Compute Power + Virtualization = Revolution

I've jumped on the virtualization bandwagon. My team now uses macs and vmware fusion. We're virtualizing all IT systems we can.

What we're virtualizing:

• OS's: windows, solaris x86, linux
• Applications: Oracle for development, IIS/ASP, Filemaker Pro, Operations management tools virtual center and Netapp DFM
• Virtualization technology used: VMware ESX/Infrastructure
• Features to use next: capacity planning
• Favorite new feature: storage vmotion - we change what storage is behind a virtual server instance on the fly, live!

Benefits:

• Unified HA: for an IT shop with a bunch of stuff with no HA solution, and 15 things with 15 ways to fail over, we unify the HA capabilities of our infrastructure, using the same HA metholodology across the board.
• Capacity utilization: Our IT infrastructure was very lumpy in how much servers were utilized. Now we can pack in virtual instances until utilization is high across the board. VMware DRS keeps us from having over-utilization problems.

Where do we not use it:

• Where we need a direct piece of external hardware: currently backup tape libraries
• Where we want a server separate from our infrastructure: some monitoring server instances
• Where vendors tell us not to (production Oracle, some other software...)