Virtualization in LIMS
Virtualization in LIMS
By Brian Jack, Principal Consultant
There is no denying that virtualization is a hot trend in IT. Intel and AMD are baking virtualization into the next generation of chips and VMWare and Microsoft are giving away their software virtualization products for Intel-based servers. Could this trend apply to the LIMS industry, too?
VMWare particularly has built up an interesting concept of ‘virtual appliances’. Virtual appliances are defined as:
A fully pre-installed and pre-configured application and operating system environment that runs on any standard x86 desktop or server in a self-contained, isolated environment known as a virtual machine.
VMWare has some of these appliances that can be downloaded as examples and to satisfy specific niche needs. For example, for a small company interested in exploring local PBX telecommunications, an Asterisk-based appliance can be downloaded that is fully installed and preconfigured. Typically, the VMWare appliances involve Linux based distributions and open source software, but increasingly, customers have been asking proprietary software vendors that produce highly complex software to distribute their software as an appliance. There are some hurdles to overcome in order for LIMS systems to be distributed via virtual appliances. Among these are:
- Operating System choices: Many larger LIMS implementations use a high-end database server (in other words, not Windows or Linux based) that are not compatible with products like VMWare or Virtual Server.
- Performance: Necessarily any virtual machine will operate less efficiently than if run on native hardware, although the performance capabilities of some virtual machines is amazing and approaches native performance levels. When fully integrated with the hardware chips, this will become much less of an issue.
- Licensing: When copies of the fully functioning software can be copied and used so easily, software licensing issues exist. This is true of both vendor software and operating systems.
With that being said, there would be immediate and substantial benefits to LIMS customers if virtual appliances of LIMS systems were produced, including:
- Reduced time installing and configuring LIMS. If databases and LIMS tiers can be bundled and delivered on one or more virtual machines, installation and configuration could be reduced to deploying a small number of files on a server and starting the virtual machine.
- Reduced IQ cost and complexity. When a vendor provides a ready to use system with no significant installation time, Installation Qualification becomes significantly easier for the customer since installation and configuration steps are reduced. Truly vendors will be able to offload much of this work from the end customer. Final responsibility for all qualifications will remain with the customer, of course.
- Disaster Recovery and Failover. With virtual appliances, disaster recovery from one physical machine to another at the time of failure can become automatic, depending on configuration. For example, a company can deploy a virtual appliance on a network storage shared by 2 physical machines. If one fails, the other picks up the virtual appliance immediately and service is not interrupted (possibly with the second machine already running its own virtual machine.)
- Ability to move a virtual machine around to different physical machines without having to reinstall. As new hardware technology becomes available, the upgrade of a virtual machine could be as easy as moving the virtual machine appliance to a new host. No aspects of the virtual machine would necessarily have to change: virtual machine name, IP address, etc.
- Snapshots: Software virtual machines software support the ideas of snapshots – point in time copies of the OS that can be restored at a later point in time. Snapshots can be used to restore software to a known good state at any time, a process that could be ideal for a change management system.
- Increased hardware utilization: A single server could accommodate multiple appliances, allowing the hardware to be utilized to its full potential.
The benefits of utilizing virtual machine appliances are obvious to customers and would apply well to the LIMS industry. Vendors must take the next step and overcome the barriers to producing virtual appliances in the LIMS industry in order for customers to see the benefits come to pass. Are there any hurdles or benefits that I have missed?
About the author: Brian Jack is a Principal Consultant and partner at J&R Consulting, Inc, a consulting firm specializing in LIMS systems.. Weekly articles on LIMS software and contact information can be found at www.jandrconsult.com <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial].
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