can make in a virtualized server environment, consider a company that provides critical business intelligence to customers such as government agencies, private security firms, and financial institutions.

The company requires vast stores of data – over 25TB stored in a major relational database. Its strict service level agreement (SLA) requirements involve heavy penalties for failure to provide requested data within specified timeframes. With a rapid increase in the number of customers as well as in the amount of data to process for those customers, the company finds itself fast running out of space in its data center. Expansion is not an option, and relocating would mean a major disruption to operations.

The IT department instead adopts a strategy of deploying blade servers and virtual machines to concentrate space used by the server farm. Halfway through the conversion it becomes clear that the maximum number of VMs each server can adequately accommodate while meeting the delivery strictures of the SLA is, unexpectedly, not enough to sufficiently reduce the utilization of space in the data center. The entire justification for the consolidation project is in danger of being negated.

Diagnosis identifies the largest performance and scalability bottleneck as occurring in the database layer. By replacing the JDBC drivers supplied by the database vendor with third-party high-performance JDBC drivers that support optimizations such as connection and statement pooling, the data center realizes a threefold gain in application response time. With the server farm now comfortably able to accommodate two additional VMs per server, the space-saving project can be successfully completed.