New concerns arise as IT executives look at the next wave of applications in the queue for virtualization. If you or your business is among those evaluating ROI and the risks associated with virtualizing your production applications, this five-chapter ebook offers some practical advice.
5 Questions to Ask About Server
Virtualization and High Availability
Part 1
Is Now the Right Time to Virtualize My Critical Production Applications?
The ebook with answers:
Is now the right timeto virtualize mycritical productionapplications?
Which criticalproduction apps canbe virtualized safely?
Won't virtualizationadd more complexity?
What happens to myvirtual machines if thephysical server fails?
Will virtualizationsoftware alone give meenough high availability?First of a five-part series from Stratus TechnologiesPART1
SERVER VIRTUALIZATION AND HIGH AVAILABILITY
Is Now the Right Time to that was increasingly powerful. Too Many such applications that weren't
Virtualize my Critical much computing capacity went idle as viable candidates for using server
Production Applications? hardware sprawl met Moore's Law. A virtualization before can now betipping point arrived, and server considered as virtualization softwareMore and more often, the answer virtualization was in the right place at matures. For example, VMware'sis yes. the right time. vSphereT 4 offers numerousperformance and scalability improve-However, it's obvious that production Server virtualization gained traction fast ments for resource-intensiveapplications will be more demanding as an accepted way to deliver IT applications compared with itsŪthan the non-essential applications services and applications in the predecessor, VMware Infrastructure 3.where your organization began using enterprise. The early adopters of x86x86 server virtualization. And keeping virtualization focused on consolidating Due diligence firstthose demands front and center makes servers that were lightly utilized. The Still, anywhere that companiesall the difference to virtualizing typical workload was neither recognize a need for high availability orproduction applications effectively and performance-sensitive, nor critical better, IT executives are called on tosafely, as we will see. in nature. perform due diligence. Before you movecritical production applications to aLet's get going with some context: For Production apps go virtual virtualized environment, you need toyears, adding new computing hardware Now IT executives - perhaps you're know your service level agreementswas the path of least resistance when among them - are looking at the next (SLAs) will continue to be metcompanies wanted to run a new wave of applications to virtualize: or surpassed.application or support more users. extending to business-criticalPhysical servers proliferated as a result. applications such as e-mail, messaging New concerns come up, for instance,Power, cooling and facilities costs rose and database servers, and business when you concentrate multiple produc-to support all that gear. At the same services including online transactions tion applications on a physical server.time, improvements in processor and credit card authorization. Some IT managers liken the effect totechnology produced server hardware putting many eggs in one basket.PART1
SERVER VIRTUALIZATION AND HIGH AVAILABILITY
VI RT U A L I Z AT I O N , Burton Group's Chris Wolf on Virtualization 2009
HI G H AVA I L A B I L I T Y Economic pressures are prompting more organizations to use x86 serverA N D ROI virtualization to support production applications, says senior analyst ChrisWolf of Burton Group in a virtualization podcast for Stratus Technologies.
"Organizations, up until now, have just been starting to virtualize theirproduction applications. With the budget constraints IT is under in 2009,"The bottom line is that with a they are going to be under even more pressure to virtualize more productionwell-architected virtualization applications. As you virtualize production applications, availability of thosesolution, a 6 to 18 month ROI virtualized applications becomes an even more critical issue," says Wolf.is highly likely."- Chris Wolf "The thing that's in virtualization's favor is that from an ROI perspective, itSenior Analyst / Burton Group continues to be an absolute no-brainer. It allows you to remove hardwarefrom your data center, so I'm reducing my hardware maintenance costs. I'mreducing my energy cost associated with that hardware as well. There couldbe some human resources cost reduction in terms of junior-level IT staff thatmight be doing some of that hardware maintenance.Explains industry a... [download for more]
