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The Top Five Challenges of Server Virtualization |
If you're embarking on a virtualization project, here are the most important factors to consider, according to Shane Colombo, a practice leader at U.K.-based C&C Technology Consulting Ltd.
- Understand your infrastructure. This includes servers, operating systems, CPU and memory utilization, application names and versions.
- Don't virtualize everything. Although virtualization is a flexible technology and can bring benefits to a wide variety of environments, it's not the answer for everything.
- Understand your administration model. Virtualization brings a new style of administration that may affect an organization's existing processes.
- Understand which applications you have. Before you virtualize any applications, determine which applications and which versions of those applications your company has as well as how they work.
- Make capacity planning decisions. In order to virtualize an environment, you must understand the infrastructure that will be used. Otherwise, you may choose a technology that doesn't provide the expected performance and service levels.
For more on virtualization, see SearchCIO.com's companion Web site, SearchServerVirtualization.com.
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The Dawn of Virtualization
The earliest form of server virtualization appeared in Unix-based servers that supported partitioning. Founded in 1998 and now owned by EMC, VMware brought server virtualization -- with servers that run x86 processors from AMD and Intel -- to the masses at the turn of the millennium. Server virtualization software divides one physical server into multiple isolated virtual environments. Throughout its evolution, virtualization technology has been called "partitioning," "workload management," "server provisioning" and, finally, "server automation." Essentially, the term means running multiple operating systems or multiple instances of the same operating system on one server.
By decoupling the application from the hardware, the virtual server can now be moved easily between physical servers, and applications using different operating systems can share physical server resources. This means companies don't have to buy and maintain a bank of physical servers. Most CIOs choose to run between two and six virtual machines on a single physical server, according to Forrester, while some run 15 or more. "One guy had 40 on a box," Gillett says.
Server virtualization has transformed the data center of the Los Angeles Angels baseball team, says CIO Al Castro. Before the days of server virtualization, Angel Stadium had 35 physical servers. "The amount of underutilization was just pathetic," says Castro. "You have these boxes, and they are just being used at 5% and 10% of their capacity." Many of the underutilized servers were tied to single tasks: one for accounting, another for customer relationship management, another for IT functions, another for email. Now Castro is using virtual machines so that these applications can share resources, thus optimizing physical servers. Today the outfit has 19 servers, three of which are virtual.
Not only can server virtualization reduce the total number of servers, but there's a lot to be saved from related costs. Fewer physical servers means less data center real estate, fewer air-conditioning units and fewer administrators. "One way to look at it is that the [traditional] administrator-to-server ratio is 1-to-20," says IDC analyst Stephen Elliot, "but with server virtualization it's 1-to-200, on average."
From the cost perspective, says Elliot, "a key note is that the admin costs don't really go away, but admin time can be reallocated when moved to virtual infrastructure. Other cost reductions come from power reduction, hardware reduction and consolidation, OS license reduction, staff reallocation, increase in process efficiency, lower provisioning costs."
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