Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Planning virtualization of servers with Hyper-V, part 2

The part 2 of this kind of tutorial talks about creating the list of applications that need to be virtualized. Part 1 is available here:

Step 2: Create the List of Applications
Before designing and implementing the infrastructure, determine which applications the infrastructure needs to support. This information will be used in later steps to determine resource requirements and, ultimately, to design the physical host infrastructure.

Determine Application Compatibility

The first step in deciding which applications to virtualize is to consider the specific technical requirements for the application or operating system and map that against any constraints in the virtualization technology. Factors include:
  • Processor architecture requirements.
  • The number of required processors.
  • Memory requirements.
  • Graphics adapter requirements.
  • Special hardware requirements.
Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V has the following constraints and limitations:
  • Is available with Windows Server 2008.
  • Requires specialized hardware chipset (Intel VT or AMD-V).
  • No access to USB devices or hardware such as Host Bus Adapters (HBAs).

Document the List of Applications

Most organizations run multiple operating systems, applications, and services that IT may consider moving to a virtual environment. To ensure that no important considerations are overlooked, a spreadsheet or table should be created that lists the applications, whether they are compatible with virtualization, and whether it is appropriate to virtualize them. Such a job aid could also include additional notes, requirements, and concerns. Filling out such a table can provide a very helpful structure to the process of planning for virtualization.

In the next article, i will cover the step 3, Determine Resource Requirements.

No comments:

Post a Comment