Value of Management by Virtualization

Posted by martin237 on Mar 4, 2007 in Data Center, VMware | 1 comment

Value of Management by Virtualization #2: Economic Impact – Network Management Evolution – Because change is inevitable

ItÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s not hard to make the case for virtualization in the server world: take one server, add VMWare, and where you had one you now have four. This is a layup business case that a third grader can make. Management by Virtualization (MBV) delivers a more subtle, but over time, a higher economic impact. Below IÃ¢â‚¬â„¢ve attempted to lay out the areas where MBV can dramatically impact the economics of running systems and network infrastructure.

Very cool article, I’ve written about the benefits from virtualization, but it’s always to see what others in the field think. Crucially for me, it’s the datacenter issue and the carbon factor, I can’t simply keep buying physical platforms, the energy and hosting costs make the costs prohibitive, I need to be more efficient with the IT, by all means physical if the need dictates it, but if possible virtualize the infrastructure, the application is the way we need to go. Two things are needed for this, business buy in aligned with a charging method, one which brings benefit to the process, coupled with allowance from the CFO to sign off the initial capital investment needed.

Keep in mind that in the near future in the UK certainly, we’re not far from the point at which my corporate carbon footprint needs to be declared, but suddenly the servers, those grid farms/blade farms and the legacy vax/dec kit will seem less attractive to a virtual session on a low voltage server.