{"id":869,"date":"2011-04-18T14:33:29","date_gmt":"2011-04-18T18:33:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antipaucity.com\/?p=869"},"modified":"2011-04-18T14:33:29","modified_gmt":"2011-04-18T18:33:29","slug":"virtualization-myth-reduction-of-servers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=869","title":{"rendered":"virtualization myth &#8211; reduction of servers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\">Ars Technica<\/a> has had a great series of articles recently on virtualization (<a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/business\/raising-your-tech-iq\/2011\/02\/virtualization-in-the-trenches-with-vmware-part-1-basics-and-benefits.ars\">1<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/business\/raising-your-tech-iq\/2011\/02\/storage-networking-and-blades-virtualization-hardware-choices.ars\">2<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/business\/raising-your-tech-iq\/2011\/03\/networking-and-virtualization-in-the-enterprise.ars\">3<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/business\/guides\/2011\/03\/performance-tuning-your-virtualized-enterprise-setup.ars\">4<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/business\/guides\/2011\/04\/physical-to-virtual-conversion-in-the-enterprise.ars\">5<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>But a statement made in part 5 repeated what has been too-often stated as a benefit of virtualization: the reduction of servers, and associated management tasks &#8211;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The benefits of performing a large-scale P2V conversion are pretty clear: server consolidation leading to reduced space and power usage and decreased heat output; easier centralized management; new redundancy and {{high-availability}} options (including the ability to restore or clone entire VMs at a time); and the opportunity to rebuild the OS of legacy systems, to just name a few. It is very possible to consolidate even a dozen racks&#8217; worth of servers into a single rack, or just two blade chassises. With gains like that, it is no wonder that virtualization is quickly becoming entrenched in the enterprise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Virtualization does <em><strong>NOT<\/strong><\/em> guarantee reduction of servers and management tasks &#8211; it can enable the reduction of <em>physical<\/em> servers in the infrastructure, but because of the ease of spinning-up a new server for testing,\u00a0development, or just &#8220;because&#8221;, virtualization has actually lead to a proliferation of servers on the network when they would not have been previously feasible.<\/p>\n<p>If build time is 10 minutes for a VM (typical in environments I have seen\/used), then any time someone needs\/wants a new server, it can be ready in a few minutes. That&#8217;s amazing. The problem is that when it is no longer needed, it needs to be powered-down and have its assigned resources returned to the pool. Sadly, this rarely happens.<\/p>\n<p>There are indeed tools that can help enable this (I was recently trained on one such tool (and, I think, it&#8217;s the single best option for the job)), but out-of-the-box, {{virtualization}} doesn&#8217;t help\u00a0anything\u00a0except to reduce the physical footprint of the data center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ars Technica has had a great series of articles recently on virtualization (1 2 3 4 5). But a statement made in part 5 repeated what has been too-often stated as a benefit of virtualization: the reduction of servers, and associated management tasks &#8211; The benefits of performing a large-scale P2V conversion are pretty clear: &hellip;<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/?p=869\" class=\"more-link pen_button pen_element_default pen_icon_arrow_double\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">virtualization myth &#8211; reduction of servers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,34,41],"tags":[],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-quote","category-technical"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=869"},{"taxonomy":"keyring_services","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/merikebi.warrenmyers.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkeyring_services&post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}