Planning Your Journey to a Virtualized Data Center

Successful journeys usually begin with a detailed plan that carefully maps out the destinations, the best routes and a timetable for arrival. A decision to undertake virtualization in your data center is no different. In fact, the decision to implement virtualization in data centers often has been described as a journey. As alluring a destination as a virtualized environment is, getting there isn't always obvious, particularly for those new to the technology. Like any trip, virtualization achieves the best results when it is the product of careful planning.

The benefits of virtualization truly are impressive in terms of simplification, flexibility, and ease of management. Companies that have virtualized their  server environments typically are able to achieve server consolidation ratios ranging from 8:1 to as high as 30:1; dramatically reduce staff time spent deploying, repurposing and decommissioning servers; and sharply cut power and cooling costs. This quickly translates into budgetary savings that either can flow to the bottom line or be reinvested in further IT innovations that improve a business's performance. These same clients have seen a return on their investment within six months or less, a reduction in total cost of ownership of between 30 percent and 70 percent and a rise in server utilization rates to as high as 80 percent, instead of rates commonly in the five to 15 percent range.

Of course, in today's hard-nosed cost environment, management isn't simply going to take IT's word that virtualization will be a boon to the organization. They will want to see the business case for virtualization, including estimates on the number of servers that can be consolidated, the amount of technical staff time that will be directed to developing IT services that previously were dedicated to monitoring under-utilized servers, and the amount saved in energy costs. They also will want assurances that performance and disaster recovery won't be compromised.

Aligning IT with business objectives

To meet all these hurdles, the current data center environment and business processes must be examined before software licenses are purchased. First and foremost is the issue of infrastructure readiness. Various applications use processors differently, and the applications in use must be evaluated for compatibility. In addition, pooled resources can conflict with one another, and compliance issues and the business's rule sets may crimp the ability to apply virtualization enterprise-wide. Lastly, the infrastructure?the storage environment, network connections and back-up procedures?needs to be assessed to address potential compatibility.

"IEC takes a holistic approach to virtualization, recognizing that it is part of a larger IT Optimization to align the IT capabilities more tightly with business objectives. IEC brings a formalized, managed approach to virtualization implementation to ensure that clients reap maximum benefit."

Without careful planning, organizations may find themselves dealing with headaches that they hadn't bargained for. For instance, businesses may discover that they have purchased software licenses that can't be utilized or that they have merely substituted virtual server sprawl for physical server sprawl. More seriously, they could find that their actual experience fails to live up to the initial promise to management.

Technical support from start to finish

To be certain that virtualization delivers on its promise, IEC utilizes a three-step methodology:

Solution Framing. IEC makes a readiness assessment of the client's data center and business environment in order to build a sound case for change to support the virtualization initiative. Since virtualization introduces the shared computing model to the enterprise, an IEC architect must evaluate what changes are necessary. For instance, a model where various business units have their own capital budgets to purchase their own segregated IT resources could limit the potential of virtualization. The IEC architect would make recommendations in this regard.

The architect also evaluates and makes recommendations on back-end infrastructure components, including storage, network, back-up, systems management, security and time synchronization to make certain they are in harmony with the virtualization products.

At the end of this phase, the client receives a report that includes a readiness assessment, high-level transition plan and business case that includes return on investment and total cost of ownership analyses.

Plan and Design. To say that virtualization changes an IT environment is an understatement. This phase is designed to ensure that the virtualization platform can co-exist and interact with the existing infrastructure. Naming and security standards are established, the disk and network structure is defined, system elements are fine-tuned and a virtual infrastructure is designed to satisfy each customer's unique requirements.

Implementation. Adoption begins with building a pilot virtualized environment as documented during the detailed design phase. The pilot is tested, and the results are analyzed to make certain that the physical and virtual environments operate according to the design. At this point modifications can be made to ensure performance is as expected. Once the pilot is complete, virtualization is introduced into the production environment, and workloads are migrated. Throughout the process, IEC actively involves the client staff in order to empower them with skills that otherwise would only be attainable through extensive theoretical training