inside

Introduction

Virtualized
1: Getting Started

2: Making the Most

Datacenter
through Virtualization:
What to Expect

3: Datacenter
Optimization: The FAQs

= Real-World IT 4: The Agile Business

4
Optimization 5: Business Continuity
and Disaster Recovery

6: Vision for the Future

Syndicated Articles

Playbook
prepared fo r
 Introduction

Virtualized Datacenter = 1: Getting Started

Real-World IT Optimization 2: Making the Most

Optimizing IT infrastructure is always
in season. During challenging times, however,
it becomes more than an aspiration: making the
most of your IT assets becomes an imperative for
competitive advantage, and ultimately, survival.
Based on the proven ROI and business success of
virtualization for server consolidation, many orga-
nizations are looking to extend their virtualization
efforts to encompass the entire datacenter, from
the OS to the network to the management of
through Virtualization:
What to Expect
those critical business information assets.
Inspired by the collaboration between 3: DataCenter
Optimization: The FAQs
VMware® and Intel to enable the next phase
of virtualization, this playbook will provide IT 4: The Agile Business
decision-makers with a step-by-step overview of
the benefits, challenges, technology options and 5: Business Continuity
best practices for datacenter virtualization. It will and Disaster Recovery
describe breakthroughs in management solutions
6: Vision for the Future
for virtual datacenters and multi-core chipsets—
including VMware vSphere™ 4, and VMware VMo-
Syndicated Articles
tion™ as well as Xeon processors with
Intel Virtualization Technology and the – Bank Scores with Server
Virtualization
new microarchitecture code-named
– Doing the Math on
Nehalem—to case studies and advice
Virtualization
from CIOs and IT decision-makers.
– Major shift to cloud IT
Using a mix of original articles and services inevitable
syndicated articles culled from the best
– Pepsi Bottler Swallows
of CIO and CSO magazines, IT decision- Skepticism About
makers will be prepared to make Virtualization
informed decisions on virtualization’s – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
role in controlling costs, optimizing IT Approach to Virtualization
in 2009
assets, business agility and disaster
recovery and business continuity.

34 2
 Introduction

1 Putting Virtualization to Work 1: Getting Started

2: Making the Most

An effective virtualization model re- efficient enterprise. And virtualization can deliver
through Virtualization:
quires commitment and a well-designed impressive results. It can spike utilization rates What to Expect
strategy. Organizations that succeed from the 20 percent range to 80 percent or higher
can achieve remarkable gains. and result in a cost savings exceeding 70 percent. 3: DataCenter
Over the last few years, virtualization has evolved But assembling the right combination of hardware Optimization: The FAQs
from a promising technology to a mainstream tool and software is paramount, and seamlessly inte-
grating policies and culture is vital. Only then can 4: The Agile Business
for maximizing utilization rates and minimizing costs
within an IT infrastructure. A 2008 IDG Research an enterprise unlock maximum business value and
5: Business Continuity
Services survey of 100 U.S.-based IT leaders found achieve superior results.
and Disaster Recovery
that 88 percent of organizations currently invest in
virtualization initiatives; 63 percent have already Building the Business Case 6: Vision for the Future
achieved success with server virtualization. Now, for Virtualization
a growing number of organizations are focusing on The ability to run multiple computing environments,
Syndicated Articles
total datacenter infrastructure virtualization. operating systems and applications side by side
– Bank Scores with Server
Yet understanding the challenges of operating within the same physical server is appealing. By
Virtualization
a datacenter and how virtualization technology partitioning a server into several virtual machines,
– Doing the Math on
can help solve them doesn’t necessarily translate an enterprise can:
Virtualization
into a viable strategy—particularly for organiza- c Boost utilization rates and thereby reduce
– Major shift to cloud IT
tions moving toward large-scale deployments. An server sprawl. A smaller and more efficient IT
services inevitable
organization—and its IT department—must develop environment also helps boost server perfor-
– Pepsi Bottler Swallows
a sound plan for virtualizing servers, storage and mance and streamline the datacenter.
Skepticism About
other enterprise resources. Utilization rates, avail- c Reduce datacenter power utilization and space Virtualization
ability, resource optimization and, ultimately, return requirements, thereby driving costs down.
– 5 Steps to A Big Picture
on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership c Deliver cost-effective virtualization-based high Approach to Virtualization
(TCO) are integral to success. availability solutions for critical applications. in 2009
It’s no secret that datacenter optimization c Develop enterprise-class application availability

34
is a key to building a more agile, adaptable and and robust business continuity and disaster re-
3

covery on a high performance platform offered
1
by Intel and VMware.
c Migrate legacy operating systems and applica-
tions to virtualized environments for better
reliability and performance—especially with
server refreshes and hardware upgrades.
The business world is experiencing one of the
Introduction
fastest data growth periods in history. As com-
panies migrate to online transactions, electronic 1: Getting Started
records, and wireless systems, the demand for
datacenter space, servers and storage arrays is 2: Making the Most
climbing at a dizzying rate. Moreover, a spate of through Virtualization:
What to Expect
government regulations, along with enhanced
business continuity, disaster recovery and data 3: DataCenter
archiving requirements mean more robust systems Optimization: The FAQs
are needed.
The corporate mindset is changing as well. 4: The Agile Business
A few years ago, the idea of going “green” was
relegated to a handful of distinctly environmental 5: Business Continuity
and Disaster Recovery
firms. Today, as energy prices climb while bud-
gets shrink, energy efficiency has become a core
6: Vision for the Future
component of a successful business. Consolidating
servers and storage translates into lower cooling
bills, reduced electricity consumption, and a smaller Syndicated Articles
footprint. Green is here to stay. – Bank Scores with Server
Virtualization
Making the Move to Virtualization – Doing the Math on
The starting point for any organization adopting Virtualization
virtualization is to gain the support of top execu- – Major shift to cloud IT
tives. A compelling financial story—and proof of services inevitable
viability—can transform a virtualization initiative – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
from a promising idea into a winning proposi- Skepticism About
Virtualization
tion. Typically, an enterprise can achieve ROI for a
virtualization project within three to six months of – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
Approach to Virtualization
deployment. Lower TCO, improved resource usage in 2009
rates and better system availability can result in
significantly greater savings and performance im-
34 4

provements. In addition, an organization can realize
1 ancillary benefits such as simplified patch manage-
ment and software updates.
It’s also vital to crunch numbers internally and
assemble a realistic adoption and deployment mod-
el. One useful tool is VMware’s free ROI calculator:
www.vmware.com/products/vi/calculator.html. It
can transform raw data and vague objectives into a
clear-cut strategy. Essentially, the calculator guides
an organization through the decision-making pro-
cess by identifying the tangible CAPEX and OPEX
savings available through: infrastructure optimi-
zation; lifecycle management; disaster recovery;
application development; release management and
desktop virtualization.
The final step is to assess, design and build a
virtualized environment that’s plugged into overall
business objectives. A virtualized model must work
across departments, business units and beyond. It
must deal with current IT requirements but offer
the automation, scalability, management tools and
support for services necessary for the future.
The migration to virtualized systems doesn’t
have to prove overwhelming. Refresh cycles can
become an opportunity for costs savings rather
than cost activities. As older servers and sys-
tems are replaced with a higher-performing
and more cost-effective architecture, it’s pos-
sible to achieve greater virtual machine density,
improved application performance, better flex-
Introduction
ibility and lower power consumption. These
incremental benefits add up to big gains. 1: Getting Started
At the same time, an organization can phase
in virtualization software such as VMware, which 2: Making the Most
provides tools for provisioning and managing through Virtualization:
What to Expect
resources faster and far more effectively. In fact,
a VMware stack can create multiple snapshots of
3: DataCenter
a virtualized environment and provide insight into Optimization: The FAQs
ideal operating conditions for servers—as well as
storage systems running on storage area networks, 4: The Agile Business
network-attached storage and other components.
Finally—and no less significantly—it’s entirely 5: Business Continuity
possible to identify small and obvious opportunities and Disaster Recovery
for virtualization, create proof points and success
6: Vision for the Future
stories, and then build on the framework by ex-
panding the use of the technology to additional
departments, divisions or initiatives. This process Syndicated Articles
can occur in a deliberate and well-planned manner, – Bank Scores with Server
starting with a test development environment that Virtualization
allows IT to tweak and adjust settings to determine – Doing the Math on
the best operating state. The end result is a low- Virtualization
risk, high-reward IT infrastructure that can trans- – Major shift to cloud IT
form an enterprise. services inevitable
In today’s highly competitive business environ- – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
ment, virtualization is ultimately about dollars and Skepticism About
Virtualization
sense. When used effectively, it provides immedi-
ate and tangible results but also builds a founda- – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
Approach to Virtualization
tion and framework for future gains.
in 2009
In Chapter 2, we’ll look at how virtualization tech-
nology can transform and optimize the datacenter. n
34 5
 Introduction

