Gary Parker

Gary Parker discusses virtualization trends and what to consider before deploying a data protection solution in your virtual environment.

Gary Parker

 In today’s green-IT world, enterprises are looking for new strategies to help them reduce energy usage, costs and space. To achieve this goal, many businesses have moved from physical storage units to virtualized environments.  As the cost of data protection has reduced significantly because of virtual machines, administrators are often faced with the added layers and complexities brought by their growing virtual data centers.  Achieving adequate data protection for individual or groups of virtual machines can be a complex process.  The following guidelines can help IT administrators reliably meet their data protection goals in virtualized environments with greater flexibility. 

1. Protect VCB and ESX servers without complex scripting
2. Consolidate your data across various data center sites and operating systems
3. Restore complete virtual machine or individual files with granular control
4. Protect virtualized data offsite through automatic integration
5. Streamline software development to reduce costs and save space

Gary Parker

It  is rare to run across anyone today who has not experienced virtualization on some level. You can virtually attend a seminar online, play a video game against your friend in another state and create an avatar to enter a computer playground. The technology creates new opportunities and broadens possibilities. This is no less substantial in the computer industry. Virtualization enables multiple environments to share resources from a single source, which delivers countless benefits to organizations, including reduced IT costs, more accessible data, improved disaster recovery and faster software development  as well as a better managed IT environment.

Storage and Server Virtualization Needs

When it comes to backing up these virtual environments, companies should look for a solution that can easily and quickly backup, recover and manage virtual environments with the least possible impact on storage staff. These products should simplify the process and lead to more efficient storage administration that enables staff to see both virtual and physical servers from the same console. Administrators should be able to set backup policies and restore data without VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) expertise. This is especially important because of the growing dependency many companies have on VMware technology.

The Future of Virtualization

Virtualization, like most technologies is continuously shifting. According to IDC’s Quarterly Server Virtualization Tracker, worldwide virtualization license shipment increased 53 percent year over year the second quarter of 2008, compared to a 72 percent year-over-year increase the previous quarter. “Quarterly totals of x86 server virtualization licenses continue to experience healthy growth, although the growth rates have slowed over the last four quarters,” said Brett Waldman, research analyst for System Software at IDC. “Based on our conversations with end users, IDC believes the high-volume consolidation opportunities—the long-hanging fruit in the x86 server virtualization market—is starting to dry up. This is, in turn, resulting in smaller deals overall. The virtualization platform providers are going to have to adapt their go-to market strategies as new growth opportunities open up around new deployment of virtualized servers not specifically targeted at consolidation and at new customer segment, such as midsized companies.”

Companies need to stay on top of the virtualization trend not only with enhanced product capabilities but also by working closely with VMware and other virtualization vendors to make sure their customers receive the support they need. Technology will always evolve, it is crucial to keep up with the times.