Devoted to hardware, software, IT issues, and information technology management

I mentioned in my bio that I'm a huge fan of server virtualization for the x86 platform, particularly VMware (NYSE: VMW) ESX Server for enterprise virtualization.  I've only obtained one certification in my career and that was as a VMware Certified Professional (VCP).  This is one technology that truly works as advertised, allows you to see some immediate returns on your investment and it is very easy to articulate these benefits to the business.

Previously you were somewhat limited with the number of Virtual Machines (VMs) you could operate on a single host because you could only have so many processors and so much RAM in a single server, but the introduction of dual & quad-core processors along with larger DIMMs has alleviated many of the hardware constraints.  Deploying blade servers as virtualization hosts can complement the benefits listed below.

Here are my top 5 benefits you can realize from server virtualization:

1. Capital Cost Avoidance.  Every time you deploy a VM instead of acquiring a physical server, that action represents several thousand dollars of capital that the company didn't have to spend.
2. Saving Time & Time = Money.  Deployment of a VM using a pre-defined template can be accomplished in minutes, while traditional physical server acquisition/deployment takes days or even weeks.
3. Environmental Cost Savings.  Every physical server in the data center requires physical rack/floor space, power, network connectivity and cooling.  Only the host requires these things and whether you're supporting 5 or 20 VMs on the host, the environmental needs do not change.
4. Portability.  Because the VMs utilize virtual hardware, there are no dependencies on the host physical hardware.  As new server technology becomes available, you inherit viable servers from acquisition/merger activity or change hardware vendors, you can integrate these hosts into your environment and there is no change necessary for the VMs.
5. Physical Server Migration/Consolidation.  There are many products and methods available to migrate a physical server to a VM with little or no downtime and consolidate them onto a host or into a farm.  Many legacy servers will probably function even better as VMs because the host is probably a newer, more powerful server.

If you've done any virtualization with any platform be it mainframe, Linux, UNIX, etc.  I'd like to hear about your experiences.