Top 10 Things System Administrators Need to Know About Virtualization
Expert Reference Series of White Papers
Top 10 Things
System Administrators
Need To Know
About Virtualization
1-800-COURSES
www.globalknowledge.com
Top 10 Things System Administrators
Need to Know About Virtualization
Jeffrey W. Hall, VCI, VCP4, CCSI, CCNP Voice, CCNP Security, Datacenter Support Specialist, CCIP, CCDP, CCNP, MCT, MCITP, MCSE
Introduction
The only constant thing about technology is that it is never constant. The advances that we’ve witnessed in computing over the last couple of decades are staggering. To even suggest even a decade ago that a single hard drive could be as big as 2 Terabytes (TB) or that a single server could have 1TB+ of RAM would have gotten you strange looks and even possibly laughs.
Today, we are experiencing one of the greatest paradigm shifts that computing has seen yet: virtualization. We are quickly moving away from thinking about a “one operating system per one server” model to one that says
“how many operating systems can we place on a single server?” This single but monumental change in datacenter design can be very difficult for system administrators to grasp.
For many years, our practice was to buy the biggest servers we could, install as much CPU and memory as possible, then take that server and install our operating system of choice. It didn’t matter that we saw incredibly inefficient use of those expensive resources (usually only 5-10%)…this was the only design we knew.
Virtualization technology changes everything we know currently about datacenter management. By implementing a robust solution, such as the VMware vSphere 4.1 suite, we are able to realize benefits and costs savings that were never once thought possible.
The purpose of this white paper is to offer a high-level description of the top 10 things about virtualization every system administrator (sysadmin) needs to know; regardless whether you’re just dipping your toes in the virtualization pool or are already in the deep end.
Top 10 Things
System Administrators
Need To Know
About Virtualization
1-800-COURSES
www.globalknowledge.com
Top 10 Things System Administrators
Need to Know About Virtualization
Jeffrey W. Hall, VCI, VCP4, CCSI, CCNP Voice, CCNP Security, Datacenter Support Specialist, CCIP, CCDP, CCNP, MCT, MCITP, MCSE
Introduction
The only constant thing about technology is that it is never constant. The advances that we’ve witnessed in computing over the last couple of decades are staggering. To even suggest even a decade ago that a single hard drive could be as big as 2 Terabytes (TB) or that a single server could have 1TB+ of RAM would have gotten you strange looks and even possibly laughs.
Today, we are experiencing one of the greatest paradigm shifts that computing has seen yet: virtualization. We are quickly moving away from thinking about a “one operating system per one server” model to one that says
“how many operating systems can we place on a single server?” This single but monumental change in datacenter design can be very difficult for system administrators to grasp.
For many years, our practice was to buy the biggest servers we could, install as much CPU and memory as possible, then take that server and install our operating system of choice. It didn’t matter that we saw incredibly inefficient use of those expensive resources (usually only 5-10%)…this was the only design we knew.
Virtualization technology changes everything we know currently about datacenter management. By implementing a robust solution, such as the VMware vSphere 4.1 suite, we are able to realize benefits and costs savings that were never once thought possible.
The purpose of this white paper is to offer a high-level description of the top 10 things about virtualization every system administrator (sysadmin) needs to know; regardless whether you’re just dipping your toes in the virtualization pool or are already in the deep end.