Dell introduces the Virtualization Advisor, it knows nothing
Dell published a new tool which aims at simplifying the capacity planning and purchase process for those customers embracing virtualization: the VMware ESX Server Virtualization Advisor.
The tool asks several questions about which kind of goal a customers is trying to achieve with virtualization but it fails miserably where it should help the most: providing guidance.
The complexity of questions a customer has to answer implies a full and solid understanding of hardware virtualization technologies, along with remarkable experience to recognize subtle differences between certain options. But as soon as a customer already has such skills the Dell advisor becomes useless.
It's a pity that the information gathering phase is so complex because the overall platform is a step in the right direction: it provides a list of servers and storage to buy, each one with a detailed configuration, along with a basic diagram to interconnect them.
Capacity planning remains one of the biggest challenge in virtualization adoption. Dell has to do much more than that to automate the process.
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'Capacity planning remains one of the biggest challenge in virtualization adoption.' Amen. What happens when the CFO's figure out all of these ESX boxes are running at 50-60%? My prediction - they will ask why can't they run at 70-80%? Depending on who they ask - some folks will run at 50% because they want failover, but other folks - mainframe/big iron folks - will wonder why its not running at 80-90%. CFO-types - they don't like spending $$$ on a 50-60% of a solution - they will see this as a lack of capacity or a lack of utilization. I expect utilization to go up past 70% - alot of shops are starting to push it up and I wouldn't be surprised in a farm type environment - Citrix or VDI to see 80% utilization. VMWare systems will start to rival mainframes - they will get alot more respect and management will become massively more important - bottlenecks will needs to be predicted, identified and resolved much faster but IT will be providing a better value to the business. My two cents. Rob Bergin Systems Engineer www.vkernel.com
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Rob Bergin, at Wednesday, March 26, 2008 9:33:00 PM
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