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By Claude Goudrealt
For
several years, most small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) have left
virtualization to the bigger enterprises. CIOs of smaller businesses have
watched and waited for a virtualization option better suited to their needs.
They should not wait any longer. The benefits of virtualization are now in
reach for organizations of nearly every size, although SMBs have some
particular considerations they must examine. For CIOs at SMBs, there are five
important things to know about virtualization in today’s market.
1. The benefits of
virtualization are magnified for SMBs.
Virtual
servers lead to more efficient use of resources, lower maintenance costs and
faster server deployment, among other benefits. The increased agility and higher availability that virtualization makes
possible are even more valuable to SMBs, which too often skimp on these areas
due to cost concerns. Lack of availability can open the door to significant
data loss, but virtualization mitigates this risk.
Additionally,
virtualization lowers the maintenance expenses and total cost of ownership
(TCO) of IT infrastructures. SMBs can also count on virtualization to decrease
and eliminate planned and unplanned downtime, respectively, since a virtualized
infrastructure can move workloads from one host to another. Perhaps most
importantly, virtualization improves the end-user experience, enabling IT to
migrate virtual servers and desktops between physical platforms without
affecting user productivity.
2. SMBs face unique challenges not seen in larger enterprises.
The
first such obstacle comes in the form of storage. Before virtual servers and
virtual desktops can freely move between different hardware platforms, they
must have common access to shared storage to transfer the running state of
workloads between physical servers. One way to solve this challenge is with direct-attached
disks with storage area networks (SANs) that interconnect to multiple servers.
SMBs
should also note that the built-in safety nets against bottlenecks available in
enterprise environments are not as likely to be present in smaller
environments. Storage disruptions and slowdowns in physical servers are
isolated to a single server or a single application, but these scenarios become
far more serious in a virtualized environment. Any single points of failure in a centralized
SAN spread across the entire set of interconnected servers and potentially
hundreds of virtual servers and thousands of desktops. SMBs must seek out
virtualization platforms that deliver a safety net to avoid this problem.
3. Be wary of unanticipated deployment costs.
CIOs
in large data centers certainly dislike surprise expenses. The SMB’s CIO,
however, has to be far more cautious of such risks. Ask questions prior to
deployment about the cost of project management, shared storage infrastructure
development, higher availability and the performance requirements of
centralized operations.
4. Initial low-end equipment investments can lead to higher TCO.
There
is a trend in SMB virtualization to adopt equipment with superficially low price points. In many
cases, these tools lead to higher TCO, since they create a complex
infrastructure that is eventually too difficult to manage and unable to
scale. Rather than deceptively
inexpensive modular options, SMBs should seek out complete solutions designed
specifically for their needs.
5. Make the most of your existing technology.
Instead
of removing your existing hardware and making unnecessary investments in new
machines, deploy a virtualization solution that repurposes the hardware already
deployed. Look for storage virtualization software that enables construction of
virtual SANs using internal disks in each physical server, enabling you to turn
a pair of existing servers into a dedicated, highly available and high-performance
SAN. Such options should also reduce the
risk of data loss with continuous real-time replication.
For
companies of every size, virtualization should simplify environments, not
complicate them. With SMB-specific virtualization platforms now on the market,
CIOs can select technology that delivers easy maintenance, affordable
implementation and the scalability they seek.
Claude Goudreault is the CEO and founder of VM6 Software. Claude is a visionary and a
serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in developing IT infrastructure
for large enterprises. He specializes in designing solutions that allows
companies to substantially reduce their IT total cost of ownership.
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