2 Making the Most through Virtualization 1: Getting Started

Trusted partners can help organiza- boosting corporate sustainability strategies. Finally, 2: Making the Most
tions get the most from virtualization virtualization offers a flexible, dynamic environment through Virtualization:
What to Expect
deployments. for infrastructure resource-sharing, with server
Virtualization seems sensible at face value, with loads that adapt in real-time to changing business
3: DataCenter
straightforward benefits and qualitative savings. needs, minimizing service delays and disruptions.
Optimization: The FAQs
Various research sources confirm that a virtualiza- In this “optimized” datacenter infrastructure, the
tion infrastructure based on high-performance IT team can virtualize servers, storage and net- 4: The Agile Business
servers can result in a 20 to 80 percent increase in works into one set of computing resources that can
hardware utilization—which can translate into hun- be shared and reallocated as needed. Think of it as 5: Business Continuity
dreds of thousands of dollars in savings. a virtual datacenter that can expand and contract and Disaster Recovery
But many IT environments still operate in a “do dynamically. Virtualization solutions also include
sophisticated management, monitoring, availability 6: Vision for the Future
less with more” fashion. A datacenter might have
dozens of servers running a variety of operating and recovery features that comple-
systems. Many of these servers house just a single ment existing system manage- Syndicated Articles
application, resulting in a highly complex, rigid infra- ment tools. – Bank Scores with Server
structure that is tough to manage and adapt. It’s a Moving to virtualiza- Virtualization
drain on cash flow, hardware resources and energy. tion requires a shift – Doing the Math on
Organizations that move to a virtualized infra- in mindset from Virtualization
structure can consolidate multiple operating sys- both IT and – Major shift to cloud IT
tems and applications onto a single server, which business services inevitable
reduces costs and complexity and frees up physical – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
space. It also simplifies security, because security Skepticism About
Virtualization
protection resides in the virtualization layer, not
within individual applications. – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
Approach to Virtualization
And because virtualization dramatically
in 2009
decreases the number of machines, datacenter
energy use is reduced, shaving utility bills and

34 6
 Introduction

2 leaders, and often new skill sets and HR changes
within IT. Below, we talk about these changes and
how technology partners can ease the transition
and improve outcomes.
Culture Change
Smart companies have been operating in a “flat”
structure in recent years; the same concept applies
to the datacenter. Resources are shared and distrib-
uted according to need, not corporate hierarchy
—a change that does not come easy.
Business leaders may worry that application
performance will suffer in a shared server environ-
ment. For executives accustomed to having their
own box, control and risk management issues can
be top concerns. The CIO’s job is to clearly demon-
strate why virtualization is a wise and competitive
option, particularly during tight economic times.
Nearly half the respondents to a recent AFCOM (an
association for datacenter managers) survey say
they will have a smaller datacenter budget in 2009;
86 percent report increased use of virtualization
technology to reduce the need for new server
purchases.
Strive for broad stakeholder participation and
test virtual servers to ensure service levels are still
acceptable. Management policies that avoid virtual
server sprawl by helping IT managers determine
which applications should go virtual are part of a
sound virtualization strategy. Finally, staff train-
ing on virtualization techniques, securing a virtual
environment, and a plan for IT staff reorganization 1: Getting Started
are key components of any comprehensive virtual-
ization change management practice. 2: Making the Most
through Virtualization:
What to Expect
A Strong Alliance Helps
As with any significant technology implementation, 3: DataCenter
particularly one that changes how core infrastruc- Optimization: The FAQs
ture components are acquired and managed, tech-
nology partners are critical to success. It’s impor- 4: The Agile Business
tant to choose vendors that continually innovate
and will be around for a long time to come. 5: Business Continuity
and Disaster Recovery
Intel, with decades of experience supplying
products to support advanced computing and com-
6: Vision for the Future
munications systems, and VMware, which delivers
virtualization software to millions of end users
Syndicated Articles
and all of the Fortune 100, have been working
together for years to deliver a flexible virtualiza- – Bank Scores with Server
Virtualization
tion architecture providing maximum efficiencies.
Their alliance has resulted in significant technology – Doing the Math on
Virtualization
enhancements:
Workload management and multi-core – Major shift to cloud IT
services inevitable
processing Data volumes and datacenter re-
quirements will only expand in the coming years. – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
Skepticism About
VMware vSphere 4 software addresses shifting
Virtualization
workload requirements through flexible, dynamic
– 5 Steps to A Big Picture
hardware resource management. It pools and clus-
Approach to Virtualization
ters aggregate physical resources, presenting them in 2009
uniformly for dynamic load balancing, high avail-
ability and mobility of virtual machines between

34 7
 Introduction

2 different physical hardware with no disruption. The

VMware/Intel collaboration has helped VMware
software make better use of Intel hardware capabil-
ities—such as the new multi-core processors, which
support multiple software tasks simultaneously.
Consolidation Virtualization and consolida-
tion require server platforms that combine perfor-
mance, scalability and availability to deliver high
service levels for multiple business applications. In-
tel architecture is the basis for exactly these kinds
of high-performance servers; with VMware technol-
ogy, organizations can achieve server consolidation
ratios as high as 20:1.
Ecosystem Benefits
The VMware/Intel partner ecosystem provides
access to a rich choice of platforms, operat-
ing systems and applications to complement an
organization’s virtualization and dynamic data-
center strategy. ISVs can gain access to a suite
of platforms from various OEMs; pre-production
access to Intel Xeon platforms; pre-release access
to VMware vSphere 4 and technical support from
both companies. More information is available at
www.vmware.com/go/intel.
For the past decade, VMware and SAP have
enjoyed a close partnership; hundreds of customers
use VMware in their SAP environments. VMware is
an SAP Global Technology Partner, and SAP sup-
ports VMware ESX™ as a platform for SAP applica-
4
4 Various research sources confirm
that a virtualization infrastructure based 1: Getting Started
on high-performance servers can result in
2: Making the Most
a 20 to 80 percent increase in hardware through Virtualization:
What to Expect
utilization—which can translate into and
hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings. 3: DataCenter
Optimization: The FAQs
tions on Windows and Linux in test, development
and production environments. 4: The Agile Business
The Intel® Enabled Server Acceleration Alliance
(Intel® ESAA) delivers reliable, high-quality server 5: Business Continuity
solutions. Intel ESAA aligns with leading software and Disaster Recovery
providers and includes a validation service within
6: Vision for the Future
Intel’s Enterprise Platform and Services division.
The alliance combines robust Intel-based server
platforms and building blocks with software appli- Syndicated Articles
cations from other companies to provide certified – Bank Scores with Server
server solution offerings to resellers. The VMware Virtualization
System Builder Program helps VMware partners – Doing the Math on
become experts in virtualization, offering technical Virtualization
support, exclusive knowledge and other services – Major shift to cloud IT
that benefit customer implementations. services inevitable
In Chapter 3, we’ll discuss three core virtu- – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
alization activities: server consolidation, auto- Skepticism About
Virtualization
mated management, and resource allocation and
monitoring. Working in tandem, they transform a – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
Approach to Virtualization
resource-intensive infrastructure that can’t adapt
in 2009
quickly to business needs to one that is flexible,
dynamic and efficient. n

34 8

3 Getting Down to the FAQs
With virtualization as the underlying
technology, the datacenter can be
optimized for best use of resources
and cost savings.
It used to be that when a business unit needed
a new application, IT ordered a new server and
placed it in the datacenter. When space ran out,
the datacenter was expanded or a new facility
was built.
Concerns about rising costs and energy usage
have made that strategy untenable. Datacenter
optimization is now focused on minimizing costs,
maximizing resources and enabling IT-business
Introduction
1: Getting Started
alignment. But multifaceted business requirements, 2: Making the Most
growing data volumes and stringent regulations through Virtualization:
make this a tall order. What to Expect
First, though, IT must deal with outdated
3: DataCenter
datacenters, which typically house multiple server
Optimization: The FAQs
platforms, with each server running a single ap-
plication, at utilization rates as low as 15 percent. 4: The Agile Business
These data islands create physical complexity,
energy waste and management headaches. A com- 5: Business Continuity
bination of best practices, hardware and software and Disaster Recovery
focused on consolidating and “greening” the data-
center can lead to a more adaptable and efficient 6: Vision for the Future
infrastructure. When a business unit needs new
functionality, users won’t have to wait for weeks, Syndicated Articles
or suffer from performance drags because the – Bank Scores with Server
infrastructure can’t handle more workload. Virtualization
For example, say a VP of sales needs a new – Doing the Math on
CRM solution in place in a week for a major indus- Virtualization
try conference. Through a Web-based interface, – Major shift to cloud IT
she requests the software, enters the number services inevitable
of users and other business requirements, and – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
accesses the application in a matter of days. In Skepticism About
this scenario, IT becomes an enabler for business Virtualization
demands on the fly—which translates to better – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
customer service and lets business units quickly Approach to Virtualization
in 2009
capitalize on changing demands and opportunities,
ahead of the competition.
34 9
 Introduction

