The motivations are strong and compelling when making the choice to move towards virtualization as the solution for your data center.

Some of the factors include:

• Lower energy costs
• Greatly reduced data center physical footprint.
• More efficient use of hardware resources
• High availability
• Business continuity / easier disaster recovery
• Lower admin to server ratio

Before the migration is to move forward a detailed audit of current equipment, platforms, applications, etc must take place. All computing resources must be properly documented and enumerated. All backups need to be made current. If hardware is going to be re-tasked and used in the new virtualization schema, thorough testing needs to be done to assure full functionality and reliability.

Thorough preparation in the form diagramming, establishing documented process flows, and devising effective storage strategies is directly relational to the effectiveness and efficiency of your virtual migration and the resultant infrastructure. The planning stage is a good time to implement new ideas that will assist in ease of administration and further data center expansion. As with any IT infrastructure the complexity scales with data center size. Depending on the size of the data center, the virtual migration can be rolled out in phases to ease the transition and deal with issues on a smaller scale than would be necessary if the entire data center was migrated at once.

When the time comes to convert or migrate from purpose-built hardware servers to virtual machines, there are several options to consider. If the data center is small or your company can afford a small window of downtime, you can take servers out of production and then migrate to virtual machines. Although this procedure is more hands-on, it allows you to deal with issues out of band without affecting data integrity. For the larger data centers or data centers that cannot afford a maintenance window for migration (which is most likely the scenario), live migrations can be performed using one of many vendor-supplied tools that are readily available to automate the migration process, live, from bare metal server to virtual machine.

Once the decision has been made to take advantage of virtualization in your data center, the key to successfully accomplishing your objectives is research, and planning. The outcome and success of your virtualized environments will likely dictated by the level of preparation and detail you have provided in your project manifest.

I recently came across a thought-provoking blog post by StorageIO analyst and author Greg Schultz. Ruminating on themes in his new book “The Green and Virtual Data Center,” Schultz laments that the natural link between the concepts of virtualization and data center consolidation has led many to mistakenly conclude that these terms are synonymous. They aren’t. And even though consolidation is one of the leading reasons to virtualize today, it’s not the only good reason to consider the technology.

Furthermore, while the inherent cost and energy savings in consolidation are fueling much of the growth and interest in virtualization today, that won’t always be the case. Does that mean that when the economy rebounds, virtualization will become yesterday’s news? Far from it, argues Schultz. Despite “the perception and industry messaging that incorrectly pigeon holes virtualization to mean consolidation, and consolidation to mean virtualization,” Schultz warns us not to be sucked into the notion that virtualization without consolidation doesn’t have a bright future. “To the contrary, the reality is that there is life beyond consolidation (and) there are even more scenarios and far greater market opportunity for non-consolidation virtualization deployments over time, than what has already been seen for first wave of consolidation-centric virtualization scenarios.”

What are some of the reasons besides consolidation for virtualizing your servers, storage or other IT resources? How about simplified maintenance and technology updates, not to mention load-balancing, fault tolerance, and supporting business continuance (BC) and disaster recovery (DR)? According to Schultz, “We are just seeing the tip of the virtualization iceberg (or mountain).”

That’s good news if you’re in the virtualization business, since perhaps as few as 15% of all servers and storage systems are actually suitable to be consolidated – yet nearly all are suitable to be virtualized. What non-consolidation reasons can you think of to virtualize your server, storage, or even desktop systems? Or do you think virtualization is simply a consolidation-crazed “flash in the pan,” being driven by the IT community’s collective kneejerk reaction to an abysmal economy? I’d like to hear your views.

In keeping with the purpose of using virtualization technology the data storage solution must also be resilient and dynamic. Options in tasking and deploying storage for a virtual machine must follow suit with the core technology. Your choice for data storage needs to have high availability and fault tolerance for optimal uptime. Access to the data needs to be fast so as not to affect the performance of the virtual machine. Optimally, the data storage should be easily expandable without creating additional volumes.

The storage technology used and its method of access typically determines if all or parts of the objectives are met and if so, to what degree.

