Re: VMS, HP and the recession

On Nov 30, 10:07 am, "Main, Kerry" <Kerry.M...@xxxxxx> wrote:

While one can not paint every Cust with the same brush, let me see if the
following is true of your environment:

1. You have more OS instances today than you did before you started with
VMware. Likely quite a few more. Especially in Dev/QA

I'll agree that, by a pure count of OS instances, yes, we now have
more. Not quite a few more, but more.
However, in the 2+ years since VMware has been implemented at our
site, with or without VMware, the number of OS instances would've
grown by now. The difference -- with VMware, additional/individual
hardware platforms have been avoided, and a lot of hardware has been
eliminated.

2. While the HW, DC space and electrical costs have decreased, your staffing
has not decreased and in fact, may have increased to support the additional
OS instances.

Although I'm not a part of our company's I/S group, I'm guessing that
their staffing has not decreased. I'm also not aware of a staffing
increase due to VMware.
As far as I know, virtualization was not implemented at our site to
decrease head count.

3. Your App license costs have increased to cover the additional instances
Of the various third party and support products required.

This may be true. Again, not being part of the I/S group, I'm not
aware of all the licensing agreements they might have.
I do know there is a substantial licensing charge with VMware's ESX
server software. There is a freebie version, but that's not what
we're using.
I'm a part of the automation group, and we partnered with I/S, using
VMware to make better use of hardware resources, and to shore up our
disaster recovery situation.

4. Once a VM is created, it almost never gets taken down or reclaimed once
its primary reason for creation goes away.

One benefit that we've enjoyed with virtual machines -- it's very easy
to create one for testing purposes. Creating a VM is certainly
easier than locating a spare piece of hardware, loading the OS,
downloading patches & updates, loading applications, etc. For
example, we have several pre-configured virtual "template" systems "on
the shelf" that can be up and running in a matter of minutes. Using
this approach, if I want to do some offline testing with a specific
application or interface, the ease of creating a virtual test system
is a nice advantage. Once the testing is complete, the virtual
machine can be taken down -- and we have done this any number of
times.

I will bet that at least 3 out of the 4 points are true in your shop.

Virtualization absolutely has benefits. No question about it.

Unfortunately, it does not reduce staffing and in most cases, App sw
licensing costs. Due to the ease of creating VM's, both of these costs
will likely increase.

Again, we did not adopt virtualization to cut staff. There were other
reasons that drove it in our company.
Better utilization of hardware, increased uptime, eliminating single
points of failure, the ability to seamlessly move virtual machines
from platform to platform, improved disaster recovery -- these things
were our motivation and justification.
Can't argue about licensing costs. VMware costs money. Additional
copies of OS cost money. Apps cost money.
However, downtime also costs money. In our case, system downtime
(which means mill downtime) is the 800lb gorilla.

And since IT staffing is usually 60-70% of most IT budgets,
virtualization does not address the 800lb gorilla of most IT budgets
when it comes to reducing overall IT costs.

Now, what will your CIO's answer be when the CEO asks "its great that
you have now completed most of the virtualization you had planned,
but now tell me how you plan to further reduce IT costs by an
additional 15% next year."

Can't answer that one. Luckily, in my current position, I don't have
to.

.

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