Considering moving to virtualization and SAN versus traditional add a server model.
Any feedback is welcome, but I am looking for high quality whitepapers to back it.
Clarification added 9 months ago:
High quality whitepapers means not VENDOR sponsored. It has nothing to do with any lack of respect toward people's experiences. I would very much appreciate any responses as they are typically more inciteful. However, the decision makers I must present to are going to want to see some numbers which time does not permit me to do a proper research study of. LinkedIn started as a great place for honest, peer review type information, but has become a breeding ground for marketing spiels and over-aggressive headhunting.
Also, our datacenter is hosted by an Availability Services vendor that offers Management Services which might decide that this is the right approach, but we manage the architecture ourselves to save costs. Moving to a more robust system such as this does increase their fees, so naturally, I'm skeptical of going to them for input.
Answers (4)
Mel B
Senior UNIX Systems Administrator and Engineer
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Both approaches has its advantages and disadvantages. Since you are looking for "high quality whiteapers", I am not going into detail of what these are. I am sure, as a consultant, you are capable of performing an effective google search as the information you are looking for is not so obscure.
Tim T
IS Manager at Airgas
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Virtualization is NOT a panacea (unless you are the one selling the services). It has pros and cons that may or may not fit your environment. Know what your pressure points are and compare that to the tons of information out there.
Keep the sales people OUT until you know you want to buy. It's a very easy product to sell even when it's not the right product to buy.
As has been stated before, approach this as a technical problem, not a sales problem. Companies selling virtualization technology (VMWare) will tell you that vm's are the end all be all, but that's not necessarily the case. VMWare does publish some whitepapers, but remember those are coming from a vendor, and should be weighed carefully. We are partially virtualized in my current organization, and it does have some nice flexibility on hardware, but without a significant capital investment (from the start), it's near impossible to get all the benefits regarding failover/redundancy/etc.
Chris M
Account Executive at HostMySite.com
Best Answers in: Enterprise Software (1), Information Storage (1)
The best solution I have run into in my personal experience is equallogic if virtualization and SAN storage is the way you decide to go. It's really scalable and very easy to learn. That's my two cents.
