Virtualization Automation – A Proper Virtual World

Does Your Virtualization Plan Have The Word Tactical or Strategic Stamped On It?

February 4th, 2009

Know What Virtualization Is, But What Is Next – Chapter 15

As some of you may know, from reading this blog, I tend to be rather critical of virtualization implementations that are, well, what is the correct term… Slipshod? Consider the following scenario, if you would… Major company implements virtualization, same company saves a lot of costs upfront, less hardware purchased, less shared storage allocated (that can not be leveraged by virtualization better), better utilization of resources geographically, both human and machine. Elimination of cost, or avoidance of cost are the new buzz words around the management water cooler. Maybe even a few nice bonuses happened to float down to the dark shadows in the trenches, where the real work is done, the last few years. But senior management is already focused on utility computing, or cloud computing, they see virtualization as just another platform to be leveraged, the era of the floating datacenter is upon us! So what happens? Reduction of staff with incomplete planning, transfer of knowledge is weak, new personal that have no real experience or understanding of virtualization, which is a very complex animal, are now forced into a technology that is more demanding and harder to deal with, yes, virtualization is not easy to support nor manage. If you don’t understand this, you don’t really know virtualization.

Think this is not possible? Look again, I suspect it is already happening or, yuck, happened to you already, in your organization. Life cycle management is the big deal, right now, but is not the true specter, what is the true shadow over virtualization, in a strategic sense; it is how easy management sees virtualization as a commodity, a cog, and nothing more. Meaning management thinks, virtualization is like a simple operating system, the classic… been there, done that, ignorance. They forget that virtualization is a strategic platform, that it must be implemented well, supported well, designed well, and most important, planned for very well. This is easy to forget when considering cloud computing. Still think this is not happening to you? Even VMware has prompted this, in their rush to make cloud computing the new wave of profitability, to starve off Hyper-V. ESXi as a free component is worthless, if you don’t purchase all the toys! The name convention VMware just now adopted, says it all, vSphere, including vNetwork, vStorage, and vCenter. VMware is thinking strategic not tactical, true, but is your respective information technology management forgetting that virtualization is a true and significant increase in complexity? Strategic planning ignores the details, tactical planning and implementation tends to ignore the big picture, so which is it that you are struggling with in your organization? If not both?

Several years go, with my clients I started talking about a task-force mind-set, cross discipline technical teams, where storage, network, and operating system teams must integrate and have a common command structure, to prioritize goals. From a strategic perspective this makes obvious sense. But at a tactical level, it is expensive, because you are dedicating personnel, often your brightest and best skilled and talented people, to focus only on virtualization infrastructure. The devil in the details, tactical objectives, to support the strategic opportunity, thus be prepared for things like VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), VMware Fault-Tolerance (FT), better leveraging of VMware High-Availability (HA) and VMware Dynamic Resource Sharing (DRS), which at the time where about two (2) or so years in the future!

Was I successful? No. Nor were others I know. A peer of mine, in a different firm, but one that I am on good speaking terms with, that has also looked at virtualization from a strategic perspective, but only seen tactical implementation efforts, said to me just yesterday… Why don’t we have an enhanced storage infrastructure? Why don’t we use HA and DRS better, why don’t we have everything in place to use SRM today? I replied, well, everyone wanted to do it, but we never got funding, and migrating physical-to-virtual (P2V) was where all the cost savings has been, or straight-to-virtualization (S2V). So, it just never happened in the last four (4) years. First, the technology was not there to allow for it, so for two (2) years, we have waited for the technology to appear, well, for the integration of technologies to be fair. For the last two (2) years, we have just enjoyed the cost savings, ignoring the strategic advantage. Yes, the tactical cost savings should have supported as a funding initiative the infrastructure enhancements required to prepare for the new toys, no doubt. His reply was, and accurate I think… Great, so now with the economic issues we have today, we have no options, on strategic infrastructure, nothing in place to let us use the greater, if not best, features of virtualization, yet invented? What a slipshod plan.

I could do nothing but smile. I saw this coming more than three (3) years ago. My management and his, agreed, something should be done, we were right, but neither management structure acted, as the savings rolled in, as millions were saved, nothing was channeled to the future needs of virtualization. Our respective plans were stamped tactical, not strategic. So, given the economic down-turn, right now, when we really need to save more, than ever before, and the tools to allow for this are there, they now exist, to make even greater savings possible! Are any of us in a position to do so? Did we have strategic plans that were several years forward looking? No, well, only on paper, since no one wanted to invest in the future? So I ask you, again, is your virtualization plan stamped tactical or strategic?

Entry Filed under: A Proper Virtual World