Feature: hot tips for virtualisation

Buying as much server memory and processor power as you can afford is a good way to avoid performance issues in the first place, says the RCP’s Venning. “The network traffic between the server and the client is often tiny – ­ it is the traffic between the servers that is high,” he says.

Colfescu says firms do not necessarily have to install new servers to handle virtualisation, depending on what they have already and how it fits alongside the virtualisation software licensing requirements.

“Everything can be re-used ­ – the network, servers, network interface cards ­ – but a lot comes down to the product you select because some are licensed by socket, some by core, and some per server,” he says.

Colfescu says companies interested in virtualising their infrastructure for the first time should make optimum use of capacity planning software, either those supplied by the virtualisation vendors themselves or third-party products.

“The figures come out slightly different with each one and might tell you that you need ‘x’ amount of servers for a particular task, but it is still worth using them,” he says.

Server virtualisation options

VMware
VMware has quickly grown to dominate the server virtualisation market. It now claims to have more than 120,000 paying enterprise customers around the world. VMware offers a range of server and desktop virtualisation tools, along with management tools.

Microsoft
Microsoft only came to market with a viable server virtualisation solution, Hyper-V, as part of its Windows Server 2008 release earlier this year. The management aspect of Hyper-V is handled by the latest version of Microsoft’s Systems Center systems management
software.

Xen
Xen is an open-source software virtualisation hypervisor first released under general public licence in 2003. It has been integrated into various open-source products including the Novell distribution of Suse Linux Enterprise Server and Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux 5. The firm XenSource sells management products around the Xen hypervisor, and was acquired by thin client veteran Citrix. Citrix’s XenServer 5 product is now based on what was previously XenSource’s XenEnterprise product.

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