Archive for March 25th, 2013

Understanding Server Virtualization

March 25th, 2013

Understanding Server Virtualization

Virtualization is a hot trend, for those small businesses that decide virtualization is the right move for them, there has to be a complete understanding of existing resources, hardware and applications before they take action.
1. Understand your infrastructure. Before you make a decision about virtualization, it is imperative to learn about your business’s existing infrastructure. This includes the numbers and types of servers, operating systems, CPU and memory utilization, application names and versions. Without a thorough understanding of these components, it would be difficult to understand how virtualization technologies could best be used within your organization
2. Don’t virtualize everything. Although virtualization is a flexible technology and can bring benefits to a wide variety of environments, it is not the answer for everything. Operating system virtualization provides the most benefit when it replaces a physical server that is underutilized. As an example, a server running Active Directory that is using a small percentage of its processing power. This is an ideal situation for virtualization.
3. Understand your administration model. Virtualization brings a new style of administration that may impact the existing processes within an organization. Realize that existing server teams with provisioning responsibilities could have to adapt to this new model in order to create new virtual servers.
4. Understand the applications you have. “Before virtualizing any applications, it is best practice to understand exactly what applications are included in the estate, what versions they are currently using and how they work,” Colombo said. When you have a complete understanding of your applications, you’ll be able to make the best decisions when considering virtualizing those applications.
5. Make capacity planning decisions. Understanding the infrastructure that will be used to virtualize an environment is a must — especially the specification and capacity of the chosen systems. If you do it incorrectly, then the solution you choose may not provide the expected performance and service levels.
If you need more information, attend our next webinar, Understanding Server Virtualization at The Computer Company, Thursday, April 4th at 2:00pm EST
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