The benefits of server virtualization are great. We’ve heard most of it before - cost reduction, flexibility, etc. What IT professional wouldn’t be interested in consolidating under-utilized servers, reducing energy consumption or reducing the physical size of the data center?  Is there more we’re missing?

I believe Dan Kusnetzky brings up a good point: What’s next after server virtualization? We’re now getting into how do we understand and manage the virtual environment. I agree with Kusnetzky’s assessment, and I believe many organizations are missing one complementary discipline - Capacity Management. 

It’s the key to optimizing virtual environments. The constant flux and variables affecting services can affect IT resource allocation which makes Capacity Management important in virtual environments and to the business. How does IT know the impact of planned consolidation activities or understand what the application is doing inside the virtual machine?

In a step toward improving the management of virtual systems, we set out to findhow IT managers are utilizing virtualization in their organizations. It wasn’t surprising that respondents mentioned that proper planning is key for successful virtualization efforts. Forty percent of respondents noted that bottlenecks (events that impacted performance or end-user needs) are one of the top three challenges in deploying virtual systems. Fortunately, the survey also points out the effectiveness of tools to monitor and manage virtual systems as well as how organizations are measuring their efforts.  

You might be interested in more on the virtualization study. 

The Ovum survey results reinforce the point that up front Capacity Management is necessary to mitigate risk and maximize the ROI of virtualization efforts.  Take a look at this story from writer Denise Dubie called “7 tips for succeeding with virtualization.”  If you have any thoughts, success stories, or tips for those working on virtualization projects, feel free to post comments on the TeamQuest Blog.  

There is a lot of promise in the use of virtualization, but it’s rare to hear vendors mention the complexities associated with its use.

They understand it, work hard to hide it, and have ambitious plans to manage it. Media such as Computerworld, SearchDataCenter.com and eWeek have devoted time to discussing the complexities associated with managing virtual environments. We’ve all heard the benefits of virtualization. For example, you can deploy multiple operating system technologies on a single hardware platform.  

However, we all know and appreciate that when any system becomes congested it will slow and potentially fail. To unclog bottlenecks, we need to know where they are in the system.

As we know, virtualization’s promise is to make things easier by hiding complexities. We also know that virtualization is more complex and harder to understand when it fails. Visibility or transparency into the system is paramount to remediating problems with the system.

What do you need to effectively manage your virtual environment? What’s missing from the current management tools for server virtualization, as an example?

With whatever virtualization solutions you are looking at, encourage your vendor to put in the instrumentation and telemetry so that when the system is suffering – and it will eventually – you can remediate quickly.

How any times have we heard the saying “Let’s not reinvent the wheel”? That statement can certainly apply to capacity planners. The trouble is that until recently, capacity planning was not a widely-adopted IT discipline so there were fewer places to share information. Now we have a large number of newer people struggling to do the right things for their company and information sources are not easily found. 

I can remember the first capacity planning work I did and quite frankly, I struggled. At that time there were few publications available and they were usually heavy into mathematical theory and short on practical knowledge.

Over the years it took a lot of work plus countless hours at conferences listening at sessions and swapping war stories at social gatherings to find the best, most efficient ways of doing our work. When I heard ideas to do things better, I took them back and adopted them. Some worked well in my organization, others did not, but over the long haul the ones that worked made me successful.

We capacity planners need to keep up with the challenges resulting from faster moving business. I think Bill Gates said it best with the title of his book “Business at the Speed of Light.” Caught up in these fast-moving times, we often don’t take the time to look around for better ways of doing things or swap ideas with peers. We keep focused and do the work the best we can with our experience and tools at hand. 

We at TeamQuest have strived to help by posting capacity planning and performance tuning information on our website. Although there are a wide variety of articles available, some have indicated their schedules make it difficult to spend the time needed to understand the in-depth articles. With busy schedules in mind, I have recorded a short White-board Series vidcast that covers some of the better capacity planning habits I’ve learned from experience and from those more learned than me. 

Please take a few minutes out of your busy schedule watch the vidcast. It is only about 7 minutes long and hopefully it will give you some ideas that will make you more successful in your current situation and throughout your career.

If you have other ideas for future, helpful clips, please email me at ronald.potter@teamquest.com.