Virtualization as an enterprise data center strategy is transformative, yet continues primarily to be deployed as a point solution – driven by projects such as ERP implementations, hardware refreshes or disaster recovery initiatives. This approach risks virtualization becoming yet another technology island – increasing overall complexity even as it reduces select capital and operating expenses. Adversity, though, provides IT leaders with an opportunity. They can slash IT costs, empower their staffs and promote their own careers by taking up the mantle for a fully virtualized data center standard.
The Need for IT Leadership
Despite virtualization's huge buzz, both IDC and Forrester estimate only a 30% enterprise virtualization penetration rate, while Gartner says it's even lower. Lack of application manufacturer support, regulatory prohibitions and security concerns are common roadblocks, but the biggest inhibitor is inertia. A fully virtualized data center requires both vision and the ability to execute upon that vision – overcoming the inevitable political hurdles in the process.
In the absence of leadership, virtualization tends to work its way slowly through the data center in a piecemeal fashion, requiring increased administration even as the cost for facilities and equipment decline. Administrative requirements are compounded by the necessity of managing both virtual and physical environments.
Lack of an enterprise vision perpetuates myopic decision-making. The inevitable hodgepodge of technology islands is antithetic to a virtualized data center dependent upon a cohesive architecture spanning compute, storage and network. The risk of dissipating huge virtualization savings makes "good enough" compromises not good enough. Basing a hypervisor decision upon licensing costs, for example, disregards VMware vSphere's singular ability to enable high percentage virtualization of the data center, particularly when augmented with the Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual switch.
Equipment decisions similarly should be driven by their contribution to data center virtualization success rather than by traditional brand loyalties. Pooled compute resources, for instance, make individual servers interchangeable and non mission-critical commodities. On the other hand, Cisco's revolutionary Unified Computing System (UCS) provides such a superior platform for hosting virtual infrastructure that IT leaders do their organizations a disservice by not at least investigating its myriad advantages.
The capabilities and efficiencies enabled by enterprise virtualization provide an effective means of challenging the status quo. An application owner may, for example, insist that SQL Server be run in a clustered physical environment because that's the way it's always been done. The IT leader can counter by calculating the huge monies this predilection will cost the organization versus using VMware vSphere's Fault Tolerance.
Creativity overcomes most obstacles to a fully virtualized data center such as the minority of software manufacturers still refusing to support their applications on VMs. An easy resolution for organizations running vSphere over NFS on NetApp is to FlexClone a Virtual Machine's virtual disk into a LUN and simply present to a physical server. Voila, instantaneous V2P.
Sometimes, as when constrained by regulatory mandates, servers must remain physical. Innovative technologies such as PlateSpin PowerConvert enable both compliance and virtualization advantages of enhanced testing, pseudo high-availability and DR replication by continuously snapping a physical server to a VM. The ROI takes a small hit, but a 95% virtualized data center is still vastly superior to a 30% virtualized one.
Roadmap to a Successful Virtualized Data Center
The journey starts with building a compelling business case. Expanding from partial to full data center virtualization enables a very large and measurable ROI, but the business value hardly stops there. A 2009 Webtorials Business Continuity report says that server failure is the number one cause of outages – a problem eliminated by enterprise virtualization. Green initiatives, cloud computing benefits, vastly enhanced disaster recovery, reduced IT staff time and more productive virtual desktops can be incorporated, along with a comprehensive ROI analysis, into a virtualization justification document that is presented to senior management and the Board.
As with any enterprise project, virtualization planning is essential. A virtualized data center not only impacts all IT infrastructure groups, but also demands much higher levels of coordination between them. This warrants representation from each IT function in the planning phase as part of a "data center team". Under the IT leader guidance, they can ensure that the backup, storage, network and security components are designed and integrated as part of a cohesive architecture. They can also anticipate required IT organizational changes – incorporating tools and processes for managing new virtualization challenges such as limiting server growth no longer constrained by budget and procurement delays.
Employees, management and customers enjoy success stories. IT leaders can build organizational pride by publicizing their virtualization project – certainly internally and perhaps externally as well. CO2 emission reduction can be touted – potentially along with rebates offered by many utilities to customers that virtualize, as part of environmental initiatives. A promotion is not an unusual accompaniment to a successful enterprise virtualization deployment.
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