WHITE PAPER
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Introduction
What impact does your choice of software have on your ability to carry out server consolidation and disaster
recovery? It could have plenty.
If you’re consolidating servers to lower IT costs, you should read this paper. And if you’re concerned about
your ability to carry out a disaster recovery within the tight timeframes today’s virtual environments demand,
you should read it. In this paper we introduce initiatives you can put into effect to survive and thrive in our
virtualized world. Then we show how Acronis virtual solutions can save administration time, lower IT expenses
and improve your ability to meet both RTO and RPO goals.
We’ll discuss the value of a unified approach to server consolidation and virtual machine disaster recoveries
and tell you how to get the keys you need to “drive” your own trial version of the finest data protection software
available for virtual environments.
Maximizing Server Consolidation
Virtualizing is fast becoming a way of life for the world’s data centers. An October 2009 research report (ID
number G00171730) from Gartner Group’s VP and distinguished analyst Tom Bittman predicts that more than
half of all data centers will virtualize some portion of their computing inventory by the end of 2012. Even though
a newer survey on virtualization adoption published August, 2010 by InformationWeek suggests that Gartner’s
estimate for 2012 adoption of virtualization could be somewhat optimistic, virtualization is here to stay,
occupying an increasingly large segment of data center server populations.
Virtualization’s most visible cost benefit comes from the way it corrals physical server populations into much
more manageable, less labor-intensive collections of virtual machines.
Consolidation offers several further benefits, including:
• Reduced downtime
• Improved disaster recovery
• Enhanced security
• Reduced networking and cabling costs
• Reduced server TCO
• Legacy environment re-hosting
• Reduced carbon footprint
Still, you have to spend time and money to achieve these goals. While many of the costs of virtualization are very
visible – acquiring host server hardware, NAS or SAN storage, improved security and networking infrastructure
and virtualization platform software – other not-so-obvious costs can cut into the benefits of virtualizing if not
properly handled.
Let’s look at some of the issues a consolidation effort is likely to reveal and discuss what you can do to solve them.
