[ale] Virtualization

[Jim Kinney]

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 9:50 PM, Christopher Fowler
<cfowler at outpostsentinel.com> wrote:

> This is my experience as well.  I think many companies look at
> virtualization as a way to save
> money on hardware.

Virtualization seems like a cool toy. But when I see a business use
many virtualized machines for daily processes, mission critical
services, etc, it just screams "single point of failure with massive
consequences".

It also speaks volumes about the overall architecture and design of
the processes in use that they require multiple machines for load that
then get virtualized to save money on hardware.

?!?!?!?!?

Huh?!? WHA?!?!?

Picture this scenario: Product FOO is composed of database, app logic,
and UI frontend. The designers all insist that their portion requires
an independent machine to avoid resource conflicts. So 3 VMs get built
thus placing all the parts on the same machine with even higher
overhead than if they were on a single, physical machine. Management
viewpoint is they don't have a new chunk of hardware to buy for this
process. While true, they did have to buy a HONKIN' box(s) for the vm
server.

It always seemed to me that virtualization is a good thing for test
environments and extremely light loads that are not mission critical.
But the ideal use in a mission critical environment is as a backup
environment for the real hardware.
-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III