Virtualization has its share of difficulties. When a company decreases the number of server farms it has, it is often possible to see the immediate benefits in terms of price. At the same time, there may be potential problems that lie beneath the surface.
First off, it is still necessary for enterprises to handle the servers, and this will require you to make use of more workers and tools, and you will need to update your images whenever you are ready to add to the environment. Many enterprises choose virtualization precisely because it is capable of saving a great deal of money in terms of time and resources. But virtualization is not a magic bullet, and comes with challenges that must be addressed.
If enterprises are incapable of meeting these challenges, then it is very unlikely that their virtualization implementation will be a success. Many companies begin the process of virtualization without realizing that they are not sure exactly what their data centers contain, and this is an issue which is very similar to the Y2K scare that plagued some enterprises.
Another issue that can cause virtualization implementation to be challenging is a lack of co-operation that exists between the IT department, and the business department. Ultimately, the goal of any enterprise should be to use virtualization in a manner which enhances the experience of the end user.
More companies and organizations are taking the time to virtualize the IT assets that they have, and it will be necessary for them to take the time to ensure that both the business side and the IT side are moving in conjunction with one another.
If they are not, you will not obtain the economies of scale that you are supposed to get from virtualization, and this defeats the very purpose of having it. Once the IT systems have been successfully utilized, the business units will make a request to the servers, and this will be dependent on the priority of their application to the total business.
Overcome Virtualization Challenges
In order for the implementation of virtualization to occur properly, it will be necessary for the business units to ask for the servers which are most important. The IT deparment should be responsible for the allocation of the virtual servers via the server pool.
There may be situations in which the business unit must make use of a smaller amount of server space than is allocated, and in a case like this, rebates will be awarded. One of the most critical challenges that firms will face are costs which are unexpected. While every piece of virtualization has benefits, it also has risks as well.
If you make use of hypervisors for the purpose of system virtualization, it is possible for power to be saved through combining applications that normally would run on multiple servers, essentially compressing them into a single box that is capable of processing multiple virtual machines.
At the same time, this benefits does not come without a potential risk; if this single box fails, you will lose each virtual machine that is in it. Additionally, configuration will become harder, and the reason for this is because you will have a single physical machine that will need to access every bit of storage, and this includes all the networks that the virtual machines must access.
It is also very likely that there could be a much higher level of CPU overhead since the hypervisor is an OS, and it naturally takes up space on the CPU. It is also crucially important to make sure the right applications are virtualized.
Not every application is suitable for the purpose of virtualization, and even those applications which are must be approached in the proper manner. What this should clearly mean is that it will be necessary to pick the right tools from the vendors. If you have distinct software structures, and you are making use of numerous deployment techniques, it will be tough for developers to apply these techniques.
Selecting the Proper Applications for Virtualization
One thing which needs to be emphasized is that distinct applications should be deployed in different manners. If the application is light, they will need to be deployed for the virtual machine that runs in opposition to the other virtual machines for a box which is physical, and the heavier apps will need to be deployed within their own servers, and they can either run as a virtual machine or run along with the operating system. The applications which are quite heavy are known for being CPU intensive, and they are known for making many OS calls. Because of this, it is necessary for them to be placed on multiple servers.
Another problem that is quite common with virtualization is having one point of failure. This failure will often occur as a result of having a single physical machine which is responsible for dealing with the process of allocating servers in a dynamic way.
At the same time, there is a good chance that you may have an issue when it comes to storage. If you have a large number of instances for an application which is operating, the application may run a lot faster on multiple machines, but it may also run slower due to the number of calls that are made.
