The trend of datacenter migration, server virtualization

With datacenter migration, many organizations and companies have adopted virtualization priority policies that require all new applications to run in a virtual environment.However, migrating traditional legacy applications to a virtualized environment is quite another matter.

While the industry is increasingly focused on technology and the benefits IT can bring to the organization's bottom line, a recent Spiceworks survey finds that spending on IT budgets has stalled.Companies are also failing to keep up with the demand for new technology.As a result of these trends, enterprise IT staff are constantly being asked to complete more tasks with less money.
The inevitable consequence of flat corporate IT budgets and reduced corporate IT staffing is that the priorities of projects involving traditional applications are reduced.Indeed, newly developed applications can run on virtual servers and are governed by virtualization priorities.But, as in, "if it's not broken, don't get busy trying to fix it."As the saying goes: because businesses lack the costs of pushing devices to achieve natural obsolescence (EOL), they often don't have the IT budget to move applications from traditional physical servers to virtual servers.
For most enterprise organizations, regardless of their size, mixed IT environments containing virtual and physical servers are now being processed.This is not an ideal situation in any case.The mixed environment complicates almost every aspect of server management.It reduces the productivity of administrators, increases the cost of management tools, decentralizes knowledge of management tools among administrators, and can lead to a significant reduction in application availability and data integrity.
Why deploy virtualization?
So why is there so much debate around deployment of virtualization?Why are IT organizations so obsessed with this technology?
1. Reduce capital expenditure
Deploying virtualization enables physical servers to host multiple virtual servers.It also provides the ability to easily migrate virtual servers between different physical servers to balance the need for resources.Physical servers running virtualized software can often run at more than 80 percent of their rated capacity.Integrating business applications into a single physical server, each of which has its own separate operating environment, can significantly reduce the number of physical servers in an enterprise data center.With fewer physical servers, IT organizations can further reduce capital expenditure, freeing up that money for other business divisions of the organization and increasing revenues.There are, of course, many other benefits.
2. Reduce operating expenses
Reducing the number of physical servers in data centers would also help corporate data centers save energy costs, and carbon emissions are an important consideration for corporate data center investors and shareholders to track metrics of concern.Also, it enables data centers to host more applications, which is a key factor in making data center real estate more valuable.
From a management perspective, it is much easier to configure and split virtual machines.If an application needs a new server, the administrator can configure the virtual machine much faster than the physical server.This typically reduces configuration time from weeks to hours or less, helping to develop applications quickly.
Virtual machines are also easier to manage than physical objects.A virtualized administrator can manage more machines instead of just a few physical devices.This helps improve the efficiency of administrators and alleviates the staffing problem in enterprise data centers.
Disadvantages of virtualization
Of course, virtualization technology also has its disadvantages.Not all business applications are suitable for running on a virtual server.While deploying virtualization can help businesses save money, the technology can also lead to increased spending in some other areas.As with many technologies, the rash use of the technology without sufficient knowledge of it may exacerbate problems that were originally intended to be solved with it.
Not everything can be virtualized
Virtualization is not the best choice for all applications.Applications that are very performance-sensitive may not be appropriate.These applications are unlikely to tolerate sharing physical resources with other applications, and the overhead of running a hypervisor on the same hardware may not be welcomed by enterprise customers.
There are various applications that require their servers to have physical attachments, and such applications often have unique drivers.Although virtual hypervisor software attracts most application use cases, it does not usually support these unusual applications.
Not all applications can be virtualized.For some applications, there may be license agreements that prevent virtualization.It can also be complex for some other applications.
Many enterprise organizations use old, traditional applications that are critical to the enterprise's key business, but have become so complex over many years of upgrades and changes that it is too risky to move them to a virtual platform.
2. Cost increase
The cost of the associated components may affect the deployment of virtualization technologies by enterprise customers.Although virtualization can help companies reduce operating costs over the long term, there are upfront investment costs associated with implementing the technology.
The host server used to run each virtual manager must be able to support the performance requirements of all virtual servers.These servers may cost more than the physical servers they replace.
Given the variety of tools available on the market today, many of which are provided by virtual hypervisor vendors, server and network administrators for enterprise customers must be trained in virtualization technology.
3. Server spread
Ironically, the problem of server sprawl that virtualization promises to solve is actually often exacerbated by the deployment of virtual machines.
When an enterprise data center deploys a server without fully understanding the impact it will have, server sprawl becomes an important issue for the data center.This often results in a data center filled with server hardware that needs to consume valuable energy and footprint over time, but is not fully utilized.
Server virtualization solves this problem.Integrating many physical servers on a single virtual server can ease energy and space constraints.However, the ease of configuring a virtual machine can lead to excessive server sprawl.
4. Single point of failure
Finally, an obvious drawback to server virtualization is that hosting multiple virtual servers on one piece of hardware has the potential to cause a single point of failure.If the physical server running the hypervisor fails, all applications running on the hypervisor managed virtual machine will be unavailable.
New data protection methods are needed to ensure data availability and data integrity in a virtual server environment.While many virtualized deployments rely on existing data protection technologies, the assumption is that a solution that works for a physical server will work for the virtual server as well, but in fact, the virtualization infrastructure presents a corresponding challenge.This is not just because the operational environments of enterprise data centers are unlikely to be entirely virtualized.