Building the next generation of IT with virtualization

Building the next generation of IT with virtualization

Introduction......................................................................................................................................... 2 The virtualization solution.................................................................................................................. 2 The agility advantage........................................................................................................................... 3 HP solutions making the virtual real........................................................................................................ 3 Virtualization considerations ................................................................................................................. 4 Capacity planning ........................................................................................................................... 5 How much do I need?................................................................................................................... 5 Provisioning with flexible server capacity ........................................................................................ 6 Flexible storage capacity............................................................................................................... 7 Management................................................................................................................................... 7 Simplifying management of a virtual environment............................................................................. 8 Managing virtual servers............................................................................................................... 8 Managing storage virtualization..................................................................................................... 9 Simplifying infrastructure change.................................................................................................. 10 Enabling automation................................................................................................................... 11 Automating VSE workloads: a more detailed look at gWLM............................................................ 12 Data assurance and availability....................................................................................................... 12 Security and compliance................................................................................................................. 13 Software licensing.......................................................................................................................... 13 Putting it all together .......................................................................................................................... 14 Transforming the "whole" business....................................................................................................... 14 Conclusion........................................................................................................................................ 15 For more information.......................................................................................................................... 16 Introduction
In an effort to stay ahead of the competition, companies have poured capital resources into information technology. In many cases, this has been done on a group-by-group basis, with each line of business creating its own infrastructure silo. Each silo had its own systems, servers, storage, licenses, and support teams-and each shouldered the total cost of owning and operating a standalone infrastructure. And in most cases, that infrastructure far exceeded their routine needs. Over-provisioning to handle peak loads of three to five times average daily needs has been a standard and accepted strategy. With plenty of reserve resources in place, companies were equipped to deal with business fluctuations. Unfortunately, over-provisioning often results in a large percentage of available resources sitting unused most of the time. In fact, average utilization of non-virtualized data center resources is often cited in the 10 to 30 percent range (see figure 1).
Figure 1. Typical utilization scenario

The virtualization solution Virtualization can help companies address the pains of over-provisioning. Virtualization has emerged as a pivotal step ... [download for more]