I think I want to virtualize - But how do I consolidate from 10 servers to 3 and still maintain the performance I need?
If you're like a lot of small-midsize businesses I talk to, you're probably sick of adding a new server every time you need to deploy a new application. The wiring closet you have 10 boxes stuffed in to is getting way too hot, and you don't want to have to rent a larger office, or God forbid, put the latest server under your desk.
The most obvious thing to do then is to virtualize some (or all) of those existing servers, free up that space in your wiring closet, gain higher levels of availability, and best of all – make your life easier. But now the question comes up – HOW do I size my new servers so that I can provide the same (or better) performance when moving from 10 servers to 2 or 3? The answer is the VMware Capacity Planner (CP) Assessment. It is a service provided by VMware and our partners that can help you gain insight into your IT resource utilization and help you develop a roadmap for server containment and consolidation!
The CP Assessment Tool will agentlessly collect the performance data from the servers in your environment and allow your solution provider to present you with a report of which servers can be consolidated together, the specifications of the new servers you should buy, and also help you build that roadmap to Virtualized bliss. My passion is to help outline that roadmap, to proactively identify opportunities with your infrastructure, security/disaster recovery, end-user computing, in the cloud formations that make sense for your business strategy as you grow your business. Your Cloud!
As you can see from the report below, one of our customers was able to move from 33 physical hosts to either 6 or 9 depending on if they wanted to be conservative or aggressive with their consolidation ratio. They have virtualized. We know that by virtualizing, this has formed the foundation and catalyst for modernizing the IT environment and moving the company future-forward for success.
Go talk to one of our VMware Solution Partners and see how much space, time, and money you can save by virtualizing!
I look forward to your comments or questions.
Get to know Jeff – Read 10 Questions With… Jeff Eberhard
On my company I have achieved a consolidation ratio of more than 20 virtual servers per ESXi host since I had lots of servers with very low resource utilization.
Nowadays, I think virtualization has changed the way we think about servers.
But this is also dangerous because before virtualization you always thought if you could allocate a new workload on an existing server (saving on operating systems and applications licenses) and now every new application is assigned a new virtual server. This provides complete isolation between applications but it is a nightmare from a management point of view.
Joaquim
http://www.opttic.com
Joaquim,
That’s great that you’ve gotten up to a 20:1 consolidation ratio! I agree that the amount of VM’s in an environment can cause a management headache (nightmare) if not handled properly. Things like management, patching, and troubleshooting problems go up exponentially as you bring more and more VM’s online. Luckily VMware has solutions for all of those problems for SMBs. Our vCenter Protect and vCenter Operations product lines allow a VMware administrator to set compliance policies across their org, automate patching of Microsoft and other applications, and help deep-dive into problems so they can be fixed quickly and with as little fuss as possible. Check out vCenter Protect @ http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-protect/overview.html and vCenter Operations @ http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-operations-management/overview.html
Thanks,
Jeff