Significant benefits can be gained with
wide-scale virtualization. Holistic virtualization is the next step in the evolution. It is imperative to have a strategy to pull
everything together for best results.
According to Jaymes Davis, virtualization
practice specialist at Entisys, “The most
important thing about VOA methodology is
that it is a new, trademarked methodology
that is sweeping the industry as the de facto
standard for building virtualization architecture. It is time to consider what it can do for
you and your company.”
Smart Business talked with Davis for his
insight into holistic virtualization.
What is holistic virtualization?
It is defining solutions and architectures
within your environment to work with virtualization technologies. A methodology has
been created for transitioning and adapting
to the virtualized workload. We have found
that holistic virtualization has become the
mindset in today’s market around solutions
that integrate everything from hardware,
software and applications because of its benefits. Prior to this point, people believed certain workloads would not work in this space,
and we are finding that this is not the case.
What’s the VOA methodology?
VOA is the virtualization-oriented architecture. It is a methodology that has been defined to create an assessment that captures
the logical definition of your existing environments, i.e. processes, inventory, forecasting, architecture design and implementation
planning. The VOA identifies soft costs and
hard costs when you are thinking about consolidation, new services, business continuity
planning or disaster recovery. It is a holistic
view of virtualization that employs the virtualization ecosystem to ascertain a strategy
versus utilizing it as a tactical solution.
Why this methodology? How was it created?
The VOA methodology was created by the
deployments and implementations for SMB
to enterprise customers and finding processes and logic structures as well as information
architectures that helped create the stepping-stones for this process. When aggregating the
data, we found that certain subsets of logic
indicators played out in all the scenarios, i.e.
VM sprawl, forecasting host scalability as
well as defining architecture and processes,
which allowed us to create and base the VOA
methodology on an ITIL format with an
emphasis on performance and perception.
Why should people move to virtualization?
From desktop users to managers of data
center infrastructure, people move to virtualization for a number of reasons. The main
reason is to create new service capabilities
within their own environment and to create
time to market improvement of their business. Another reason is consolidation and
disaster recovery (business continuity planning). New opportunities for virtualization
have been found in desktops with VDI architectures, providing more cost savings, mobility and stability scenarios than ever.
How can a virtualized company benefit from
the VOA methodology?
Existing virtualized companies can benefit
from the VOA methodology through the
evolved assessments, the VOA foundation services and the VOA comprehensive assessments. These expanded services were created to further adoption of the new technologies and service methodologies for your
existing environment. If you don’t have an
ITIL-based change management or a service
delivery model for your virtualization platform as well as chargeback, these expanded
methodologies are for you.
With so many different virtualization platforms, how do you choose?
It is important to provide a choice for customers after defining the logical structure
and requirements within an organization.
This helps create solution architectures and
scenarios with most hypervisors and hardware configurations while embracing
CAPEX and OPEX before defining a strategy
for a company. Because there are so many
choices and virtualization has such a big
ecosystem, it is important to make sure that
the solution presented is customized to fit
those variables.
Are there workloads that can’t be virtualized?
How does that tie into holistic virtualization?
There are workloads that can’t be virtualized but can still benefit from virtualization-oriented architecture. Nonvirtualized workloads can utilize tools from third-party vendors as well as platform supportability to
augment its capability to participate.
Virtualization can play a part in disaster
recovery for the nonvirtualized workload at a
reduced capacity or a service replacement
once identified.
How long does a VOA assessment take and
what is the cost?
VOA assessments for Phase I take approximately two weeks. The latest virtualization
appliance technologies, project implementers and project engagement services are
utilized to fulfill Phase I assessments with
speed and accuracy. Cost varies based on the
server count, but the return on investment
and savings can be staggering.
JAYMES DAVIS is virtualization practice manager for Entisys Solutions. Reach him at (925) 270-8230 or [email protected].
