Virtualization

First, you need to decide on the virtualisation technology you want to use. There are two major players: VMware http://www.vmware.com/ and Microsoft’s Hyper-V http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/hyper-v-server/ and http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-server/hyper-v.aspx
Both companies have free and paid solutions.

If you are new to virtualisation, I suggest you to choose one of VMware or Hyper-V by reading the information available on both web sites, here on EE and on Internet. Ones, you have chosen the favourite technology, I suggest you to get really familiar with all features by building a test environment before getting all you production servers in the virtual world. The planning is the essential step here and I’ve seen very bad planned solutions by unqualified people.

So, to summarize, get yourself a pilot project for couple of months. Even, if you have enough time, you could test both.

My favourite is Hyper-V because it’s a cheaper solution but VMware is more mature.

There are also other virtualisation solutions on the market, if you wish to look for something different.

I have used V-sphere for a bit and I am familiar with it and it I liked it and it did the job for the over 200 servers we were managing. Given that I less than 10 servers, I V-sphere would do the job for this environment.
I need more info on how plan the migration.
I will be doing all of the above when it comes to migrating our AD, Exchange, and so on. I have done that in the past (not too experienced) but need more insight on the process when it comes to Virtualization.
Or even a step by step guid for virtualization.


Thank you

Thanks