Using Capacity Management to help prevent VM Stall

When running a virtualization/consolidation program it’s usual to concentrate on the low risk servers, the “low hanging fruit” if you will.  Once past this point the difficulties or politics in virtualizing more complex and business critical systems can lead to the concept of VM stall.  This issue is wide spread across the industry with Gartner estimating that companies have still only virtualized 20% - 30% of their physical estate.  VM stall has been evident during a number of consultancy engagements conducted by us, with companies taking an overly cautious approach to virtualization due to a lack of understanding.  This lack of understanding tends to be focused on the following areas:

·         Difficulties in sizing VMs and inherently  the   supporting infrastructure

·         Understanding the performance aspects of virtualization

·         Managing the Capacity of virtualization

Based on experience working on these sorts of issues with our global client base we have developed a number of service driven solutions that can provide as much or as little assistance as required.

This assistance could be in the form of a one day workshop that educates your support teams on what to monitor and how to interpret the data these metrics provide.  We can also deliver a more process based solution where we would assess the effectiveness of Capacity Management within your business, in relation to virtualization and make recommendations.

To fully exploit the benefits of virtualization i.e. fewer, but more utilized servers the principles and practices of Capacity management should be employed, take a look at our services...

http://www.metron-athene.com/consulting/consulting.html

I’d be interested to hear your views on VM stall.

Rob Ford

Consultant