FEATURE

Virtualization reality check
By Robert Mullins

Mike Williams considered his virtualization project a success after consolidating 17 U.S. datacenters into three. But then the traffic jams started. 

As CIO of the U.S. Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA), which monitors work on military contracts, Williams had a problem on his hands. Consolidating all those datacenters without reconfiguring the WAN was like consolidating 17 cities into three without widening the freeways.

"It is important to make sure to optimize the WAN. We actually didn't," Williams says. "All of a sudden the speed of light is not so fast anymore."

Williams' story is one of many cautionary tales surrounding early virtualization efforts. Although virtualization promises cost-saving optimization of datacenter resources, the path to that payoff is littered with hazards.

Not just network configuration, but software licensing, security, and systems management are all potential pitfalls, say industry experts and enterprises that have gone virtual. And people issues can be more troublesome than technical ones if the corporate culture resists virtualization.

Read the full article here.
http://utilitycomputing.itworld.com/4824/070309virtualizations/page_1.html

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