Virtualisation virgin pitfalls for the bottom line

Mike Bantick
Sunday, 27 July 2008 06:43

Business IT - Technology

The consultant also tried to oversell the ESX solution (not an unheard of practice in the corporate IT world) by suggesting that the High Availability (HA) option using "vmotion dynamic virtual machine copying" was also an essential part of the installation.

The bottom line was that, to install a VM solution as suggested would have blown out the cost substantially and – as it turned out – was completely unnecessary given company X’s requirements.

Ultimately, company X installed ESX, under the guidance of a second consultant as originally designed.  This gave company X the separation of content it required, and due to the nature of applications running on the VM’s, resulted in a high availability set-up without the need for vmotion or a revamp of the network.

Company X is very happy with the implementation of ESX into its infrastructure; it gives the system administrators a greater freedom to shift applications around hardware while providing the separation of systems and availability required by the company’s clientele.

All it took was a clear understanding on both the IT department and VMWare consultation sides.

During the initial roll out of ESX not all of the ESX virtualisation features were needed.  In fact if those features had been incorporated into the initial quote, it is quite possible the project would have never got off the ground.

Times of course change, with the advent of ESX V3.5 and the changing needs of company X’s mid-range applications, the company is now indeed looking at adding a SAN network as well as some of ESX’s High Availability options to meet the dynamic demands of business.