Virtualisation; I don’t get it
It seems that in the local industry (Melbourne, Australia) that businesses just don’t get virtualisation.
At the cessation of another job, I am beginning to wonder if this virtualisation thing will ever catch on. Or maybe I’m too far ahead of the curve and waiting for it to catch up.
Let’s start with the benefits;
- no reliance on physical infrastructure
- Rapid provisioning of both servers and desktops (VDI)
- Fault tolerance and, if I want it, automated load balancing
- Cost savings in the datacentre because I’m not taking up as much space with hardware that needs to be maintained and replaced as often
The disadvantages are far outweighed by the benefits. It does cost to put in a virtual infrastructure; primarily the storage. Fibre channel is still “king” in the storage stakes, however, advances in ethernet technologies and a bit of planning in the implementation phase mean that iSCSI is a viable competitor (http://invurted.com/iscsi-vs-fibre-channel-storage-performance/). Of course, there are training considerations. Thankfully, the virtualisation platform is largely “fire and forget” technology. So apart from some familiarity with my chosen platform, there is little reason to touch it post-implementation.
Maybe I’m missing the point somewhere …
