Server Virtualization

One of the opportunities that TBI consultants are skilled at identifying is the optimization of your company’s existing resources. For example, when it comes to servers, many of these sometimes expensive machines are often vastly underutilized because each server is assigned to only one application or task and processing capacity is left untapped.

According to recent studies, some servers never exceed 6 percent utilization. Call it uni-tasking. And call it expensive, inefficient and outdated.

With the use of new VM (virtual machine) software, your servers can be “virtualized” to become multi-taskers. One physical server—or many—divided into multiple virtual environments can have a significant and positive impact on your IT budget and productivity.

During step one of TBI’s three-step approach, our team will evaluate your servers and determine whether server virtualization would be appropriate. If so, during implementation (step two) we will guide your staff through the process of identifying and utilizing the correct VM software for your specific business needs.

Operational Readiness Assessment For Virtualization

Solution Snapshot

This solution will assess your organization's ability to successfully integrate and operate platform (server and/or desktop) virtualization technologies across the enterprise. The assessment offers many benefits such as helping your organization understand the true impact and cost of adoption. The solution also offers an optional Remediation Phase to assist in closing the operational gaps found in the Assessment Phase. This service can be performed both prior to large scale deployment of platform virtualization or used to restart a virtualization initiative that halted due to the operational gaps that were encountered during adoption.

OBJECTIVE

Plainly stated, the purpose of the Operational Readiness for Platform Virtualization solution is to ensure that an organization can fully adopt, integrate and manage virtual hosts and guests across the entire IT ecosystem at a level that meets or exceeds its current operational capabilities used to support the existing, traditional physical environment. To do so requires a comprehensive examination of the entire IT environment to root out those areas that will be impacted by virtualization, define a mitigation plan and to execute that plan until the environment is operationally ready to support the new technology.

BACKGROUND

The industry is abuzz with the benefits that server virtualization delivers to IT. You perform a POC implementation, capture workload utilization metrics, generate a consolidation plan and produce TCO and ROI numbers. So far so good; you're ready to deploy server virtualization across the enterprise. But things start to unravel early in the process due to incompatibilities between server virtualization technologies and IT operation. Required management tools do not function. Appropriate skill sets are not in place. Established procedures aren’t compatible. Soon the deployment grinds to a halt due to an inability to effectively support it or an inability to make it comply with corporate standards.

Does the scenario described above sound familiar? It represents a common occurrence in organizations attempting to adopt platform virtualization, especially in the Production environment where the technology is subjected to well established processes, policies and the tools that enable them. The Operational Readiness for Platform Virtualization solution is designed to overcome the challenges organizations face with integrating virtualization into daily operations.

THE TBI APPROACH

Whether referring to servers or desktops, platform virtualization is a transformative approach to delivering, controlling and managing compute resources. Its impact on an organization's IT ecosystem and the ability to adapt are often related to the operational maturity or capability of the organization. TBI's Operational Readiness solution looks across the entire IT ecosystem as well as its peripheral "touch points" using an ITILv3-based approach that includes People, Process, Tools and even Partners where applicable. TBI further leverages the ITIL framework by mapping its service areas to your IT environment to ensure that no area within your IT ecosystem is overlooked.

METHODOLOGY

The solution is comprised of two projects, one to assess the environment and an optional add-on component to remediate the issues found and documented in the Assessment deliverable.

The Assessment Phase, which is analogous to an impact analysis, provides the basis for the Remediation Phase. It examines your IT environment in its entirety to discover critical roles, processes, and tools that will be impacted by the introduction of platform virtualization. Areas examined may include Operations, Data Management, Application Engineering, Change Management to name a few (the specific areas assessed are tailored to meet the organizational structure of your IT ecosystem). Once discovered, the pertinent findings are documented, analyzed and assessed with high-level recommendations and an associated impact and remediation complexity rating. Lastly, the Assessment Phase also determines the current operational maturity of your current IT environment to establish the operational baseline requirements when introducing platform virtualization.

The Assessment Phase may be followed up with a Remediation Phase where TBI assists you in overcoming the challenges identified in the assessment report. TBI is versed in assisting customers in all areas of adapting existing skill sets, processes and tools for ensuring smooth integration of new technology. This often includes working with vendors where existing tools may not be supported or operational on your virtualization host platform of choice.

DELIVERABLE

At the conclusion of the Assessment Phase you will be presented with a report that includes the operational maturity rating and an overview of the Drivers, Enablers and Inhibitors that affect the overall adoption of virtualization. The core of the report, however, pertains to the detailed breakdown of all findings of the issues discovered when assessing the people, processes and tools across the entire IT ecosystem. The table reflects how every issue is reported.