Consolidating applications, after or before virtualization

[Tonduma]

Hi all,

Actually I'm new in the company and exists a great number of servers with different Windows OS versions and SQL Servers.

My boss wants to consolidate servers using VMware.

My question is, what is better, consolidate applications, OS version and more, after or before virtualizing ?

I hope your comments about.

Thanks

 

[comtec17]

Before and/or during. Never do it after. Make sure your applications run fine in a physical world before moving them to virtual.

 

[Tonduma]

Why is not good consolidate applications before virtualizing ?

I supose that you think with virtualization, you can make tests, deploy with flexibility and more features, isn't it ?

 

[sillyVM]

Hey Tonduma, you might want to try this:

I am using VMware Server running on a Win2000 host to host three virtual machines. physical machine has 2x2.8ghz cpu and 4g memory

1 linux backup server, 1G memory
1 windows developement application 1G memory
1 windows developement database 1.5G memory

Most of the time they idle at <300mb memory.
I used VMware workstation 6.0 beta and a physical to virtual importer to create my virtual machines. All of these softwares are free right now. So it's working out pretty well for me. I like the web interface to monitor your server that VMware Server provides.