1How to Get Started with Virtualization?

Have you decided to implement virtualization as to utilize your computer resources to the maximum as well as reducing overhead costs? You should not jump into a virtualization implementation until suitable expectations have meet your business requirements. Implementing technology for the sake of implementing would most likely be a losing investment.

Virutalization Analysis

You should begin with a proper virtualization analysis which includes the return on investment. You can use a free online tools like VMware ROI calculator. Virtualization is not only intended for large organizations with hundreds of servers or thousands of employees; but also for smaller organizations. The key is to know your requirements and have proper resources to succeed with virtual machines.

Though you do not know how to get started actually, you don’t have to fear because you can start on a small scale. Even though you wish to do server virtualization, you can start on your desktop if you are really new to this. In fact, when you do small tasks like web browsing or email reading, most of your computing resources go unexploited. Suppose, you wish to run an application which is not supported by your operating system, then you can easily set up a virtual machine on your computer itself which has the operating system required to run your application.

Always start virtualization in small scale. Never jump ahead by virtualizing critical business applications or database servers. This would really worse the condition especially if you are new to virtualization. You can also get advice from people who have real experience in adapting virtualization. When you apply virtualization for servers or critical applications, you should choose the best virtualization tool that meets your business needs.

Only thing you need to make sure before starting virtualization trial is that your computer should have enough configuration like RAM, CPU etc to fit virtual machine. Otherwise, it would affect the performance of your machine. There are many different products including VMware ESXi , Microsoft Hyper-V etc, which makes virtualization quicker and simpler. Most of them are available as completely free or trial versions on Internet. You can download and install any of them to try virtualization.

Virtualization Tools

There are many tools to forecast the hardware required to move a physical infrastructure into virtual platform. You can use VMware’s Capacity Planner for this purpose. Some tools even allow you to state your preferences and consider these during the forecasting process. Using both the result of the tools and your own experience at small scale virtualization, you can purchase hardware and software components required and complete the process or consider cloud computing.

Once you feel that virtualization could give your return on investment, you can proceed and setup the real environment whether it is for testing, server consolidation or research purposes. After completing a virtualization implementation, you should evaluate it continuously. You can check factors like availability, performance, networking, security, memory etc to know whether virtualization meets your needs or not. This will also make your familiar with virtual environment.

Even after virtualization, you have to be careful. You should be able to enjoy the benefits like efficient computing resource utilization and cost cutting. If you have done virtualization correctly, then you would be saving your valuable money and time and this would be a continuous process.