Microsoft White Paper Sample

Ideas International (IDEAS) offers the following recommendations for users who are choosing between the use of standard operating systems such as SLES 10 and Windows Server 2008 to virtualize workloads, versus the dedicated virtualization software approach of VMware:

• Identify dependence on I/O devices, and determine whether drivers for them are supported by VMware’s ESX Server.
• Understand the trade offs between virtual infrastructure offerings from VMware, Microsoft, and Novell, and determine whether all short-term requirements can be met by the platform being considered.
• Focus on trade offs in virtualization management capabilities for these platforms, concentrating particularly on options for provisioning.
• Understand the relationship between managing different levels of the system stack, including software, operating system, virtualization, hardware, and storage. Identify the benefits of having a single management infrastructure for the software/OS and virtualization levels.
• Evaluate the total cost of ownership of a virtualization platform, considering the cost of virtualization software and OS licenses, as well as the impact on tools, support, and processes for management and patching.