It's been an article of faith that virtualisation will help save the enterprise money, turning it into one of the few growth areas in the recession. But, some companies are starting to take a hard look at the numbers and are concluding that the ROI on virtualisation may not be all it's cracked up to be.
While server virtualisation has come to embody many of the most innovative capabilities in today's IT infrastructures, the technologies are still evolving.
Over the past few years, there has been a seemingly never-ending charge of new hypervisors into the market, and each newcomer comes with its own architectural approach and set of performance characteristics. Yet architecture isn't the entire story, says Hubert Wentzel, Divisional Director at EOH. “Just as there are differences in hypervisor efficiency, there are also significant differences in management software efficiency. Taken together, total differences in efficiency - including how well a hypervisor solution makes use of supporting hardware and licensing - will drive the overall cost of a server virtualisation solution.”
Wentzel feels that virtualisation customers are faced with a complex set of tradeoffs in evaluating virtual server infrastructures, along with a landslide of marketing noise that makes assessing true cost seem like a wild goose chase. “In recent years, virtualisation vendors have confused the marketplace by introducing 'free' hypervisors, surrounded by claims that they are cost leaders, while focusing little attention on performance and management. Other vendors have claimed that the choice of hypervisor is irrelevant. All of this has muddied the waters for IT buyers,” he says.
Wentzel adds that as you move further down the enterprise food chain, the return from virtualisation diminishes, to the point where it may end up costing you more than a straight physical infrastructure. “How you use your virtual environment can have major consequences on the bottom line. Unchecked virtual sprawl will most certainly eat away at any savings from consolidation, due to the increased need for management, storage and even physical servers to keep idle or underused virtual ones in play.”
However, he says that while financial considerations may be paramount for virtualisation in the short term, this is a long-term technological shift under consideration. “Even if virtualisation does not produce stellar ROI, or even ends up costing you money, it is still a worthy investment toward a more flexible, dynamic infrastructure.”
Server virtualisation has become the starting point for businesses embarking on a 'green' data centre strategy, Wentzel points out. “Server and storage virtualisation should be key components to any green IT strategy. Both deliver significant energy and cooling cost savings through consolidation of resources. A virtualised infrastructure therefore provides cost savings on a number of levels.”
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