The re-emergence of Virtualization
technologies, such as VMware, Microsoft's Hyper-V, Xen and Linux KVM has
provided organizations with the tools to create new operating system platforms ready
to support the services required by the business, in minutes rather than days.
Indeed IT itself is a service to the
business.
In more recent times, Cloud computing which
in itself is underpinned by Virtualization, makes use of the functionality
provided to satisfy
·
on-demand resources
·
the ability to provision faster
·
rapid elasticity (refer to NIST 's description of Cloud
Computing)
Cloud computing makes
full use of the underlying clustered hardware. Constant strides are being made by
Virtualization vendors to improve the Virtual Machine (VM) to Host ratio,
without affecting the underlying performance.
But, you may ask "What's this got to do
with Idle VMs?"
Well, as I described earlier Virtualization
provides the means to easily and quickly provision virtual systems. Your
CTO/CIO is going to demand a significant ROI once an investment in both the hardware and
virtualization software has been made, possibly switching the focus to an
increase in the VM to Host ratio.
“What's wrong with that?” I hear you say. Nothing at all, as long as you keep track of what VMs you are
provisioning and :
·
what resources you have
granted
·
what they are for
Failure to do so will mean that your quest
for a good ROI and a satisfied Chief will be in jeopardy, as you’ll encounter a
term most commonly known as VM Sprawl.
More about this on Friday. In the meantime why not register for my webinar 'Taking a trip down VMware vSphere Memory Lane'
http://www.metron-athene.com/services/training/webinars/index.html
Jamie Baker
Principal Consultant
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