How can we gradually implement server virtualization technology? (1)

Server virtualization technology is implemented to reduce the physical infrastructure and save space and money.

Virtualization Technology is a good way to use physical servers more efficiently and effectively. You can also integrate existing servers to save space and money for the data center. However, the methods for implementing server virtualization technology are both correct and incorrect, and the current methods may not be suitable for every company.

Just like using any technology, you should try your best to have a full and in-depth understanding of virtualization technology so that administrators and employees can know how to use it most effectively. This article describes how to implement server virtualization and How to Make server virtualization a necessary part of the data center in the next few years.

Understand the hardware and software required for Virtualization

Once you are ready to implement virtualization, make sure that the appropriate number of infrastructures that meet your requirements are deployed. Duan van der Westhuizen, product line director of Rackspace's VMware private cloud, said: "virtualization technology requires a physical bare metal server as a platform, and then the hypervisor is mounted to the platform. The Virtual Machine hypervisor layer is a key system that allows you to extract virtual layers from the physical layer and allocate resources such as memory and processor from the physical host to various virtual machines running on the server."

Choosing a solution installed on this physical server depends on the type of virtualization technology you want to use. For example, some companies may only want to virtualize their storage systems for backup or disaster recovery, while others may want to build virtual machines to run applications from a virtualized environment. It is important to have the best combination of software and hardware to make full use of the benefits of virtualization technology.

Recognize possible challenges and know how to overcome them

Virtualization brings many challenges. After you deploy a suitable software and hardware system, you must ensure that the implemented solution allows you to know whether the virtualization technology is correctly used and whether the best performance is achieved. Virtualization environment management and monitoring tools are a good way to avoid problems such as virtual machine scattering. According to van der Westhuizen, virtual machines are scattered, because there are too many virtual machines on one server, and the Administrator "cannot track all virtual machines", resulting in more physical resources. However, in some cases, research and education are the best solutions.

Van der Westhuizen said: "One way to overcome this challenge is to strengthen user education, especially when many departments can create their own virtual machines as needed. Monitoring tools that indicate the usage of virtual machines can find old and underutilized virtual machines. These virtual machines can be turned off. The fee sharing platform can allocate virtual machine costs to the department where virtual machines are created. This not only reduces unnecessary virtual machines, but also increases the awareness that virtual machines cannot be created at will ."

Select an appropriate application for Virtualization

Next, you need to determine which applications you want to migrate to the virtualization environment. Van der Westhuizen said: "companies should analyze and confirm which workloads are suitable for virtualization processing. Unfortunately, not every application is suitable or can run on a virtualized server. For example, some third-party applications and legacy applications that are not permitted to run in a virtualized environment are not suitable at all ."

The solution you deploy should solve storage and performance problems. However, if you do not virtualize the appropriate application, you may not see the expected results.