Keiran Shelden The other day, I was going through some other forums I don’t usually read and I came across an interesting thread title, “Is virtualization going the way of the Dinosaur?” After reading through some of the responses and the numerous amount of posts by the thread starter, I started to wonder.
Footprint.
Time.
The time it takes to move 5 servers into a rack, plug in and build each server is time consuming and costly, what if you only had to plug in 3 servers, thus allowing you to start installing the software long before you had a chance with the extra 2 servers.
Convenience. Once you have ESXi installed on your 3 servers, you are set to configure your vSwitch’s and then your storage. Once configure, you can start building your virtual machines (In this case, the 5 servers). Once you have installed and set up your servers, you are set ready to go.
“Oh no..! We forgot that we need to let our partner company in to access one of our web apps… which means we now need another server and we haven’t got the budget for it!”
Never fear, everything is under control and this is where virtualization becomes really worth while. Your administrator only needs to log onto vSphere and right click on a host, selecting New Virtual Machine and in approximately 2 minutes, a server is in the process of being built. In less than 2 hours, you can have your sixth server up and running and your partner company logging into your web app.
There are many different designs for how to set up your virtual infrastructure, this can be storage, i.e. Physical SANs, or vSAN on the hosts. Or Switches if you use iSCSI for your SANs.
This adds to the footprint, but also adds flexibility to what you can achieve with your infrastructure.
Key Point
- Reduces the energy footprint
- Minimises set up/installation time
- Easy to manage
- Flexible and easy to expand infrastructure i.e. additional servers
Please leave any comments or recommendations.
Thank you.
