Virtualization projects have so many benefits and pilot programs are generally easy to execute. These pilot program often show great promise which can lead an IT manager (or their boss) to make the most common virtualization implementation mistake - a rushed full scale roll out. This often leads to disastrous results.
“Jumping the gun and rushing a virtualization project across IT will serve only to bombard staff with more work than necessary and fewer results,” say Nick Portolese, senior manager of data center operations at Nielsen Mobile. Portolese’s advice starts with this: Don’t rush a roll-out until you have done your homework and know your environment inside out.
Larger virtualzation deployments require extensive research on servers, workloads, applications and business demands to reveal where the technology will benefit the company most. It’s critical that IT managers understand and categorize the workloads and existing management of each of the applications you want to virtualize — before you start.
Essentially, the homework that Portolese suggests IT managers do at the start of a virtualization project must be an ongoing process to maximize the return on virtual resources and prevent wasting time correcting errors left untouched for too long in the environment. We can lean a lot from guys like Nick who was recently interviewed by Network World. To read more about the things “you shouldn’t do” when it come to planning your virtualization project check out this helpful article.
Posted under Data Center Virtualization, Virtualization Strategies
This post was written by admin on October 20, 2008
