As virtualization stretches deeper into the enterprise to include mission-critical and resource-intensive applications, IT executives are learning that double-digit physical-to-virtual server ratios are things of the past.
Virtualization vendors may still be touting the potential of putting 20, 50, or even 100 VMs (virtual machines) on a single physical machine, but IT managers and industry experts say those ratios are dangerous in production environments, causing performance problems or, worse, outages.
“In test and development environments, companies could put upwards of 50 virtual machines on a single physical host. But when it comes to mission-critical and resource-intensive applications, that number tends to plummet to less than 15,” says Andi Mann, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) in Boulder, Colo.
We need to continue to maintain the necessary operational barriers to maintain service and delivery, as part of this we should be trying to ensure that during the virtualization process we don’t bring in inherited issues or failures in best practice. At the same time we need to ensure that we don’t create issues that are not actually there, one single server hosting your 40 virtual machines is an operational risk, but only if you have no backup and crucially only if loosing your IT would cause your business to stop. We need to contain risk against marginal cost (and reglatory requirements), establish where the line falls for our IT and our business.
Most of the issues you find with a virtualization project (in distress or working well) tend to remain non technical as they do with nearly every IT project, who pays for what, what’s included, what’s supported and what isn’t supported, what disaster recovery functionality there is (and what it costs against requirements), coupled with the issues of delivery and management. I’ve noted a few in my presentation. An interesting read, do check it out.
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