To virtualize or not to virtualize

Virtualization offers many solutions to many issues system administrators face on a day-to-day basis. In this article I will be looking at server virtualization, it pros and it cons and what business leaders need to do before they take the plunge.

Before virtualization as supplied by VMware, Microsoft, Xen and Virtualiron. The ability to consolidate on server space was reserve for big companies that can afford blade systems and other enterprise high-end systems that cost a fortune. Today a home user to the largest enterprise can afford to consolidate using virtualization. It comes at different price levels to match your budget.
Therefore if any businesses are thinking about virtualization I would advise them to look at some of the pros and cons of server virtualization:

• One of the major reason for virtualization is server consolidation, because your server room is running out of space. This where virtualization comes in handy and will freeup a lot of space in your server room.
• Are you a software house? Virtualization is considered a heaven sent for developers and software testers a like, because virtualization has dramatically reduce the time and effort needed to build and deploy servers and workstations.
• Another benefit of virtualization is: the servers that are being made today are very powerful and just having one application running on these servers will only taking up a very small percentage of the resource, which is not very cost effective.
• Virtualization can reduce your power consumption.

So why shouldn’t you virtualized:

• When you are planning to virtualize, care must be taken less you end up with a single point of failure. Therefore if you are not planning to implement the infrastructure that will provide redundancy then it best to stay as is.
• Although different providers say they are providing virtualization not all are the same, so check that it meet your requirements.

Thus, if you are thinking of implementing virtualization for whatever reason, you should first look at what you have. Is your infrastructure purly windows, Linux or UNIX from this evaluation you can exclude some vendors. How much have you got to spend. This is when you need to list everything you want down to the finest detail this well help you to get the true cost of the project. If after this you still want to go ahead well all the best.
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