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While many of Goldberg's earlier questions have been answered, new ones about the future of server virtualization continue to crop up. Chief among them is the cascading effect of a virtual server on a data center. Simply put, making changes to core technology like a server may require changes to other systems, such as storage. "As midmarket CIOs start playing with more virtual servers, they are going to realize that it fundamentally changes the way they look at a data center," says Forrester Research Inc. analyst Frank Gillett.
Goldberg eventually decided to deploy virtual servers -- a "several-hundred-thousand-dollar investment" -- and today $400-million St. Peter's Health Care Services is enjoying the early benefits of the technology. Of the hospital's 160 physical servers, 110 were virtualized and consolidated onto five physical servers using EMC's VMware. Fifty-five servers couldn't be virtualized because their Food and Drug Administration-certified status prevented alterations. A few older servers were retired and shipped elsewhere. The rest have stickers that read "do not power on," and their decommissioning translates into a 25% reduction of power in the data center (prior to server virtualization, all the physical servers were turned on). These hibernating servers give Goldberg some headroom if he needs more computing power down the road.
Three-fourths of third-party applications at St. Peter's Health Care Services run on VMware, including a major workforce management system. "My sense is that they will all get there," Goldberg says. "With any new contract with application vendors, we really want them to support virtual servers."
But Goldberg's virtual server adventure is just beginning. He wonders what the future will look like as hardware and software vendors jockey for position. "I'm keeping an eye on server virtualization being embedded in the hardware by hardware vendors," Goldberg says. "Will this come to fruition? If it does, would there be a reason" to continue to have the VMware layer?
Server virtualization, says Gillett, is simply the catalyst for a much broader set of infrastructure makeovers. "It's the tip of the iceberg," he says.
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