3 The Big Virtualization Picture
An optimized datacenter lays a foundation for self-
service IT. The streamlined datacenter becomes a
pillar on which to build out the entire IT infrastruc-
ture, including desktops, servers and networks. An
optimized infrastructure efficiently manages user
requests and applications. Consolidation, resource
allocation and workload balancing save companies
money, ensure high availability for critical systems,
and are part of an overall energy management
infrastructure, including efficient power and cooling
systems. Below are the core features of an opti-
mized virtual infrastructure:
1. Server consolidation
Consolidating servers directly improves the bot-
tom line. Datacenters account for 1.5 percent of
total U.S. electricity consumption at a cost of $4.5
billion—more than all the color televisions in the
country, according to research from the EPA and
the Silicon Valley Leadership Group.
Through widespread adoption of virtualiza-
tion, the EPA estimates annual savings in electric-
ity costs in 2011 will be from $1.6 billion to $5.1
billion. With high-performance server and state-
of-the-art virtualization software combinations,
server consolidation ratios could reach 20:1. Ac-
cording to VMware, consolidation can result in up
to 80 percent cost savings on energy bills and 50
Getting started is quick and inexpensive. VM-
ware offers customers two free downloads to
1: Getting Started
get started on virtualization now—no investment
required. VMware Server is a free virtualization 2: Making the Most
product for Windows and Linux servers that en- through Virtualization:
What to Expect
ables companies to partition a physical server into
multiple virtual machines and immediately experi-
3: DataCenter
ence the benefits of virtualization. VMware ESXi is Optimization: The FAQs
an OS-independent hypervisor, offering the same
functionality and performance as VMware ESX but 4: The Agile Business
with a 32 MB disk footprint.
As well, continued advances in server hard- 5: Business Continuity
ware, such as the new Intel® Xeon® 5500 series and Disaster Recovery
and Intel® Xeon® 7400 series processor families
6: Vision for the Future
create a performance environment that makes
virtualization practical and cost-effective.
Syndicated Articles
2. Automated management – Bank Scores with Server
Automated management is an ongoing trend; sys- Virtualization
tems that can dynamically manage, monitor and fix – Doing the Math on
issues or modify settings to improve performance Virtualization
are helping decrease IT managers’ workloads—and – Major shift to cloud IT
in some cases prevent costly problems. New virtu- services inevitable
alization software and advanced server platforms – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
can help in several ways: Skepticism About
Virtualization
c Central management: Virtualization tech-
nology can provide a central management con- – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
Approach to Virtualization
sole to keep track of performance, availability
in 2009
and configurations including automatic security
patching and power management. This means

34
percent on hardware.
10

IT managers can view the status of hundreds
3 of servers and thousands of virtual machines.
From the console, IT managers can analyze
physical servers to identify strong virtualization
candidates, and then convert them to virtual
machines. Management software within virtual-
ization suites can also provide Web access from
any networked device, enabling managers to
work remotely.
c Load balancing: VMware Distributed Re-
source Scheduler (DRS) aggregates CPU and
memory across physical servers into unified
resource pools that are made intelligently
available in real-time to virtual machines based
on business priority, to maintain SLAs. Load
balancing optimizes heat generation and power
distribution across the datacenter; it can also
entail live server-to-server migrations, which
supports the shared services model of the
modern IT environment. The trick is to do this
across multiple generations of processors, with-
out affecting end-user performance. VMware
and Intel technology help enable rapid migra-
tion of virtual machines while avoiding these
potential problems.
3. Resource allocation
and monitoring
A virtual datacenter offers the ability to direct,
through automated policies or manual intervention,
Introduction
how IT resources are used according to business
needs. During a major product promotion, for in- 1: Getting Started
stance, it might be necessary to direct more server
power toward the call center. When the promotion 2: Making the Most
ends, those resources can be reallocated. Managed through Virtualization:
What to Expect
properly, virtualization can boost both internal and
external customer service satisfaction.
3: DataCenter
Here are a few examples of how IT can use Optimization: The FAQs
VMware virtualization technology to dynamically
manage resources: 4: The Agile Business
c Enable applications to dynamically acquire
more resources to accommodate peak 5: Business Continuity
performance and Disaster Recovery
c Assign minimum and maximum CPU capacity
6: Vision for the Future
to virtual machines based on business priority
c Ensure critical virtual machines receive prior-
ity access to storage devices and network Syndicated Articles
bandwidth – Bank Scores with Server
c Use resource pools to provide on-demand Virtualization
access to virtual machines as business needs – Doing the Math on
shift and to ensure application service levels Virtualization
are met – Major shift to cloud IT
c Take advantage of advanced server hardware services inevitable
that increases the memory bandwidth and – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
application performance within each virtual Skepticism About
Virtualization
machine by more than two times over previous-
generation multiprocessor platforms. – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
Approach to Virtualization
In Chapter 4, we’ll delve into the concept of
in 2009
agility and how virtualization supports it, from both
IT and business perspectives. n

34 11
 Introduction

4 Turning the Corner to an Agile Business 1: Getting Started

Business agility is a long sought after quickly migrating virtual machines to it according to 2: Making the Most
organizational goal. Virtualization is SLAs and other policies. through Virtualization:
What to Expect
making it easier to achieve. Normally, IT administrators spend hours manu-
In a global business environment where plans are ally configuring new servers, which can create
3: DataCenter
constantly morphing, agility is key—and virtual- frustrating and sometimes costly delays. Ad- Optimization: The FAQs
ization can help. It is bringing companies closer vanced server technology, coupled with special-
to on-demand computing than ever before. With ized virtualization features, enables more efficient 4: The Agile Business
virtualization, IT departments can operate in a migrations between physical servers, preventing
more behind-the-scenes manner, and give busi- user downtime. 5: Business Continuity
ness more control over how and when they use IT Outcomes: IT can more quickly allocate and Disaster Recovery
services. Organizations can change course quickly, new computing resources to support the busi-
6: Vision for the Future
scaling up or down as necessary to meet new ness, and users do not experience productivity
customer demands. declines from infrastructure changes.
The following intersections between virtualiza- Syndicated Articles
tion technology and agility give IT the power to be 2. Location-independent – Bank Scores with Server
more responsive to business requirements: applications and services Virtualization
IT complexity is often related to incompatibility – Doing the Math on
1. Faster provisioning issues between platforms. It is much easier to Virtualization
Virtualization software is embedded on some move virtual machines from machine to machine – Major shift to cloud IT
physical servers, allowing IT to deploy a new virtual as needed for availability or backup reasons. services inevitable
machine in just a few minutes. (VMware ESXi is an Intel® VT FlexMigration with VMware Enhanced – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
OS-independent VMware hypervisor available for VMotion technology enables efficient live migra- Skepticism About
Virtualization
free. It offers the same functionality and per- tions of virtual machines across all Intel Core
formance as VMware ESX but with a 32 MB disk microarchitecture-based servers. – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
Approach to Virtualization
footprint). Virtualization management software Virtual machines are hardware-independent,
in 2009
addresses the dual parts of provisioning, automati- and can run on any x86 computer; a physical server
cally detecting the new physical hardware and can even run multiple different virtual operating

34 12
 Introduction
systems. As well, virtualization encapsulates appli- with backup or replication software because it
4 cations, operating systems, and hardware require- resides in a few files called the virtual machine. 1: Getting Started
ments including CPU, memory, storage and I/O into If a server begins to fail, the virtual machine can
a highly portable software container. be recovered to any compatible hardware without 2: Making the Most
Outcomes: A virtualized infrastructure not configuration, since virtual machines are hardware- through Virtualization:
What to Expect
only enables consolidation among disparate independent. It’s important to note, however, that
platforms but it also offers more flexibility with IT should select suitable hardware platforms for
3: DataCenter
IT resources and enhances performance. virtualization, to ensure high performance and reli- Optimization: The FAQs
ability during data and system recovery.
3. High availability Outcomes: IT can achieve high SLA perfor- 4: The Agile Business
Server failure is a hard reality. It doesn’t have to be mance and satisfaction levels with the busi-
a nightmare. One strategy for dealing with it is to ness, and avoid costly interruptions. 5: Business Continuity
have physical servers as backups for key systems,
and Disaster Recovery
but that gets expensive to maintain. Specialized 4. Dynamic, real-time resource
6: Vision for the Future
virtualization software, however, can continuously management
and seamlessly monitor the environment for server Virtualization boosts operational efficiencies.
failure, and restart virtual machines immediately— VMware virtualization software, combined with Syndicated Articles
without human intervention. The user, unaware of Intel® Xeon® processor servers, can create a virtual – Bank Scores with Server
the situation, continues work as usual. “pool” of processing and storage resources, allow- Virtualization
By the same token, consider the implications ing IT managers to allocate and reallocate them – Doing the Math on
for disaster recovery. A system can be protected as needed to different applications or to provide a Virtualization
data backup resource. – Major shift to cloud IT
For instance, say an organic produce home services inevitable

4
4 When infrastructure is simpler,
streamlined, and easier to adapt, it
requires less time to manage. That leads
to the ability to provide higher levels of
services faster.
delivery company receives a larger-than-expected
response to an online promotion. To meet demand
– Pepsi Bottler Swallows
Skepticism About
Virtualization
and maintain efficient processing on its Web site,
the company can quickly dedicate more server – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
Approach to Virtualization
power to its customer-facing applications. As well,
in 2009
IT managers can create policies to prioritize how
resources are allocated to virtual machines, keep-

