The Hidden Costs Of Virtualization (Part One Of Three)

Thursday, 28 September 2006 by Michel Roth

This excellent article on SearchServerVirtualization.com by David Marshall and Dan Knezevic discuss the "hidden costs" of virtualization: In the rush to consolidate servers and save precious data center space, many companies are turning to virtualization. By consolidating a data center's physical servers into virtualized servers, the enterprise can experience higher server utilization and increased operational efficiency.

"Although virtualization brings lots of benefits and features, it is important to keep in mind that virtualization is not the Holy Grail and may not be appropriate for every situation or environment. It does come with some drawbacks. These drawbacks may not be deal breakers, but you should be aware of them before you adopt the technology. In this column, we will look at several key issues that can cause problems in a virtualization adoption."

"Part one will discuss the power and heat costs and the management concerns of virtualization. Part two will discuss networking issues and the problem of virtual machine sprawl. Finally, part three will discuss licensing, performance and storage."

Check out part 1 here.