Verizon Business this week offered a few tips on implementing server virtualization, which IDC says will be a $16 billion market by 2013. The company is recommending:
• That customers complete an assessment of their current IT environment and computing resources, including all servers. Customers should determine the servers that are candidates for virtualization.
• That after compiling a list of applications that will run in the virtualized environment, customers should determine if the vendors of the applications support virtualization. (Chris Wolf of the Burton Group recommended at the Catalyst Conference that application owners should now have to justify why an app cannot run in a virtual machine, instead of the other way around.)
• That customers should evaluate licensing costs – when customers are assessing those applications that will be migrated to the virtual environment, that they determine how the software is licensed – whether by server, CPUs, multi-cores or by virtual machine.
• That customers assess their memory and storage requirements for the applications that will run in the virtual environment.
• And, finally, that customers look at the security of the new environment, paying close attention to industry regulations, etc.
Good tips all.
