How can virtualizing help?

Imagine taking those 5 machines and putting them all into one server (also known as the host). That’s exactly what virtualization means. Now most likely you will have to buy a new server with more memory and better CPU to condense all your servers into, but this still saves you money in the long run and space. The software to virtualize most of the time is free, or you can pay money for certain feature. So why pay for it? Read below.

Now that I’ve read everything that’s good about virtualization, what’s bad about it?

It’s simple single point of failure. Imagine the host getting fried during a storm or electrical spike. Yup those five servers all went down at the same time. In a non virtualized scenario, yeah maybe one server got fried, but the rest are still running though. However virtualization has ways to protect you from this single point of failure, but that’s where you have to pay to get these features. I won’t explaining all the costs associated because each vendor that different features and prices, but if you need need help in sorting out all this call us.

If you need help with virtualization or would like us to visit your practice for an assessment, call us at 832.260.0550

Servers that are not suited for a virtualize environment

1. Servers that require too much I/O on the drive – any servers that do a lot of I/O work. Basically any server that hits the hard drive constantly is NOT a good candidate to put in a virtual environment. The reasoning behind is because on the host you will be sharing resources that will create a bottleneck for the VM (Virtual Machine) which needs to do a lot of I/O work at all time. The rule of thumb is for Exchange and SQL may not be a good candidates for virtualizing but with a few exemption depending on the size of your enterprise’s exchange and sql.

2. Servers that use too much CPU (High Demand Processor Utilization) – I’m not referring to servers that hits high CPU utilization every now and then;  I’m talking about servers that stays above 30-60% CPU utilization throughout the whole operation.

What’s a good candidate to virtualize?

This all depends on the “host” you buy (the host is the physical machine where you will install and run all your VMs in) but based on our experience, we have virtualized everything from citrix servers, terminal servers, exchange (but not the mailbox server but instead the client access server role), and many other scenarios. If your server doesn’t use too much I/O or CPU then it is safe to virtualize. Like I said previously it all depends on the size of your organization and the resources  currently currently being utilized on the storage drive, memory, and processor.