34 13

ing strategic applications and data readily available.
4 Outcomes: In the future, virtualization
technology will automatically readjust loads
based on changing datacenter conditions or
business requirements.
5. Simplified IT management
Virtualization technology has become a criti-
cal method to reduce infrastructure complexity
through faster server deployment; more painless
and effective migrations; better achievement of
service-level agreements via intelligent resource
allocation; and a more foolproof response to avail-
ability and disaster recovery needs.
When infrastructure is simpler, streamlined,
and easier to adapt, it requires less time to man-
age. That leads to not only a lower cost structure
for the datacenter, but also the ability to provide
higher levels of services faster.
Outcomes: Less time troubleshooting
means more time to help business leaders
achieve their goals.
Virtualization in action
The following organizations gained agility benefits
from virtualization:
c To keep up with the pace of business, Siemens
Medical Solutions required an ever-increasing
number of servers, which caused physical
storage constraints and made hardware main-
Introduction
tenance more complex for IT administrators.
Through virtualization, IT gained time and real- 1: Getting Started
ized a $4 million reduction in operating expens-
es, reduced space and cooling requirements 2: Making the Most
through consolidation, and improved availability through Virtualization:
What to Expect
of applications and data. VMotion from VMware
enabled the company to add memory, move
3: DataCenter
memory, or migrate applications across servers Optimization: The FAQs
without any downtime. The company is now
making better use of its hardware resources, as 4: The Agile Business
virtualization improved server CPU utilization
from 4 percent to 70 percent. The company is 5: Business Continuity
now investigating multi-core technologies to and Disaster Recovery
place more intensive workloads and more users
6: Vision for the Future
on virtual machines.
c AXA Technology Services (an internal service
provider for the AXA Group, a global insurance Syndicated Articles
provider with 52 million clients) was worried – Bank Scores with Server
virtualization might result in a performance Virtualization
decline for its brokers. After implementing the – Doing the Math on
technology, the company maintained its previ- Virtualization
ous service levels and realized the following – Major shift to cloud IT
benefits: $550,000 in hardware expenditure services inevitable
savings; 30 percent improvement in server utili- – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
zation; reduction in time needed to acquire and Skepticism About
Virtualization
build a server from days to hours; and a 12:1
server consolidation ratio overall. – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
Approach to Virtualization
In Chapter 5, we’ll look at how virtualization
in 2009
can enable a streamlined and affordable disaster
recovery and business continuity practice. n
34 14
 Introduction

5 The Role of Virtualization in Business 1: Getting Started

Continuity and Disaster Recovery 2: Making the Most

through Virtualization:
What to Expect
Virtualization can enable a more robust incredibly complex and cost prohibitive. Conse-
and reliable disaster recovery and busi- quently, many organizations are turning to a virtu- 3: DataCenter
ness continuity model. But it’s vital to alized IT environment. It reduces the demand for Optimization: The FAQs
develop a focused strategy and put the hardware while alleviating or even eliminating the
right technology in place. need to replicate data in the same format in which 4: The Agile Business
Business continuity is a critical concern for all orga- it was originally stored.
5: Business Continuity
nizations. The emergence of vast computer net- and Disaster Recovery
works—often intertwined with partners, customers, A New Business Continuity
employees and others—has changed the way com- Model Emerges 6: Vision for the Future
panies act…and interact. There’s an expectation that Downtime is far more than inconvenient in a digi-
systems will function effectively and data will flow tal economy. According to Ontrack Data Recovery
Syndicated Articles
almost instantly. Recovery time objectives (RTOs) Services, large companies can lose upwards of $1
– Bank Scores with Server
and recovery point objectives (RPOs) continue to million an hour when systems and data aren’t avail-
Virtualization
shrink while the need to support business continuity able. For small companies, the consequences of any
– Doing the Math on
and disaster recovery (DR) grows. interruption in the flow of goods or services can
Virtualization
Corporate executives, IT managers, and small be fatal—customers will take their business else-
– Major shift to cloud IT
business owners must develop an effective busi- where. Too many organizations fail to take busi-
services inevitable
ness continuity and disaster recovery strategy—no ness continuity seriously until it’s too late.
– Pepsi Bottler Swallows
simple task. Companies must tap into a variety of Hurricane Katrina caused over $100 billion in
Skepticism About
solutions and technologies to build a robust and damages and made local business operations nearly Virtualization
effective infrastructure, including: storage and impossible. But some firms—including several lead-
– 5 Steps to A Big Picture
backup devices; mirroring and clustering technol- ing financial services companies—had plans in place Approach to Virtualization
ogy; management software; and remote access. to route phone calls and data flow to other offices. in 2009
Establishing and managing datacenters—as well While others floundered, they stayed strong. And

34
as replicating data on physical servers—can prove in some cases, virtualization helped them build a
15
 Introduction
more robust and streamlined architecture.
5 What makes business continuity planning so 1: Getting Started
challenging is that it’s necessary to design and
engineer a solution that can handle dozens, even 2: Making the Most
hundreds, of variables, including RPOs, RTOs and through Virtualization:
What to Expect
storage tiers. Yet at the same time an organization
must plan for a variety of possible disruptions rang-
3: DataCenter
ing from cataclysmic events such as earthquakes to Optimization: The FAQs
more mundane problems such as power failures.
Virtualization provides a way to lower the cost 4: The Agile Business
of business continuity and DR without compromis- ing information. This means an organization can re-
ing results. Virtual machines allow IT to manage store computing functionality to hardware without 5: Business Continuity
tape and disk libraries more seamlessly, and quickly serious concern for its underlying characteristics. and Disaster Recovery
access virtual snapshots of data to retrieve files In essence, the virtualized platform creates hard-
6: Vision for the Future
based on specific RPO and RTO criteria. This is es- ware independence through a complete operating
pecially valuable for businesses that cannot afford environment. Virtualization software from VMware Syndicated Articles
to build and maintain remote failover sites with handles the data management and mapping, thus
– Bank Scores with Server
identical physical servers and storage arrays. simplifying IT management and improving the over- Virtualization
Remote datacenters that duplicate all the all ability to run the business.
– Doing the Math on
hardware and software from a primary business Greater automation is also part of the picture. Virtualization
site create a tangle of challenges. Beyond the If a hardware or application disruption takes place,
– Major shift to cloud IT
initial cost of building a failover site and ensuring virtualization software ensures that only a brief services inevitable
it meets all standards is the nettlesome issue of restart is required. VMware High Availability (HA)
– Pepsi Bottler Swallows
keeping hardware and software synchronized on virtualization software offers powerful business Skepticism About
physical machines. Even minor patches and firm- continuity and DR features: if a physical server fails, Virtualization
ware updates can derail systems. And maintaining any virtual machine that’s affected automatically – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
systems in an identical state can drain IT resources. restarts on another production server with spare Approach to Virtualization
Virtualization separates the recovery process capacity. If a failure takes place within a virtual ma- in 2009
from physical servers. Virtual machines contain the chine, VMware HA detects the problem and restarts
OS, applications, data and, in some cases, provision- the failed virtual machine on the same server.

34 16

5 Steering Toward Success
Virtualization can benefit business continuity and
disaster recovery strategies in other ways. Orga-
nizations can conduct non-disruptive testing and
make changes dynamically without taking systems
down. They can simplify data recovery by eliminat-
ing complex manual steps—all while centralizing
recovery plan management. In this new environ-
ment of automation and high availability, hardware
failure no longer equals business failure. Systems
adjust and adapt and it’s business as usual.
It’s a concept that appeals to Health First, a
Toolkit
The Power of
Virtualization Technology
Rising energy costs and limited datacenter space
are forcing organizations to seek a more efficient
computing infrastructure. Intel Xeon processors deliver
results in three key areas: optimal server performance
based on specific application requirements; energy
reductions and boosted performance; and best-in-class
virtualization features. All of this translates into more
intelligent performance and greater automation, in-
cluding more efficient use of processing power; better
consolidation ratios; the ability to combine heteroge-
neous servers into a single virtualized server pool; and
improved virtual machine failover, load balancing, and
disaster recovery capabilities.
Introduction
non-profit healthcare provider with three hospitals
and a total of 40 clinics and offices along Florida’s
1: Getting Started
Space Coast. Using Intel processors and VMware
ESX, the organization built a high availability envi- 2: Making the Most
ronment while trimming 55 physical servers and through Virtualization:
What to Expect
$105,000 in capital costs. Health First also reduced
server deployment times, increased flexibility to
3: DataCenter
business needs and boosted DR protection. Optimization: The FAQs
It’s a significant step forward for a smaller or-
ganization with limited resources. Health First pre- 4: The Agile Business
viously depended on tape backup, which required
days to restore in the event of a server failure. 5: Business Continuity
Now, with real-time snapshots of running virtual and Disaster Recovery
machines and a storage area network (SAN), the
6: Vision for the Future
organization is able to recover primary applications
“within an hour,” says network engineer Joel Otero. Syndicated Articles
Another company that used virtualization to
– Bank Scores with Server
boost business continuity is Subaru of Indiana. Virtualization
The 620-acre facility, which manufactures 21,800
– Doing the Math on
vehicles per month, turned to a virtualized IT envi- Virtualization
ronment to boost productivity and reduce system
– Major shift to cloud IT
downtime. The joint solution using VMware and In- services inevitable
tel platform pushed annual uptime from 96.64 per-
– Pepsi Bottler Swallows
cent to 99.56 percent and created new business Skepticism About
continuity options. IT now uses virtual machines as Virtualization
hot backups for physical machines, eliminating the – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
need for new hardware. Approach to Virtualization
In Chapter 6, we’ll examine how organizations in 2009
can use virtualization to realize even greater per-
formance and profits. n
34 17
 Introduction

