Virtualisation is spreading like wildfire as businesses look toward server consolidation, disaster recovery and green initiatives. But whatever your motives, your first practical obstacle to getting started is deciding on the scale of deployment and getting it approved.

Virtualisation used to be kicked off by Research & Development departments but these days, with more mature technology available, IT departments go straight for the live, mission critical servers where the benefits can be realised immediately. The issue then becomes one of risk versus scale.

Ideally, you want to get a business case for the all singing, all dancing VMware™ platform on day one, but just how forward-looking can an FD be in this trying economic climate?

The alternative is to start small — a less robust platform, less training and fewer tools. Get going, prove it and then fund the big one. The downside to this approach is the risk of setting out on the path to virtualisation with basic tools, a basic platform, and insufficient experience and training.

Mitigating this risk is easier than you'd imagine now that hosted virtualisation is an option. Without implementing a dedicated platform, you can virtualise just a few of your servers and make them part of your domain... you can even use VPNs instead of WAN connections. You get a platform that's run by VMware certified professionals using the right tools.

Once a comprehensive plan has been thought through, you can proceed, with your FD's cash, to build that all singing, all dancing platform, either on site, or in a data centre. The bonus being that your hosted VMs (Virtual Machines) can be migrated in a flash, with hardly any downtime at all.

So, if you want to get those first 10 servers up and running as quickly as possible, without repeated trips to the FD's office, kick off with hosted VMs, prove your point and then build a well thought through platform that will carry your business forward.

To find out how hSo can help you to implement a Hosted Virtual Solution:
Call us on 08700 638 739 or email us here.