Develop a solid virtualization capacity planning strategy

Editor's note

The role of an IT capacity planner isn't entirely unlike that of an oracle. For all intents and purposes, both are expected to predict the future -- the only difference is that rather than prophesy the future of heroes and demigods, capacity planners prophesy the future of the data center. This remarkably less mystical -- yet no less difficult -- task entails using careful calculations to estimate space, hardware and software resources to develop a capacity planning strategy that ensures an IT organization sufficiently meets the workload demands of its end users.

Virtualization further complicates the already daunting task of devising a capacity planning strategy for the data center. Compared to traditional physical servers, virtualized servers consume more resources. Virtualization makes it easy to migrate workloads from one physical server to another, but the process of moving multiple VMs at a time can result in resource shortages. With so many moving parts, it's easy to see how an administrator might face difficulties when provisioning computing resources. It's essential that capacity planners accommodate for the additional challenges virtualization poses when predicting data center needs.

This essential guide helps capacity planners determine what to look for when putting together a comprehensive virtualization capacity planning strategy, how virtualization fits into the picture, what potential problems they might encounter and which tools they should use.