Tracking server utilization rates over time is key to retaining benefits of Virtualization

An article in eWEEK (February 18, 2008) emphasizes management of virtual machines as a key component for avoiding server sprawl and retaining the value of virtualization. The article refers to a Ziff Davis Enterprise Editorial Research survey conducted for eWeek where about 75% of respondents said that improving server utilization was among the main drivers leading to a virtual implementation in their organization. This means keeping a close eye on server utilization, where capacity planning forecasts will become an inevitable outgrowth of successful virtualization projects. In organizations where virtualization evolves from “great to have” to “standard operating procedure”, IT managers will have to accurately measure the amount of physical resources needed to host the expected increase in virtual infrastructure requirements. Only management systems that track utilization over time will be able to provide reasonable metrics for sizing future IT hardware requirements.

Open iT SystemAnalyzer module is ‘virtualization-ready’ and well-placed to provide utilization rate trends for CPU, I/O and Memory, all of which are key components in realizing the benefits of virtualization.