One of the hottest topics in the IT industry today is the uses and benefits of virtualization technologies to consolidate infrastructures and reduce total cost of ownership.  However, many server administrators today are reluctant to take the plunge due to the risk and the unknowns that virtualization can bring. 

Low risk migration to virtualization
The fundamental aim of virtualization is to enable server consolidation and containment by running software applications on fewer servers.  This delivers immediate benefits by increasing server room space and decreasing pressures on energy consumption, as well as costs.  Virtualization allows for the most efficient use of hardware resources and development operations to quickly provision test systems for a variety of combined operating systems and software platforms.

Going virtual doesn’t have to be risky.  Using a high availability technology model that supports both physical and virtual machines can provide the safety and security needed to migrate from physical to virtual.  Setting up an active and a passive server pair for high availability with the active as the current physical server and the passive as a new virtual server allows for seamless migration between the two environments.  Once tested, the scenario can be reversed to have the active server be the virtual and the passive be the physical, thus enabling a risk free migration.  Taking this approach means that if an unforeseen issue arises in the virtual environment, the passive physical server is brought back online and the users remain seamlessly connected to their application.  To complete the migration to virtual, the physical passive servers can be migrated to virtual machines on separate host servers, which continues to reduce the total cost of ownership, while still maintaining continuous availability.

Continuous availability defined
Not all ‘high availability’ solutions provide the ‘continuous availability’ needed to support both migration and mission critical applications.  True continuous availability of business critical applications requires a solution that ensures business is not disrupted by IT outages, and users are kept seamlessly and transparently connected to critical applications.  Continuous availability solutions address continuity across all possible forms of outage.

The reasons for outages vary and can include unforeseen compatibility issues with virtualized environments.  It’s a fact of life that IT outages will happen, and a critical goal should be that when an outage occurs, it should not result in business disruption and downtime – end users should simply continue operating as if nothing has happened, thus delivering on the promise of consistent business performance.

Virtualization and potential risks to continuous availability
The fundamental design of running multiple, virtual servers within a single, physical host system, inherently introduces new IT risks.  By consolidating multiple servers that perform a variety of business critical functions onto a single host system, availability of that system becomes a significant risk point.  There have been huge steps to mitigate these risks with high availability and business continuity products to protect the platforms on which virtualized applications run.

Implementing a continuous availability solution can help ensure that the transition from physical to virtual is a seamless one that provides positive outcomes, rather than adding more risk.

For more information on the Neverfail Group, visit their web site at http://www.neverfailgroup.com.

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