VMware...It's a no-brainer.

It's been several months now and I just wanted to give a quick update on my VMware project.

The plan was to initially review the 50-60 physical machines in production and select the likely candidates for virtualization. The results have been great. We have approximately 40 virtual machines, some of which are completely new machines.

In my opinion, the project was a no-brainer. Server racks are empty, lot's of cabling has been pulled, electrical outlets unplugged and hell, our data center looks sharp. But the benefits don't stop there. Servers that I wouldn't fathom recovering because of out of date documentation, vendor support, various s/w configuration changes are a thing of the past. Now..just recover from a snapshot.

VMware has made upgrades to existing systems a lot easier. If we don't get something right the first time...roll back the snapshot and do it again. This worked perfectly for upgrading SQL 2000 to 2005. Oh yeah...SQL 2005 is virtualized and so is Exchange 2003 Enterprise - a benefit for help migrating to 2007. How is this possible? Well, I clone my servers, stick them in a seperate switch with no attached interfaces and practice my migrations over and over again if needed. I was even able to make our developers happy..OMG!! They have their own private virtual network with copies of production servers and free reign without interference with our public/production network.

And of course I make this all sound like a box O' chocolates...a lot of careful planning and considerations went into this. BUT...the benefits are great, these were just a few.