In February, we announced PBS Engineering and Environmental Inc. as the winner of our $100,000 VMware/Dell Journey to Your Cloud Makeover contest. This is the third in our blog series chronicling PBS’s implementation of expanded virtualization and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager.
Everything has been progressing as planned at PBS. The Vancouver disaster recovery center is already up and running with a full 3-2-1 redundant high availability (HA) configuration based on a SAN, two switches and three servers. Throughout the makeover and our discussions with Todd Leavitt, IT Manager at PBS, there’s been one recurring theme – he wishes he would have started virtualization sooner.
So why didn’t he? “I implemented a little slower than I should have because I was very cautious that virtualization was different than what I was used to,” he explains. “I started out with one machine and then virtualized a couple machines with a free version of ESXI host. I ran that for a while to see if I’d have any problems, and it was just incredible. There were no problems, and it became absolutely trustworthy.”
We often hear similar stories from customers who wish that they would have started virtualization, or expanded their use of virtualization, earlier. So we thought it would be helpful to dispel some of the common misconceptions surrounding virtualization for small to medium-sized businesses.
Debunking the Top 5 Virtualization Myths Through One Company’s Experience
Myth 1: Change is scary.
IT professionals are understandably wary about rocking the boat, but as PBS’s experience shows, there really is nothing to fear. Or, as Todd puts it, “I think a lot of small businesses might be afraid – the technical people, the IT managers, the network administrators – because virtualization is just different. Everyone is used to one machine with one OS installed on it, and they get stuck on that. It’s amazing, once they take that first step, how easy it is to implement and manage. Don’t fear the change – it’s for the best. It is the future.”
Myth 2: My company doesn’t have the manpower.
On the surface, it may seem like implementing or expanding a virtualized environment would require a lot of resources; however, many of our small and medium-sized business customers operate with one-person IT departments. Without virtualization, these businesses would need to hire additional IT staff. As Todd has discovered, virtualization allows you to remain nimble, dynamically adapt to change, address problems as they arise, and accomplish more with far fewer resources.
Myth 3: I don’t have the time.
In most cases, virtualization doesn’t take long – usually anywhere from a couple days to a month, depending on the project scope. For example, the timeline for the $100,000 PBS virtualization expansion is roughly one month. And, think of the time and headaches you’ll save in being able to schedule server downtime or take vacation without having to worry about potential server issues. “It’s extremely efficient to be able to do maintenance on servers during the workday now, instead of having to stay until 7:00 p.m.,” Todd says. “And now, there’s significantly less maintenance overall.”
Myth 4: Virtualization is expensive.
Virtualization can Continue reading →
