1.1 Five Steps to determine when to virutalize your servers

1. Understand the benefits of going virtual

• Save time to deploy server
• Save money in less administration, hardware requirement, energy consumption
• Simplify management - resource optimization, HA, and snapshot
• Recovery from disaster faster

     2.  Evaluate a virtualization solution

• a solution has been around for a long period of time and has been tested with a variety of applications
• a solution has been proven in production IT environments
• a solution offers flexibility and options to fit the company need.

     3. Determine if all applications are going to work well with virtualization

• number of applications won't fit for virtualization is small
• Look into Virtual Appliance for performance concern

     4. Analyze the cost of virtualizing your server infrastructure

• you calculate your ROI to virtualize your servers, with the VMware ROI calculator
• typical payback period, or amount of time to break even on the investment
•  One point to note about comparing costs among virtualization vendors: VMware has
  introduced a method for comparing “cost per application

•  Virtualization requires:
  • Fewer servers
  • Fewer infrastructure costs – cooling, UPS, generator
  • Less spent on electricity
  • Less space needed for you IT infrastructure
  • Less time spent administering servers
  • Faster response to business needs

      5.  Analyze the time and skill needed to virtualize your server infrastructure

• Depending on the scope of the project, it could be very quick or it could be a more
  significant undertaking.