The importance of planning your virtualisation

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, retailers will no doubt have been inundated with customers seeking to buy their gifts, both in-store and online. Over the last few years it has also been well documented that online traffic is increasing year-on-year during the festive period. This year will have been no different, especially as the number of customers purchasing from mobile devices are also on the rise.

Because of this rise in traffic, it is important for retailers to prepare themselves for the festive period. But it is also important for retailers, and other businesses, to look beyond the busy festive period, and plan for the year ahead as peaks in service demands are always in flux, and can happen at any time.

Peaks in demand can after all create a lot of pressure on a businesses’ infrastructure and they need therefore need to have a solution in place, which not only allows a temporary allocation of resources, so operations do not stop or slow down, but also acts as a centralised data source, in order for data to be accessed remotely. One solution that can dramatically help easy demand on infrastructure is virtualisation. It provides a quick win, in terms of costs, lower energy usage and the overall utilisation associated with pooling all of the resources together. Virtualisation also helps companies to get the best use of resources, by enabling them to do more for less, and provides greater visibility and control, dramatically increasing the flexibility in which these resources can be managed.

However, the minute businesses start virtualising and centralising all their data types in one place, stakeholders, and often consumers, get nervous due to the data security and privacy concerns this solution raises. In fact, security is a key challenge for companies when they consider virtualisation as it is something that has to be managed very carefully to ensure that risks are negated or at least very well balanced with reward.

Because of this concern over security and privacy, there are things that organisations need to consider before implementing virtualisation solutions.

Firstly, companies need to consider a simple approach to virtualisation. The very first thing they need to do is to gain a better understanding of their data and data usages before embarking on a virtualisation journey. This will give them a view of how to approach virtualisation and give them the opportunity to build a solution that can be scaled out to include tiered virtual services, which can be treated as private cloud offerings over time – all dependent on their requirements of course.

Businesses also have to consider the physical environment that will support virtualisation. As systems are more densely grouped together in a physical location it requires some thought to be put behind the dependency on traditional computers and what physical security will be needed outside the data centre. IT managers should apply, in equal measure, the amount of security that goes into the physical environment, into their virtual environments to ensure maximum safety.

Before data is virtualised, IT also has to consider the level of complexity of the environment its business will require. The more complex environments take longer to develop and require specialist skills that are not always readily available. Because of this, IT managers need to consider an investment in skills, turn to more experienced partners and also take advantage of pre-configured and validated appliance-based or cloud solutions.

Last but not least IT managers also have to consider the cost of virtualisation. With a number of vendors now licensing on a per virtual machine basis (per VM), it is worth considering the overall cost per VM when planning a virtual infrastructure, rather than licensing on performance. Businesses will be able to reap in the benefits of this during peak time, and save on money when demand is back to normal.

It is also worth pointing out, virtualisation is not for everyone and that is something that needs to be considered. For example, High Performance Computing (HPC) demands maximum performance and dedicated CPU usage and because of this, virtualisation does not work. Applications that demand very high outputs will struggle on virtualisation platforms that are sharing resources. But, surrounding services that support these specialised applications can still benefit from being virtualised, meaning that many organisations are able to reap in the benefits of adopting virtualisation and applying it where appropriate. When a single server is supporting a specific line of the business, such as in retail outlets or large retail chains, the benefits of virtualisation are minimal unless the platform is able to provide additional functionality, such as a business continuity platform for alternate stores.

Ultimately, before organisations think about virtualisation, they need to consider whether they have the right skills in-house to see the journey through or whether they will need to engage a partner that can help them make the best decisions. And with Christmas nearly past, and New Year right around the corner, now is as good a time as any to look into what virtual solution will best support your organisation to keep up with peaks in service demand.