6 Building a Foundation for the Future 1: Getting Started

The right IT infrastructure can help
an organization ride the virtualization
wave into the future of business and
embrace opportunities that can rede-
fine the enterprise.
Virtualization can drive remarkable improvements
in utilization and performance, helping organiza-
tions squeeze maximum returns from technology
investments and fashion a far more agile enter-
prise. But in today’s highly competitive and fast-
changing global environment, building a solid IT
foundation is crucial. The right hardware, software
and systems can create new opportunities and a
more dynamic approach to business.
Storage, applications and desktops are also
becoming virtualized as organizations look for
ways to manage IT environments more efficiently.
As cloud computing, Web 2.0, service-oriented
architecture (SOA) and many other tools enter the
picture, a flexible and agile IT framework is impera-
tive. And given the current economic climate, orga-
nizations must adopt an architecture that supports
change at the lowest possible cost.
A Framework for Success
Although the concept of building today for tomor-
row sounds simple enough, the path to success can
have more than a few potholes—such as trying to 2: Making the Most
balance expenditures versus ROI. During the recent through Virtualization:
What to Expect
economic downturn, more than a few organizations
made OPEX cuts that reduced server refreshes and
3: DataCenter
other equipment investments. This approach can Optimization: The FAQs
inhibit opportunities for gains once the economy
picks up or as the need for more sophisticated 4: The Agile Business
systems accelerates.
Assembling the right combination of hard- 5: Business Continuity
ware, software and other components can also and Disaster Recovery
be a challenge. Together, Intel and VMware offer
6: Vision for the Future
a virtualization environment that’s optimized for
maximum performance. A 10-year partnership has
produced features and performance levels that Syndicated Articles
aren’t available through mixing and matching. An – Bank Scores with Server
IT department that relies on hardware-assisted Virtualization
virtualization from Intel can achieve infrastructure – Doing the Math on
optimization from the desktop to the server—and Virtualization
across the network. – Major shift to cloud IT
Intel Xeon processors with Virtualization services inevitable
Technology (VT) provide a unique and powerful – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
platform providing hardware assistance for virtu- Skepticism About
alization. Enhancements in the processor, chipset Virtualization
and network interface ensure the VMware virtual- – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
Approach to Virtualization
ization software runs at a maximum performance
in 2009
level. Moreover, the software can offload complex
tasks to hardware for near-native performance

34 18

characteristics. In a business environment that’s
6 increasingly measured in milliseconds, such gains
are a clear competitive advantage.
Embracing a Virtual Future
Virtualization will play an important role in comput-
ing in the months and years ahead. Already, orga-
nizations are stepping beyond server virtualization
and reaping additional rewards through virtual-
izing storage, networking, and applications. For
example, storage virtualization allows an organiza-
tion to centralize all available storage and manage
one large pool of devices and servers—instead of
hundreds of different ones—and carve up that pool
into storage portions attached to the servers.
Application virtualization, which isolates an ap-
plication from the underlying OS, lets programs run
in parallel with other software—making it much
easier to move programs and data across devices
and operating systems. And it can enable delivery
to any device or operating system, creating a level
of flexibility that was once impossible. Organiza-
tions are looking to extend the benefits of virtual-
ization technology to client devices.
The client advantages are equally significant.
VMware client virtualization allows organizations
to manage desktops as a service and lower admin-
istration and management costs—all while increas-
ing end-user flexibility. What makes virtualization
so powerful is that it partitions familiar hardware
Introduction
into multiple isolated virtual environments called
“virtual machines.” Virtualizing client devices allows 1: Getting Started
an organization to use multiple operating systems,
isolate applications from one another, and take 2: Making the Most
advantage of more flexible computing models. through Virtualization:
What to Expect
The combination of VMware View™3 (Client
Virtualization Platform) with Intel® vPro™ is a “best
3: DataCenter
of breed” solution, optimized for enterprise busi- Optimization: The FAQs
ness client virtualization. It enables network mobil-
ity, enterprise-class control, and centralized applica- 4: The Agile Business
tion, image and data management while providing
flexibility and device independence. This approach 5: Business Continuity
reduces hardware-related operating costs and and Disaster Recovery
allows IT shops to manage desktops as a service,
6: Vision for the Future
resulting in greater business flexibility and end-
user productivity.
Virtualization is creating opportunities for other Syndicated Articles
IT gains. Within the datacenter, for example, VM- – Bank Scores with Server
ware enables server consolidation and serves as a Virtualization
fundamental building block that drives efficiency, – Doing the Math on
control and choice—particularly as organizations Virtualization
adopt cloud computing solutions. Cloud comput- – Major shift to cloud IT
ing provides an environment where applications services inevitable
and data are highly accessible—and manageable. – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
Using the Internet to connect customers, business Skepticism About
Virtualization
partners and employees with the data they desire
when and where they need it, an enterprise can – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
Approach to Virtualization
ratchet up productivity and cost-efficiency.
in 2009
VMware vSphere™ aggregates all datacenter
resources into a shared private cloud, creating mas-
34 19

sive economies of scale and leading to enormous
6 capital and operational savings. The solution
also decreases capital expense per application
and supports the broadest range of operating
systems and applications running on x86. This
makes it possible to seamlessly federate private
and public clouds without requiring application
customization.
VMware vSphere is optimized for Intel® VT
FlexMigration. This processor technology boosts
Toolkit
VMware vSphere
THE COST AND COMPLEXITY of traditional cluster-
ing systems can be formidable. VMware vSphere
provides an efficient and financially prudent way to
maximize the availability of applications running on
a virtual machine. It makes operating systems and
underlying hardware configurations invisible and
pushes business continuity to a new level. VMware
vSphere protects systems within an entire infra-
structure. This includes an ability to monitor virtual
machines to detect hardware and OS failures; restart
virtual machines on physical servers without manual
intervention when a failure occurs; and protect ap-
plications from OS failures by automatically restarting
VMs when an OS failure takes place.
Introduction
flexibility and offers greater options in managing
and allocating virtualized workloads across new 1: Getting Started
and existing Intel-based platforms. It makes pro-
cessor generations transparent and expands the 2: Making the Most
pool of resources in a virtualized environment. through Virtualization:
What to Expect
Combining VMware® Enhanced VMotion™
technology with Intel VT FlexMigration allows an
3: DataCenter
enterprise to capture the current live state of a Optimization: The FAQs
virtual machine and transfer it to a destination
system with a different processor generation 4: The Agile Business
without any disruptions or downtime.
Cloud computing allows organizations to 5: Business Continuity
move beyond the traditional datacenter and into
a computing framework that makes geography
and Disaster Recovery
6: Vision for the Future
irrelevant and physical machines less important.
Grid computing, Software as a Service, on-
demand computing and hosted IT become viable Syndicated Articles
– Bank Scores with Server
options—transforming computing into a utility
Virtualization
and further reducing IT complexity.
Virtualization is at the center of a shifting – Doing the Math on
Virtualization
IT landscape; its successful adoption can lead
to remarkable gains. Understanding how to use – Major shift to cloud IT
the technology and unlock its full value can help services inevitable
an enterprise tap its full potential. Of course, no – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
one can predict exactly how the business and IT Skepticism About
Virtualization
worlds will change over the next few years. But
one thing is certain: the right technology founda- – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
Approach to Virtualization
tion can support whichever direction an organiza-
in 2009
tion chooses. n
34 20
 syndicated articles
S
A Bank Scores with
Server Virtualization
By Gunjan Trivedi
Here’s a look at why ICICI Bank’s senior GM and Group
CTO, Pravir Vohra, is known as an IT leader who can make a
difference.
They say old habits die hard. It’s a adage that’s certainly true
for ICICI Bank’s senior GM and the Group CTO, Pravir Vohra. As a
man who was part of the team that popularized online banking
and helped create a new revenue stream for ICICI Bank, Vohra is
already known as an IT leader who can make a difference. He’s
also celebrated as a CIO who not only leverages new concepts
and technologies to create -mover advantages for his organiza-
tion, but also adopts solutions at such an unprecedented rate
and scale that it advances his bank beyond the reach of its peers.
Even solution and service providers have found it hard to keep up.
About four years ago, for instance, ICICI Bank was one of the
first, at the scale it operates, to successfully leverage enterprise-
wide data warehousing and b usiness intelligence. And now the
second largest bank in the country has again scored another first
with technology, this time with server virtualization.
ICICI Bank’s IT team, led by Vohra, has used virtualization to
arrest an electronic infrastructure spill-over at its datacenters.
They consolidated 230 physical servers to just five, running a
little under 650 applications on a virtualized environment. It
required them to develop the unparalleled technology ability to
run 60 virtual machines on a single server but it saved the bank
over a crore annually in power, cooling and space.
The result? While the server count of its closest competitors
runs into four or five digits, ICICI Bank services its customers
with just a fraction of that. That’s incredibly low for a bank of
its size with assets amounting to Rs 384,970 crore (US$7899),
and with 1,400 branches and 4,530 ATMs across the country.
Introduction
Big, Real Big
1: Getting Started
The business problem ICICI Bank forever grapples with lies at
the core of its standardized Windows NT architecture. Any ap-
plication typically requires a Web tier, an application tier and a 2: Making the Most
database tier— it’s a necessary evil. “Now if somebody asks for through Virtualization:
a development environment, add three more. Move onto a test- What to Expect
ing environment, add another three servers. So even if you are
deploying something as simple as a library management system, 3: DataCenter
you have to take nine servers into account. At ICICI Bank, we run Optimization: The FAQs
about 650 applications. Go figure,” says Vohra.
Running that many application has a domino effect. It de- 4: The Agile Business
mands an ongoing investment in servers, power consumption,
rack space, switching gear because as all these servers need to
5: Business Continuity and
be interconnected to storage and networking sub-systems for
Disaster Recovery
management, availability and recoverability. “We were actually
worried that we were ending in a server or an electronic sprawl,”
he says. “It is a kind of an exponential problem. We were not
6: Vision for the Future
utilizing our servers properly but had to keep them because
some development or some testing could happen. Let’s say that Syndicated Articles
without virtualization, I’ll provide a server to run a library, holiday
home and collection applications on the same server. But if you – Bank Scores with Server
run a user acceptance testing (UAT) environment at the same Virtualization
time, you’ll have problems. The world has found a way of con- – Doing the Math on
suming the manufacturing it manufactures,” Vohra says. Virtualization
The problem wasn’t new. Though the problem piled up over
time, the bank’s IT team had only experimented with different
– Major shift to cloud IT
technologies from time to time to seek an effective solution.
services inevitable
But a couple of years ago, they started looking at a solution in – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
earnest. “We found an embryo of a solution that we believed Skepticism About
could work and improve over time to adequately arrest server, Virtualization
rack and power sprawl. We considered it to be workable enough
– 5 Steps to A Big Picture
to start dabbling with. It was a struggle for us,” recalls Vohra.
Approach to Virtualization
Vohra refers to a two-year-ago old initiative that was funda-
in 2009
mentally concentrated on server consolidation. Over the last year,
the scope of the project has expanded to include other infra-
structure consolidation, and an overall focus to reduce the bank’s
34 21
 syndicated articles
S carbon footprint. But it’s been a journey of discovery, he admits.
A “We can’t take credit for scripting a story to a design principle. We
found a way as we discovered new things and worked with dif-
ferent technologies. The idea was to improve our IT management
capabilities and to reduce power and cooling consumption. It’s
about working around a theory of constraints,” he says.
School of Hardknocks
Vohra formed a core team of 12 who were part of the NT
admin team in the shared services vertical that takes care of
the bank’s datacenters. The team ran a few proof-of-concepts,
and started by virtualizing environments that were lower on the
showstopper scale.
Vohra points out that out of the 650 applications, there are
about 200 applications, which nobody would even notice if they
were shutdown for a day. For example, a one-day outage of ap-
plications such as ATM cash analysis or dead-stock inventory MIS
generation would not raise any eyebrows.
But as the team started testing in live and more critical envi-
ronments, they set high-water marks for the thresholds of run-
ning applications in a virtualized ecosystem. About 14 months
ago, the team managed to run about 51 virtual machines on
a single physical server. “We were trying to figure out what
we were running out of: compute resources, I/O bandwidth or
memory? We’d take say a server of 4-CPUs with 8-cores, run-
Introduction
it takes effort to make something hard work. But the problem in
such cases, is that you don’t know what you are going to do but 1: Getting Started
you discover what you need to do. You do it and take the next
step,” he says.
2: Making the Most
As the team scrambled forward with its server virtualiza-
through Virtualization:
tion push, it had to pick its way through numerous technical
What to Expect
challenges that surfaced. High CPU and memory utilization
led to frequent performance degradation, which were in turn
3: DataCenter
compounded by network bottlenecks. This resource issue was
addressed by using dynamic memory and CPU allocation to Optimization: The FAQs
avoid creating performance chokepoints. Patching and upgrading
to higher versions were also undertaken to overcome various 4: The Agile Business
technical limitations.
“You run into a choke and after some analysis you realize that 5: Business Continuity and
the internal disks are not good enough or you need a higher I/O Disaster Recovery
bandwidth pipe. Or you might find that the machine is running
out of memory for no logical reasoning. The physical machines
6: Vision for the Future
you’re virtualizing, may add up to only 32GB of RAM, while
on a target machine you have 64. Since we were pioneers in
implementing such a solution at this scale, there were no easy Syndicated Articles
answers available. Not even with our solution providers. We un-
– Bank Scores with Server
derstood the theoretical concepts well, but we became experts
Virtualization
by living through all the live classrooms,” he recalls.
– Doing the Math on
The Smaller They Are, the Virtualization

