My previous blog
talked of the need to look at ‘value’ of systems in the future, not just their
‘cost’. Today we’ll consider the 2012
capacity challenge in P2V, physical to virtual migration.
You probably
think this isn’t an issue for capacity managers in 2012. Haven’t we already done P2V? Well, take a look around. There’s still a long way to go. Advances from the likes of VMware mean that
more can be virtualized than we might have previously thought. The easy stuff has been done first, now we
have the difficult stuff to migrate. For
the enthusiastic capacity manager, this means a harder but more rewarding task
lies ahead.
The problem
of course is that the more difficult the systems are to migrate, the greater
the risk and cost to the business if there are any errors. More reason then, to ensure good capacity
management throughout the process.
‘Quick calculators’ that use basic math to work out that 50 servers
running at 1% will fit onto a virtual server aren’t anywhere near enough to
help you assess what can be virtualized and where, if those physical servers
are busier, running more complex mixed workloads and have significant
interdependencies across an application or service. Better measurement of how those servers are currently
performing is needed, combined with a view across multiple servers providing a
complete service.
Having
quantified and sized requirements for the virtual environment based on a
comprehensive view of the physical applications being virtualized, you need to
manage the capacity of those applications well, once migrated. A later blog in this series will consider
this in more detail, but again the core modern capacity management elements are
relevant: predict to avoid problems; ensure you have a 360⁰ view of resources and make sure you
know what the business needs.
User access
to systems grows ever more varied, especially with the increasing use of mobile
computing and portable devices, so make sure you understand your end user
service perspective wherever those users are.
Rapid deployment offered by virtual systems make over provisioning or
poor provisioning so much easier to achieve than before! Good ‘deep dive’ software is needed to ensure
that critical virtual servers are well managed to avoid repeating the mistakes
of our physical past and wasting money over-deploying resources. As I said in the first blog in this series,
capacity management in 2012 is about ‘value’ not ‘cost’.
The rewards
for the capacity manager and the business are greater, the bigger the capacity
management challenge. Enjoy the 2012
virtualization challenge of virtualizing the valuable stuff!
On Monday we’ll look at our third capacity management trend for 2012,
capacity management for cloud computing.
Andrew Smith
Chief Sales & Marketing Officer
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