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| Data Center Management News: |
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Server virtualization: India Inc.'s top data center priority for 2010 |
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By Jasmine Desai, Principal Correspondent
16 Dec 2009 | SearchDataCenter.in |
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The benefits of server virtualization are not debatable. Indian
businesses are definitely in agreement with this technology, going by
the results of SearchDataCenter.in team's Data
Center Purchasing Intentions Survey for Indian organizations.
Server virtualization came as the most prominent server-related trend
and key investment area for 2010 in the Data Center Purchasing
Intentions Survey results. Almost 51% of the surveyed CIOs cite an
increase in server
virtualization-related budget allocation for 2010. This is largely
compounded by server virtualization's benefits like savings on space
and power fronts.
Held in October 2009, the survey reveals interesting server buying and
technology trends. Some of the evaluated aspects on the server front
include typical server virtualization application scenarios, most
preferred hardware platforms, and derived benefits.
Cost savings are clearly the driving factor for adoption
of server virtualization solutions in India. Nearly 47% of the
surveyed organizations are in process of expanding virtual machine
deployments. More interestingly, 40% of Indian businesses are testing server
virtualization for disaster recovery (DR) or high-availability
scenarios. The cost
benefits and ease of management when implementing DR on virtual
server infrastructure is clearly driving this trend.
Since a single physical server can accommodate multiple virtual
servers, most Indian organizations are enticed by the huge savings
in terms of space and hardware. Adding to these benefits is the
automatic reduction in power required to cool these servers. As a
result, power saving is one of the topmost factors driving
virtualization, considering the dearth of power in most parts of
India. According to most respondents, the top three factors
driving server virtualization at India Inc. are hardware cost savings
(for 85% of surveyed organizations), power and cooling cost savings
(75% of the respondents) and reduction in physical data center space
(for 60%of the respondents). Almost 25% of the surveyed IT
decision makers plan to deploy server virtualization for the first time
in 2010.
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46% of Indian companies don't have a standard hardware platform to host virtual machines. But blade servers have substantial clout, with 31% of organizations trusting these platforms.
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The server virtualization trend incorporates several aspects —
especially in terms of applications that IT managers prefer to run on
virtual machines. According to the Data Center Purchasing Intentions
Survey, 63% of surveyed organizations run Web servers on virtual
machines, making it the most common application on a virtual server.
This is followed by applications like application servers (57%) and
databases for development (45%). Network infrastructure services like
domain name servers, DHCP, and firewalls are also finding their place
on virtual servers, with 43% of respondents attesting to the same.
It's evident from these results that Indian businesses are still
testing the waters, since mission critical applications (like ERP) are
not being deployed on virtual servers. Organizations prefer to assess
the performance of non-mission critical applications on virtual servers
before running mission critical apps on such infrastructure.
Indian organizations determine the hardware platform for server
virtualization using various parameters. Long term growth and hardware
scalability should clearly take priority in such assessments. But
strangely, the survey reveals that 46% of Indian companies do not have
a standard hardware platform to host virtual machines. However, blade
servers do have substantial clout in the server virtualization
space, with 31% of organizations trusting blade-based platforms.
Blade servers have made a slow but sure entry in the Indian market due
to benefits like low power consumption and space. Also, blade
servers have become a preferred platform for server virtualization
due to its space saving capabilities.
IBM's long-standing legacy in the Indian market seems to extend to the
server virtualization space as well. Nearly 41% of Indian organizations
run their server virtualization platforms largely on IBM hardware. HP
follows closely, with 35% of Indian organizations using its hardware as
the primary server virtualization platform. Dell has started becoming
aggressive in terms of its presence since the last couple of years, and
this seems to be working. Almost 19% of surveyed organizations bank on
Dell products as the primary hardware for server virtualization.
Aggressive green drives
Green seems to be the dominating color for CIOs in 2010, and this was
clearly highlighted by the top three drivers for server purchases. More
than 32% of the surveyed Indian organizations made it clear that
reducing power consumption is a critical aspect to consider during new
server evaluations.
Apart from the green IT drive, increase in capacity emerges as a clear
priority during server purchases for 45% of the respondents.
Enhancement of server virtualization capabilities is also a critical
factor for 45% of Indian companies.
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