To Virtualize, or Not to Virtualize?

Baseline ran a survey about virtualization of nearly 400 IT professionals last month. According to the survey, 62% of the 400 respondents felt that there were various applications they won't virtualize. Reasons included:

• Concerns over the data-intensive nature of various applications, such as SAP and other business applications.
• Security issues, including the fact that
• Concerns about being able to create backups in a virtualized environment without causing latency.
• Technical concerns, including the fact that some of their servers and other hardware don't support virtualization in the first place.
• Inability to calculate the ROI of virtualization for an application 

Sure, virtualization has drawbacks. There is no worry-free panacea out there when creating a platform for your business-critical applications. To paraphrase The Princess Bride, "IT life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something." Don't believe the hype. But we're really not talking about virtualization in a technical sense now, are we? Virtualization is all about having a business plan and executing it well.

I suggest that your ability to successfully virtualize sensitive applications reflects how well you're able to manage your department. Virtualization is not a technical issue; it's a business issue. If you can virtualize well, you're a manager that understands how to calculate ROI and who understands how to manage employees well. You also know the business use of the applications and servers you currently manage.

Technical and business issues include:

• Virtual machine sprawl: Because it's relatively easy from a technical perspective, virtualization can lead to too many new servers that exist for no reason. Also, new VMs may not be properly backed up, leading to security and reliability issues. In this way, your environment can quickly become the victim of VM "urban blight." This, again, is a policy/management problem, not a technical problem. Make sure that you have a clear set of criteria for approval or denial when it comes to creating virtual servers. Otherwise, you'll have created a "VM of the day" strategy that will get you nowhere.
• Infrastructure issues: One of the top mistakes in virtualization is not properly preparing your network. Many SANS aren't properly sized for quality virtualization. It's sometimes hard to map storage performance and capacity requirements for the SAN to work properly. Also, many are using the Network File System (NFS) as a protocol; have you properly planned your rollout to include this protocol? Also, what about disk alignment? Check that your VMDK files are aligned with your storage solution.
• Workload planning: When planning for virtualization, it's vital that you have a deep understanding of your server load.

Perhaps have an entry about how to plan a virtualization rollout.  It seems to me, then, that visibility, in a technical and business sense, is essential for successful virtualization.