ning Windows and run a mixed load of applications on 51 virtual

Rarer They Fall – Major shift to cloud IT
machines. Not only did we break Sun Microsystem’s record of Today, ICICI Bank runs about 40 virtual machines on a server, services inevitable
running 50 VMs on a server but we topped it. We touched a fig- with VMware virtualizing the environments of database server – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
ure of 60 virtual machines on a single server. Of course, we later running SQL instances; application servers such as Websphere, Skepticism About
determined the optimal threshold at about 35 virtual machines,” Pramati and Oracle; and Web-servers. Vohra explains that as a Virtualization
says Vohra. strategy the current implementation has been executed only
– 5 Steps to A Big Picture
As the proof-of-concepts succeeded, turnaround times for on 8-CPU dual core, 64GB RAM servers so that the features of
Approach to Virtualization
the project were defined, allotted and rolled out. The turnaround over-commitment of memory and CPU resources are leveraged
in 2009
times for the identification and redressal of problems were moni- and VMware is able to scale up instead of scale out, taking full
tored closely. “With technology, it is very easy to say that some- advantage of the Bank’s licenses
thing doesn’t work. It is much harder to make it work. Obviously, To decrease the use of multiple network cards, the servers

34 22
 syndicated articles
S have been moved to the same subnet of the NAS storage. This
A way, the same network card could be virtualized and deployed.
This also ensures that connectivity to the storage through iSCSI
is consistent and there are not too many hops.
“You can now over-commit resources. If I really needed 24
cores to do something spread across 30 applications I can now
give them two cores each. That is a total is of 60 cores but
physically I have only 24,” says Vohra. The logic is that not all
the applications peak at the same time. Some of these systems
allow to over-commit resources beyond the boundaries of the
physical box.
4
4 The virtualization effort forced
various processes to be relooked and
improved. It has translated into speedy
provisioning that takes no more than
two minutes.
The required disk space on the home server has been provi-
sioned on the connected iSCSI and Fiber Channel-based storage
to meet the requirements of hosted VMs. I/O bottlenecks had
been avoided by segregating storage connectivity on different
network interfaces, says Vohra. This requires separate network
cards for individual storage connectivity.
The virtualization effort forced various processes to be
relooked and improved. It has translated into speedy provision-
ing that takes no more than two minutes of. This has directly
reduced the average downtime of all the virtualized applications.
Earlier, though the bank’s IT team could provision five serv-
ers as standby for 30 servers it took three hours to bring up
those server, in case of a failure. Each server had to be manually
configured, loaded and restored. And if the incident occurred at
2AM, it could take as much as five hours to bring up.
Now, with automatic provisioning and over-commitment in
Introduction
place, running applications can failover seamlessly and automati-
cally. Features such as V-Motion have been employed to transfer 1: Getting Started
applications to higher configuration slice. Such innovative online
fallback mechanisms have led to zero downtime.
2: Making the Most
Virtual machine slices with requisite operating system con-
through Virtualization:
figurations have been created on virtualized disk space. Clon-
What to Expect
ing feature of such VM slices help in the rapid provisioning of
resources when they are required. Downtime has been minimized
by provisioning alternate servers with the V-Motion feature for 3: DataCenter
auto failover of the entire system to another base server or for Optimization: The FAQs
individual virtual machine failover.
Though the business is exposed to all 650 applications, not 4: The Agile Business
all the applications have been virtualized, says Vohra. There are
a few applications (running on 900 servers) that are too critical
and too monolithic to be put on a virtualized environment. Appli-
5: Business Continuity and
Disaster Recovery
cations such as the core banking system and credit card applica-
tions demonstrate no advantage even if they were virtualized 6: Vision for the Future
as they need power-packed servers to run in any case. “You
don’t do it for religion. You do it only if it makes business sense.
Anything that doesn’t require super-sized servers has been vir- Syndicated Articles
tualized. All the new applications also are being virtualized. Only
– Bank Scores with Server
about 20-odd applications are running on very old servers. We
Virtualization
will either retire them and have them virtualized eventually. They
are part of the last mile of the journey,” he says. – Doing the Math on
Such technological advancements have made an impact on Virtualization
the resources and learning skill sets in ICICI Bank’s shared ser-
– Major shift to cloud IT
vices team. They need to stay abreast with new technologies. It,
services inevitable
however, doesn’t affect the application development team. As
long as they see a server name, an IP address, they have local – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
admin rights to the server; they don’t know whether that server Skepticism About
translates into a pizza box or waferware, Vohra says. Virtualization
Vohra maintains that given the amount of money a CIO needs – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
to sink in a project like this, it had better make sense and a CIO Approach to Virtualization
better believe in what he or she is doing. At ICICI Bank, once the in 2009
proof-of-concepts were successfully executed, there was no
doubt over what would work and what would not.
But Vohra warns of peripheral things a CIO can never test, un-
34 23
 syndicated articles
Introduction
S
A
less they get their feet wet. “We took a considered view. If some
of these don’t run, we were comfortable that we had the ability
to work with our partners to get upgrades or patches to make
4
4 Virtualization and the resulting
green IT benefits have effectuated the or-
1: Getting Started