The practice of data storage on the same hardware as the virtual machine is strictly taboo as it defeats the purpose of deploying virtualization in the first place. Virtualization data storage is usually accomplished with Network Attached Storage (NAS) or a Storage Area Network (SAN). Both forms of storage have their benefits and drawbacks as will be explained later in this article.

A NAS – or Network Attached Storage comes in the form of a hardware device that usually contains one or more arrays of hard disks handled by one or more controllers. The advantage of having multiple controllers is that in the case one fails the other may take over the failed controllers RAID array, often in a somewhat performance deprecated state but none the less still operational. NAS devices come with an operating system that is meant to control the storage functions needed and provide device setup and management access in the form of secure shell access or VIA a web browser.  NAS uses common file based protocols to allow access to storage with NFS being popular for UNIX systems and CIFS for windows systems.

A SAN – or Storage Area Network is a high speed network of interconnected data storage devices. The storage devices connected can be of different brands. SAN’s are commonly used in somewhat larger storage implementations than NAS due to their cost and complexity, although they can encompass NAS devices. The drawbacks of using a SAN as compared to NAS are cost, and more complex administration.

Another difference between the two storage options is that with NAS you use file level operations and SAN’s uses Block level I/O.

Using network storage for your virtual machines there is always the concern of latency. This problem is being overcome with the use of TOE (TCP Offload Engine) enabled network cards and faster fiber channel and copper interconnects.

Your choice of virtual machine data storage ultimately should depend on the size and demands of your virtualization deployment scenario and of course budget.

There are two types of green weighing on the minds of business professionals these days: The green that denotes business practices that tread lightly on the environment, and the green that represents money – or lack thereof for capital improvements. The big question is, can you implement the former type of green without spending too much of the latter?

Apparently, you can. At least, so says a recent report written by Barb Goldworm, a virtualization analyst for Focus Consulting and co-author of the 2007 book, “Blade Servers and Virtualization: Transforming Enterprise Computing While Cutting Costs.” In the white paper titled “How to Green Your Data Center from the Server Out,” Goldworm and her co-authors Armando Acosta of Dell and Ed Kurtzer of Intel set out with the premise that the greening of data centers is not only desirable – it’s inevitable.

“Energy costs are going up dramatically. In fact, energy costs are surpassing hardware costs,” according to the report.  An accompanying chart tells the story in graphic detail, showing clearly how energy remained relatively low throughout the 90s and well into the current decade. However, in 2008, energy prices suddenly shot up, quickly crossing over the stable line representing server costs. For the first time, “We are spending more money on power and cooling for the servers than we are for the servers themselves,” the authors state.

As an example, consider a 1,000 square foot data center, which can hold 30 10kW racks. The power required to operate that infrastructure is about 300kW, with another 300kW required for cooling. In Goldworm’s estimates, that translates to an electric bill of $240,000 annually for cooling alone. This explains why, in a survey at last year’s Interop conference , 74% of the IT professionals polled said their company’s major motivation for adopting energy-conserving “green IT” practices is cost reduction. 

Goldworm advocates implementing measures such as power management, upgrading to more efficient UPS, and replacing legacy servers with new energy-efficient models. But she also goes one better, suggesting that server virtualization can significantly reduce power consumption by increasing hardware utilization, and eliminating under-utilized hardware.  In her consulting practice, Goldworm says she “sees an average of 10:1 consolidation ratios in virtualization. Virtualization reduces space use, power consumption, waste, and cooling needs.”

Blade servers, in particular, offer substantial energy savings, the report notes, by reducing the overall number of electronic components that require power and cooling, and by adding more flexibility in server load balancing, providing the ability to incrementally power down servers during periods of low utilization, such as at night.

Through savings such as these, the move to virtualization and other energy-efficient IT practices can actually become self-funding, according to the authors. However, there is a cautionary note: The savings in energy costs are usually directed at the facilities budget. IT managers may find it challenging to pinpoint the cost savings derived from their green initiatives, and to get those savings credited back to their own IT budgets. The authors suggest that IT departments should seek to a partner with their facilities counterparts at the very outset of any green IT initiative. “Then the savings on the facility side can help fund the move to green IT, including virtualization and consolidation efforts on blades.”