Virtualization Daily

According to Computerworld, “Despite the technology’s promise, most businesses have yet to deploy virtual servers.”. A bit of a reality check maybe, but at the same time the fact that the question is even being asked for a technology that’s so new is pretty impressive.

In Computerworld’s latest quarterly Vital Signs survey, 51% of the 314 IT managers polled said they have no plans to use server virtualization. Fewer than one in five said they’re testing the technology, and just one quarter use it for production servers. A mere 4% said they have followed PerkinElmer’s example and made virtual machines a default server technology standard for many data center applications. “Most companies are still working with it in smaller areas, consolidating a few servers,” says Gartner Inc. analyst Martin Reynolds.

It’s a good article and goes on to look at how people are using virtualization.

The survey shows that the reasons for considering virtualization differ depending on the size of the organization. While more than half of large companies cite consolidation as their primary reason for adopting server virtualization, companies with fewer than 500 employees are most interested in ease of deployment and manageability. And some smaller companies are looking at virtualization to solve business continuity challenges.

And some of the reasons why they’re holding back.

Shahri Moin, IT director at Oscient Pharmaceuticals Corp. in Waltham, Mass., is testing Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. So far, so good, he says, but Moin has reservations about upsetting the status quo. “Putting it in production scares the daylights out of me,” he acknowledges. And since he has just a few dozen servers to manage, the most common motivation for adopting virtualization — consolidation — isn’t a big concern. “It’s not going to allow me in a meaningful way to reduce staff or operating costs,” Moin says.

Perhaps the most interesting comment.

“Virtualization is kind of a leap of faith,” says Mike French, senior network engineer at Perkin Elmer. He has spent time explaining the technology to his peers. “It’s a tough thing to break the barrier, but if you build the environment rock-solid with redundancy and safeguards, nobody should ever have a problem.”