Virtual servers spread into cost-saving predators

The proliferation of virtual servers eliminates the cost-saving benefits that many IT organizations crave when applying server virtualization, said an IT professional who led the company's virtualization initiative.

Boeing computing infrastructure designer Jett Thompson says we are under great pressure to find ways to save money as much as possible. Virtualization has been one of the hottest topics since virtualization has found many of the benefits of cost savings.

Boeing has developed a cost model to determine the savings achieved through virtualization. This cost model takes into account server and storage LAN costs, operating system licenses, virtualization software and management tools, power and cooling, and labor costs.

Thompson did not disclose the exact numbers of Boeing at the Gartner Annual Data center presentation in Thursday. Instead, he introduced a hypothetical model in detail. The model is based on the approach he uses to determine Boeing's cost-saving approach.

In this model, an enterprise with 6000 physical servers uses ESX server software to increase the proportion of virtual servers from 15% to 75%. The enterprise has about 20 virtual servers configured on each host and can undo thousands of physical servers. This hypothetical enterprise will save $28 million in the five-year period of application virtualization.

However, Thompson says all these savings will disappear without controlling the spread of virtual servers. Because virtual servers are easy to configure, users may require a greater number of new virtualization and exceed the level that it can control.

' without demand management and good governance, you're actually going to make your company pay a lot of money, ' says Thompson. Virtual server sprawl will eliminate any savings in funding.

Gartner analyst Thomas Bittman says companies should be taught to control the spread of virtual machines. Virtual server sprawl is more difficult to measure than physical server sprawl. We basically think that the spread of virtualization is more serious than the physical spread of the problem.

In the cost model that Thompson assumes, server demand growth of 50% will make the virtualization project unprofitable. This additional requirement will increase labor costs, storage requirements, and allow you to retain additional physical servers.

According to your business needs, the benefits to end users will make this cost acceptable, Thompson said. However, it is important to consider the full impact of virtualization on the datacenter.

Virtualization should save the system administrator's labor, hardware maintenance, and power and cooling costs. Storing LAN storage and migrating from physical to virtual environments can increase costs. However, if you can control the spread, virtualization is worthwhile from an investment perspective. From a cost standpoint, it's easy to prove that virtualization is reasonable.