Virtualizing the hard stuff

Webcast Most Reg readers have moved on from the early days of virtualizing servers, when the idea was simply to consolidate and save floor space. Yesterday’s virtualization beta-testers are now fully versed in the virtualization game, and they're looking to get more bang for their buck with real projects that deliver benefits across their application portfolio.

This is where virtualization gets interesting. But it’s also where it gets more challenging. There are good technical reasons why people have been slow to move down this road, based primarily on the fact that these apps can be very resource intensive and particularly in the area of memory and I/O. You might say it’s all about virtualizing the hard stuff – workloads, databases, and critical apps. Don’t be scared, though. For those of you venturing down this road we believe we have just the tonic.

On June 10th, 2010 at 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern, we have a live one hour webcast that will be tackling just this subject.

As ever, the event is fronted by Reg supremo Tim Phillips. He’ll be joined by Dan Olds from Gabriel Consulting and system design/tech gurus Baker Hull of VMware and Bob Zuber of IBM. The four of them will be exploring all of the key challenges and potential solutions for virtualizing critical apps across your business. This will include:

1. Larger apps (like transactional or BI databases) that require vertical scalability and can sometimes under-perform in virtualized environments.

2. Configuring the host systems to handle the absolute peaks. If they can be placed in virtualized environments, then the slack space on these systems can be used for other workloads – providing a savings for customers.

3. Why certain apps present a problem – both because of technical attributes and on the business side (they need to be able to provide predictable performance).

For any of you that are embarking on this journey, or even just thinking about it, we believe this should be just what you need to help with a successful roll-out. Interested? We thought so. You can register for the event right here.

If you can’t make it on the day, we’ll be making the entire event available in its recorded format shortly after. If you register today, we’ll email you when that’s available. ®