How much do you know about virtualization and blade servers for the midmarket? Write down your answers to these 10 true or false questions and then scroll down to see how well you did.

1. True or false: Virtualization is a tool for testing and development.

2. True or false: Blade servers are constantly gaining share in the enterprise market but they are not as cost-effective as rack-mounted servers for smaller deployments.

3. True or false: Virtualization can ease backup, reduce administrative demands and improve security at the desktop level.

4. True or false: Low server utilization can impair your ability to expand your infrastructure, your budget to buy new hardware and your resources to deploy it.

5. True or false: Virtualization can ease backup, reduce administrative demands and improve security at the desktop level.

6. True or false: Incrementally introducing blades into the server room along with legacy hardware creates operational challenges.

7. True or false: Virtualization can help defray the cost of a data center expansion.

8. True or false: When you're planning a virtualized infrastructure project, the first thing you need to do is evaluate available products.

9. True or false: Blades make it easier to implement network-attached storage.

10. True or false: An application running within a virtual machine uses fewer resources than one running on a physical machine.

How did you do?

1. True or false: Virtualization is a tool for testing and development.
Answer: True.
A single physical server can host dozens of virtualized development environments, where you can safely run and test several applications at once without impacting your mission-critical production environment.

2. True or false: Blade servers are constantly gaining share in the enterprise market but they are not as cost-effective as rack-mounted servers for smaller deployments.
Answer: False.
Although that was true originally, newer products are being developed with the midmarket in mind. For example, smaller footprint, lower up-front investment and more user-friendly power adapters are among the promises of HP's BladeSystem c3000. Read more about blade vs. rack servers for virtualization.

3. True or false: Virtualization can ease backup, reduce administrative demands and improve security at the desktop level.
Answer: True.
With the right technologies, you can host desktops in virtual machines, running on centralized servers in your data center.

4. True or false: Low server utilization can impair your ability to expand your infrastructure and your budget to buy new hardware.
Answer: True.
All that wasted space wastes resources. Furthermore, according to analyst Tony Iams, servers in many companies typically run at 15-20% of their capacity, which may not be a sustainable ratio in the current economic environment.

5. True or false: Blade servers and server virtualization are two different and incompatible approaches to server consolidation.
Answer: False.
In fact, an approach that combines both blades and virtualization will do more than consolidate space by increasing efficiency and security.

6. True or false: Incrementally introducing blades into the server room along with legacy hardware creates operational challenges.
Answer: False.
Actually, introducing blades into the server room isn't any more likely to create any more challenges than running rack-mounted and tower-based servers in the same room. Read our tip to learn more about towers, racks and blades

7. True or false: Virtualization can help defray the cost of a data center expansion.
Answer: True.
This becomes an important selling feature for virtualization when you consider that the average rack of servers or storage takes up seven square feet.

8. True or false: When you're planning a virtualized infrastructure project, the first thing you need to do is evaluate available products.
Answer: False.
The first thing you need to do is take stock. A detailed inventory of your entire computing environment will identify your requirements.

9. True or false: Blades make it easier to implement network-attached storage.
Answer: True.
It's easier to connect network storage to a blade than to individual servers.

10. True or false: An application running within a virtual machine uses fewer resources than one running on a physical machine.
Answer: False.
In fact, given the same workload, an application running in a virtual machine requires more resources than one on a physical machine.

Learn more about virtualization and blade servers for the midmarket.