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Virtualization software, blade servers and capacity planning tools... how does everything fit together? Virtualization software and blade servers help corporations deal with server sprawl, low resource utilization and management control.

Virtualization
According to a July 2006 Yankee Group report, sixty-two percent of respondents already have a virtualization solution in place or are in the process of migration. The popularity of virtualization is easy to understand.

A virtualized server enables business to consolidate the physical space in the data center, but more than that, enables better use of computing power, storage capacity and other resources.

Nearly two-thirds of the Yankee Group user population had deployed server virtualization as a one-to-many (multiple instances on one machine) compared with only 10 percent using server virtualization as a many-to-one (grid or utility computing) solution.

Reasons for using virtualization software include:

• Reduced infrastructure costs
• Flexible application deployment
• Improved server utilization rates
• Consolidation
• Improved server and application provisioning times

As more servers are being dedicated to specific business applications, the need for improved server capacity utilization rates has increased. Large amounts of capacity are wasting away. According to Forrester, capacity utilization generally hovers between 8 percent and 15 percent on Windows/Intel servers, and between 25 percent and 35 percent on UNIX and Linux servers.

Virtualization and Blade Servers
Blade servers deliver a higher density of processing power - more CPU power in a smaller space. Blades help data center managers do more with less and drive down the total cost of ownership (TCO).

Additional benefits of blade servers:

• Reduced floor space
• Reduced cable complexity
• Smaller physical size
• Hot-swappable

Virtualization can complement blade servers by allowing you to move an existing application from one physical server to another and easily troubleshoot a problem blade server without impacting the end user.

For example, if one blade server has a problem, you can use virtualization to find adequate resources while you take out and fix the problem blade. After troubleshooting, you can replace the blade without business interruption.

The blade server is often an option for companies looking or needing to invest in new infrastructure hardware and server equipment.