Rick Says

#2: Storage and networking will be your biggest pain points

Planning a server virtualization implementation of any scale will require a lot of planning in the areas of storage and networking. In a server virtualization strategy, the migration from local storage to shared centralized storage takes adequate sizing and planning. Further, administrators will be challenged to rethink the provisioning of virtual servers.

From our experience Rick is dead on.  We have done hundreds of deployments in Education, Corporate, Wndows, Novell and Mac environments and going to a centralized storage solution allows our customers better performance, productivity and manageability but it makes the administrator rethink how they support their end users.  The planning portion of this process is vital and collaborative as it allows the Administrator to fully comprehend the reach of virtualization and the indirect and the direct savings while we customize the best solution.

Recently we were reading this interesting blog post at breathingdata.com regarding why desktop virtualization projects fails and what some top barriers are to wide-scale adoption. I think in summary it’s about customers believing the sales hype that it’s all lower cost, simpler overall management and that it brings greater mobility and in best case scenarios this is true but like any technology it comes down to working with companies and individuals you trust because they can help make your life easier through their knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. Also educating your company, school district or municipalities about what lies ahead.

For instance…

Tip: Client costs are only part of the picture. Desktop virtualization can reduce capital expenditures but do not expect that to be the case in the first year. Building the infrastructure is expensive (storage, servers, licenses, etc.) and may be the same in the first year. Think about using existing PCs as clients instead of replacing them with thin clients. Thin clients are cheaper than PCs but the reduction in hardware costs may not be seen for a couple of years due to the infrastructure needing to be built. More importantly, operational expenses will be seen immediately and that is where the true cost savings can be found.

Read the full blog post here.

First off, we need to define the term virtualization so we all have common ground.  It can be somewhat slippery as different groups use it to describe their particular set of services.

The best definition I have found is this, from this white paper on Virtualization in Education from IBM:

“Simply put, virtualization is a technique for hiding the physical characteristics of computing resources from the way in which other systems, applications or end users interact with those resources. As a practical matter, when you get a Google map on your cell phone or when you let your PC automatically shop for the lowest price, you are using virtualization. The concept of virtualization is very broad and can be applied to devices, servers, operating systems, applications and even networks.”

It’s the last sentence that makes it the versatile and somewhat confusing concept to understand.  If it can be applied to so many different pieces and parts in the technology process how can it work for your particular organization?