them run. When you are a pioneer, you are bound to trip up. But
if your relationships are strong, then your partner will also work
with you and solve your problems,” says Vohra. ICICI Bank had
quarterly targets of how many net servers were de-inducted.
Payback was how many physical servers were sold for scrap or
sent for recycling.
“In the end, we saw clear business payback. Business may
or may not see it because for them it is just an event. They will
see results only when an application goes down. In the life of a
business manager, it will happen only three times. If it is 4AM, he
is not bothered. But if it is at 10AM, and if it is a trading applica-
tion, he would kill you for even 10 minutes of downtime. When
an incident happens, a 3-hour or a 30-minute outage hurts busi-
ness equally. Applications ran reasonably smoothly earlier but
now they don’t see any outage at all,” he points out.
Pocket Power
Although users are not consciously aware that the applica-
tions they use everyday have been virtualized but there are still
measurable, demonstrable business benefits. The consolidation
of 230 servers to five has resulted in an annual opex savings
of Rs 1.15 crore on account of power, cooling and space, says
Vohra. The break-even period, considering capex, has been about
six months, with projected savings for five years of about Rs
5.7 crore. ICICI Bank’s IT team buys servers today based on their
power consumption. It is not that one company is worse than
another, or that one model is better than another, says Vohra.
“You should never generate more heat and consume more power
than you can avoid. Would I buy a car, which is cheaper but con-
sumes more gas? It is the same thing. At the end, you want to
pay a little premium to buy a car that consumes less fuel. There
are models of servers that are of similar compute capacity but
ganization to earn valuable carbon credits. 2: Making the Most
through Virtualization:
What to Expect
Today, Vohra is in a position to point this out because he
knows. “The electricity bill at my datacenter alone has come 3: DataCenter
down by Rs 70 lakh,” he says. Optimization: The FAQs
The procurement and indenting process has witnessed a dra-
matic change, too, after the virtualization revolution at the bank.
4: The Agile Business
All the business units in the ICICI Group have been instructed
to not indent or procure physical servers. The only unit they are
allowed to procure their indent is in cores. Instead of asking for
5: Business Continuity and
Disaster Recovery
physical servers, they are supposed to ask for a certain number
of cores because for every application, the unit of measurement
6: Vision for the Future
is no longer a computer or a CPU but the lowest measurement
unit in commercial terms.
“Fundamentally, the DNA of the enterprise has changed.
Budgeting is now based on cores. Soon, going forward, we will
Syndicated Articles
move over to threads as the unit to indent and budget. The – Bank Scores with Server
only people allowed to count servers are those from the shared Virtualization
services group who manage our datacenters,” says Vohra.
– Doing the Math on
Virtualization and the resulting green IT benefits have ef-
Virtualization
fectuated the organization to earn valuable carbon credits. The
enterprise intends to encompass various organization-wide – Major shift to cloud IT
green initiatives that go beyond its datacenters to create a services inevitable
meaningful and substantial trust fund of carbon credits that can – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
be leveraged at the right opportunity. Skepticism About
“The logic for pursuing this initiative is that it not only ad- Virtualization
dresses the global phenomenon of environmentally responsible
business but also leads to efficiency gains and associated cost – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
savings. As a result, we manage to cut flab, evolve lean pro- Approach to Virtualization
cesses and also benefit from building an environmentally aware in 2009
organisation,” he says.

34
consume almost two times the power of another,” he says. Like they say, good things come in small packages.
24
 syndicated articles
Introduction
S
A Doing the Math on Instead, he used the $300,000 to replace the Unix servers with
one PA-RISC-based HP-UX server running HP’s Virtual Partition 1: Getting Started

Virtualization
One IT director breaks down the savings that
he reaped from a server revamp and technol-
ogy from VMware and Vizioncore.
By Joanne Cummings
Money is tight. Performance is declining. Your servers are
all nearly three years old and pretty soon, their high-priced main-
tenance contract is about to kick in. What do you do?
If you’re like Tim Hays, you take the money you would have
spent on maintenance and instead use virtualization to not only
improve performance, but increase IT efficiency, cut power and
cooling costs 45 percent, and make disaster recovery as easy as
pushing a button.
“I guess I’m more of a business guy first and an IT guy second,”
says Hays, director of IT at Lextron, a wholesale distributor of ani-
mal health pharmaceuticals with 600 employees in 44 locations
across 19 states. “I look at IT as a business enabler. Virtualization
wasn’t something that we did just because it was the next cool
thing. It made a lot of economic sense.”
Start small
Hays, who told his story at the recent Network World IT Roadmap
Conference in Denver, didn’t jump into virtualization all at once
(see related story on more lessons learned). His first foray was
in 2005, when he was faced with paying $300,000 over three
years to maintain the three Unix servers and direct-attached
storage units supporting his ERP, inventory management and
sales management functions. All told, the three servers were
responsible for handling $1.75 million in sales transactions daily.
(vPAR) software, which enabled the one server to host three
virtually partitioned servers. He also put the server on a Fibre
Channel-based HP EVA 5000 storage-area network. (Compare
2: Making the Most
through Virtualization:
storage virtualization products.)
What to Expect
“Cost-wise, it was a wash,” he says, noting that the depreciation
for the new equipment was $100,000 per year, the same as he
would have been paying for maintenance per year on the old gear. 3: DataCenter
But reports now ran 30 percent to 40 percent faster, and user Optimization: The FAQs
complaints declined.
“People were waiting less time to get information, and they 4: The Agile Business
didn’t have that problem where they were outworking the ability
of the system to retrieve the data,” he says. 5: Business Continuity and
At the same time, the company also needed to upgrade its Disaster Recovery
ERP databases from Informix 7 to 9.4. “We had 1,500 programs
that we needed to regression test against new hardware, a new 6: Vision for the Future
database, new development tools and a new operating system,”
Hays says. Buying new equipment enabled Hays to install all the
new software and thoroughly test everything before cutting Syndicated Articles
over. Once his team was confident everything would work, they
– Bank Scores with Server
simply switched users from the old equipment to the new. The
Virtualization
whole process, which could have taken six months in the past,
took just 45 days. – Doing the Math on
Virtualization
Success breeds success – Major shift to cloud IT
Faced with a similar situation on the Wintel side of the house services inevitable
in August 2006, Lextron once again calculated its options. The – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
company had been using 40 physical servers to support its Micro- Skepticism About
soft Windows environment, including Exchange, SharePoint, CRM Virtualization
and Web services, as well as file and print.
“We had servers that needed to be replaced and we had a – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
track record of taking multiple physical servers and combining Approach to Virtualization
them into one,” Hays says. “Virtualization seemed like an obvious in 2009
project to at least investigate.”

34
At the time, virtualization a la VMware was not well-known. The company decided to virtualize its 40 servers and run
25
 syndicated articles
Introduction
S them all on a cluster of two HP x64 DL-360 servers, each with push-button [disaster-recovery].”
A 20GB of memory and running VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 Vizioncore cost $600 per server license, and Lextron uses 1: Getting Started
(VI3) software. Hays says the decision to use just two physi- it for 26 critical servers. “Twenty-six times $600 is less than
cal servers hinged on VMware’s licensing costs. “It’s just a math $15,000,” he says. “So it’s another area where we just said, ‘Why
2: Making the Most
problem,” Hays says. “I can buy more VMware licenses and spread wouldn’t we spend this money?’”
through Virtualization:
them over cheaper servers, or I can buy more expensive, robust In the end, virtualization was just a no-brainer for Lextron. “I
What to Expect
servers and fewer VMware licenses. I just projected the total cost got more productivity from my staff, I got better utilization of the
of ownership for a 36-month period, and using these four boxes equipment that I had, I got a better return on the invested capital
was optimal mathematically.” for equipment, and I reduced power and cooling costs,” Hays says. 3: DataCenter
Plus, the move enabled Lextron to eliminate three racks of He notes those benefits came on top of the savings he got in Optimization: The FAQs
equipment, along with 45 percent of its power and cooling costs. the first place, by buying the four servers and VI3 to replace 40
And it increased productivity overall, especially in IT. “If someone servers. “It was easy math.” 4: The Agile Business
needed a test server in the old world, you had to find a physi-
cal box, and make sure it had the right physical features -- CPU, Joanne Cummings is a freelance writer in North Andover, Mass. 5: Business Continuity and
memory, the right network connection,” Hays says. “Sometimes, She can be reached at jocummings@comcast.net. Disaster Recovery
we had to purchase a new server just to test a particular applica-
tion. That’s all eliminated with virtual machines. They’re very easy 6: Vision for the Future
to build up and take back down.”
Plus, with virtualization and fewer physical servers, Lextron
was able to go to the next big step, implementing what Hays
calls “push-button” disaster recovery.
Major shift to cloud Syndicated Articles

“Because of virtualization, we were able to rent a much small-

er facility for a disaster-recovery center -- if you looked at it, you
IT services inevitable, – Bank Scores with Server
Virtualization
might even think it was a broom closet,” he says. The [disaster-
recovery] site has just two server racks, an inline cooling unit, and
IDC says – Doing the Math on
Virtualization
UPS and battery backup. Plus, Hays uses Vizioncore’s vReplicator By Jon Brodkin – Major shift to cloud IT
software to replicate virtual machines from the primary site to
services inevitable
the backup site. IT infrastructure and services delivered over the cloud will
“I have virtual Exchange Server ‘A’ sitting in my production be ubiquitous within five years, and vendors that ignore the shift – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
data center, and multiple times a day, Vizioncore takes a snapshot from on-premises software to Internet-delivered technology will Skepticism About
of everything that’s unique about it — the server, the database be left in the dust, IDC analyst Frank Gens predicted at the IDC Virtualization
— and it passes that data over to virtual Exchange Server ‘B’ at Directions conference in Boston Tuesday. – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
the [disaster-recovery] site,” says Hays, noting that the disaster- “If you are not thinking about and acting on delivering your Approach to Virtualization
recovery site is located 3 miles away and is linked to the produc- own offerings through the cloud [within five years], you won’t be in 2009
tion site via a 180Mbps connection. “From a command console, I in the mainstream anymore,” Gens said. Avoiding the cloud “won’t
can tell it to automatically switch over to Exchange Server B and really be an option.”
run all my users, and my users wouldn’t know the difference. It’s Gens defined cloud computing as “consumer and business

