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 Monday.
In the meantime why not register for my webinar VMware Capacity Planning'
In the meantime why not register for my webinar VMware Capacity Planning'
Jamie Baker
Principal Consultant
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