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tanveer_hussainFlag for United Arab Emirates

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Pros and cons for Virtualization (VMware)

Hi ,

Would like to know regarding the cons of virtualization of our present physical server in our office, all i heard and read are positive points from the vendor but i want to know what are the cons for that, i would appreciate if any experienced person can share there views with me so that it will be very easy for me to take the decision,

Regards,

Tanveer.
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wizzardofoz
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I point you to this excellent article that summarizes the arguments on either side.

http://www.btquarterly.com/?mc=pros-cons-virtualization&page=virt-viewresearch
There are actually very few cons to virtualisation, the main one i can think of would be the need to retrain staff. Depending on the size of your company virtualisation can become so complex that you could potentially need a dedicated VMWare admin, if your just using the basic features however the amount of knowledge needed is minimal.

The Pros are fairly well known and i assume you know most of them ie.
- more efficient use of hardware
- load balancing
- server snapshots
etc etc

There is a similar question on EE which you might like to view.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/22695958/Pros-Cons-of-Virtualization.html
I missed one of my favourite pros.

No pesky server installations all you need is to create a server template once off and you can deploy as many servers using this template as you need. This allows you to run a development environment/lab for testing solutions without the hassle of building each server.
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ASKER

Thanks for your quick reply,

But friends all the articles which you have submitted are the old one for 2007 which i have already reviewed after that there are many new enhancements were made to the virtulization technology i need to know the report for current 2009 year, and with some experts who are certified with good amount of experience in this field can help me with there old experience for pros & Cons they have faced while using this technology.


Regards,

Tanveer.
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wizzardofoz
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Biggest con I came across was the initial hardware purchase. To license an existing server to run vmware and then get the hardware such as memory up to standard was no feasible for my environment. I had to purchase new servers in order to do this. Another expense was purchasing of shared storage that all hosts can access. Depending on your environment this may mean you will need to attend some form of SAN training as a vmware cluster will never really warrant having a dedicated storage administrator. Once these costs had been overcome the rest is just positives. Being able to provision servers in minutes has proven to be a major advantage, live migration is a dream, hardware consolidation is outstanding. My two cents worth.
If I am reading your question correctly, it appears that you have one server in your office that you want to virtualize.  If that's the case and if you don't see adding any more, I'm not sure that there is any real advantage to virtualizing.

If there are multiple server that you want to virtualize then there are many advantages to doing this.  First, you can spend hardware money once. although it might be more than you would spend for any other single server. But once you've spent it, you might not have to buy hardware again for a very long time.  In our environment we spent a lot of money on two IBM servers and a SANS array.  We purchased these with tons of RAM and processor power.  But we already have over 40 virtualized servers running so I think we've probably come close to breaking even on the hardware.

Having a virtual environment give you the ability to quickly and easily add in a new server if you need to do so in a hurry without having to take the time to process a new server through your capital equipment process.  VIrtualizing servers gives you better control over your resources so you have less wasted resources. For example, if you need a server with only 20 GB of disk space, you don't have to buy a 80 GB disk and waste the other 60 GB.

The main disadvantages are that the IT staff has something new and a little complex to manage and since the VM is really just a file, if the file gets corrupt you may lose the entire VM.

There are also many different ways to get into virtualization depending on your needs and budget.  VMware, for example, has a workstation product, and ESXi server product and the ESX server product.
I think i can get that much only, so i will divided the point between two persons wizzardofoz & andoss,

Thanks for all your ppl. help,


Regards,

Tanveer.
I am really sorry by mistake i have selected only wizzardofoz , SORRY!!!