34 26
 syndicated articles
Introduction
S products, services and solutions delivered and consumed in real Recession will be a change agent in the technology world,
A time over the Internet.” More technically, Gens said the cloud is forcing customers and vendors to adapt to new realities, IDC 1: Getting Started
made up of shared services under virtualized management that chief research officer John Gantz said. Whereas IDC was predict-
are accessible to people and other services over the Internet in a ing nearly 6% growth in worldwide IT spending back in August,
2: Making the Most
pay-per-use and self-service model. the analyst firm now believes spending will increase by just half
through Virtualization:
An important distinguishing feature under the IDC cloud of one percent this year. Spending should rebound with 4.4%
What to Expect
definition is the use of Internet standards to connect cloud ser- growth in 2010, IDC forecasts.
vices to one another and to the systems within enterprise data “Out there, nothing is familiar,” Gantz said. “We’re in the midst
centers, he said. of the worst economic downturn since before the computer was 3: DataCenter
Cloud services break down into six main categories, according invented in 1947.” Optimization: The FAQs
to Gens— applications, collaboration tools, storage, servers and But the move toward cloud computing — or utility computing
processing, IT management, and platforms. as it is also called — shows that the IT industry is still stable and 4: The Agile Business
IDC surveys show 26% of businesses using the cloud for has room for growth, speakers said. If IT is truly a utility, like water
IT management, 15% to bolster server and storage capacity, a or electricity, it’s probably a good business to be in, Gantz said. 5: Business Continuity and
quarter for collaboration and business applications, and 17% for Gens, who has traveled throughout the world the past six Disaster Recovery
application development and deployment. weeks and spoken with hundreds of CIOs, said “one thing I have
A common perception is that most customers embrace cloud learned during this trip is that this whole topic about cloud, Inter- 6: Vision for the Future
services because of the cost. While that is certainly true, Gens net delivery of IT offerings, is really capturing the imagination of
said IDC surveys show the No. 1 attribute driving people toward a lot of CIOs and line-of-business people out there.”
cloud services is the ease and speed of deployment. Syndicated Articles
Users are telling CIOs they want faster delivery of services,
– Bank Scores with Server
and the cloud helps achieve that goal.
Virtualization
Pepsi Bottler
“That alone guarantees that over the next several years the
cloud model will be very important for CIOs,” Gens said. – Doing the Math on
Virtualization
Swallows Skepticism
Other big selling points identified in user surveys include
lessening the need for in-house IT staff, paying only for what you
– Major shift to cloud IT

About Virtualization
use and when you use it, the standardization of IT systems, and
services inevitable
access to the latest functionality.
The top concerns identified in IDC user surveys are security, – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
performance, availability and barriers to integrating cloud services One IT leader’s cautious move into virtual serv- Skepticism About
with in-house IT systems. “We’re going to have to do a lot of ers and storage virtualization tastes sweet so Virtualization
work around service-level assurance to move this market into the far. Here’s a look at the strategy and savings. – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
mainstream,” Gens said. Approach to Virtualization
The theme of this year’s 44TH annual IDC Directions is “ICT [In- By Jon Brodkin in 2009
formation and Communications Technology]: New risks, rules and
opportunities.” Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch and Does IT Christian Messer was a virtualization skeptic not long ago.
Matter? is scheduled to speak at the end of the conference. Now he swears by virtual servers.

34 27
 syndicated articles
Introduction
S “I was very skeptical. I think it’s more mentality than anything Messer is moving his storage from tape to a Dell EqualLogic
A else,” says Messer, who is leading a server and storage virtual- iSCSI storage-area network and virtualizing both servers and 1: Getting Started
ization project at G&J Pepsi Cola Bottling Company in Cincinnati. storage. Having storage and server virtualization work together
“It was more of a lack of understanding on my part. As I got it is key, Messer says, describing the ability to abstract logical
2: Making the Most
in a lab environment and began playing with it, my confidence storage from physical storage and easily reallocate storage
through Virtualization:
level grew.” units to virtual machines.
What to Expect
Messer, manager of information systems at G&J, explains that “In my opinion, it’s necessary to have both if you want to
he had suffered numerous system crashes with Microsoft Ex- get all the benefits,” he says. “It makes your [disaster] recovery
change on physical servers and wasn’t sure how it would perform time quicker. The ability to grab snapshots of virtual machines, 3: DataCenter
on virtual ones. But the performance turned out to be fine, and data volumes, replicate those and replicate changes. . . . Hav- Optimization: The FAQs
virtualization has allowed Messer to drastically reduce disaster ing multiple layers of redundancy scattered across your WAN,
recovery times. for me that’s extremely valuable. I put more value on that than 4: The Agile Business
“I did a test employment with Exchange 2007 in a virtual anything else.”
machine environment and I got incredible results,” he says. “Its It took about a half-hour to get back up and running after a 5: Business Continuity and
performance was outstanding. I’ve got a much higher comfort SQL virtual server crashed recently. That’s a huge improvement Disaster Recovery
level now with virtual machines than with physical servers. I’m over the days when G&J had everything on tape.
able to leverage a lot more of my technology and get some ROI, “Just outside of five years ago, if you lost a server, you were 6: Vision for the Future
which looks great to the accountants.” rebuilding and reloading an operating system and grabbing all
G&J is an independent bottler with more than 1,000 your data from tapes,” he says. “Your downtime was a good solid
employees. eight to 10 hours.” Syndicated Articles
Before deploying virtualization last November, Messer had 78 Messer estimates he’s saving between $11,000 and $13,000
– Bank Scores with Server
servers, mostly from Dell and HP, and is in the process of con- per year because of storage and server virtualization.
Virtualization
solidating them into just 16 Dell blade servers by the end of this That’s not to say life with virtualization is perfect. USB storage
year. (Compare blade server products.) devices aren’t compatible with G&J’s virtual machines, Messer – Doing the Math on
With VMware’s hypervisor on quad-core servers, he’s running says. He’s working with VMware to solve the problem but hasn’t Virtualization
two virtual machines on each core for a total of eight per physi- come up with a fix yet.
– Major shift to cloud IT
cal server. “You can make the USB device visible to your ESX Server,
services inevitable
Sharepoint, Exchange, SQL and Oracle databases and file however your virtual servers won’t see it,” he says. “It’s a minor
servers are all running on virtual machines. Before virtualization limitation.” – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
Messer was using less than 10% of his server resources, and he Skepticism About
still has room for improvement. He says he hasn’t found an ap- Virtualization
plication that he wouldn’t trust on a virtual machine. – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
“With each baby step, we were throwing more at [VMware] Approach to Virtualization
ESX,” he says. “At this point I haven’t thrown enough at it. I could in 2009
probably double everything I’ve got on the ESX servers and still
not be at 50% utilization.”

34 28
 syndicated articles
Introduction
S
A 5 Steps to A Big 2. Investigate shared/unified
storage to improve flexibility 1: Getting Started

Picture Approach to A well-architected shared storage environment can help IT groups

enable the advanced features of virtualized server environments 2: Making the Most
Virtualization in 2009 without adding the overhead of additional management. through Virtualization:
What to Expect
Think far beyond your servers from the start if 3. Revisit data backup and
you want to reap virtualization’s wider poten- recovery plans 3: DataCenter
tial in the data center, says Dave Robbins, CTO, Optimization: The FAQs
Virtualization means relying on fewer physical systems to process
Information Technology for NetApp. Here’s his more tasks. Consolidating on fewer machines without redesigning
starting checklist for IT pros who want to take data protection will lead to performance issues, impede recovery 4: The Agile Business
a holistic view of virtualization in the enterprise. and limit overall project success. CIOs should carefully consider
the best choice in data protection for their organization’s specific 5: Business Continuity and
By Dave Robbins
needs, to minimize the impact of events such as data, system, or Disaster Recovery
site failure and ensure information is properly protected.
In the current economic climate, organizations are cutting IT
projects that are unable to show a strong return on investment
6: Vision for the Future
within twelve months. But buoyed by the prospect of increased
4. Consider thin provisioning
efficiency, lower costs, quick return on investment, and a more flex- Server virtualization enables the rapid provisioning of applications
Syndicated Articles
ible model to align with primary business functions, virtualization is and administrators should consider thin provisioning for their en-
one of the IT projects getting almost universal buy-in from CIOs. vironments to reclaim unused storage, improve storage efficiency – Bank Scores with Server
While server virtualization is delivering on these benefits in and enable faster time to market. Virtualization
the data center, many CIOs are now responding to the unintend- – Doing the Math on
ed consequences and complexities that are being created. These 5. Dig into data deduplication to Virtualization
include virtual server sprawl, a lack of full realization of benefits, maximize efficiency – Major shift to cloud IT
and increased shared storage costs, among others. By its very nature, virtualization tends to have a lot of duplicate
Here are five key considerations for CIOs and IT leaders who
services inevitable
data such as the same operating system and application software.
want to ensure that they are taking a holistic view of virtualization. Deduplication technologies allow an organization to use and man- – Pepsi Bottler Swallows
age less storage while still reaping the benefits of virtualization. Skepticism About
1. Assess your virtual Virtualization
environment readiness Dave Robbins serves as CTO, Information Technology for NetApp. – 5 Steps to A Big Picture
You can’t optimize what can’t measure. Detailed assessment is Approach to Virtualization
required before full project commitment to understand your cur- in 2009
rent capabilities, help justify current and future investments, and
provide a baseline measurement that can be tracked and reviewed.
For more information, visit www.vmware.com/go/intel
3 29