More often than not, we did discuss a lot about virtualization and Virtual Networking. We waxed eloquent about the importance of virtualization. We dug into how virtualization helps small and medium businesses and even how to secure your virtual machines.
If you had a predominantly physical IT network, you would have had to think about purchasing physical servers, network components, storage capacities, etc., and then about installing them. As such, the thought of planning for capacity would not have occurred to you then. If you are tinkering with virtual machines or even the mere thought of using them, capacity planning comes to the fore as an important activity.
As a business, you would deal with plenty of data. As a part of data management, you’ll inevitably plan according to the trends of this data for anticipating your present and future capacity needs. With virtualization, the scene is a little too dynamic for normal data management. Virtualization is accompanied by rapid growth which makes capacity planning crucial. The dynamic nature of virtualization makes capacity planning an ongoing, frequent and fluid activity in data management for virtual machines.
When it comes to virtualization, the capacity allocation, usage and management can be so fluid and quick that just ‘planning’ won’t suffice. That’s when Capacity Optimization makes sense which is nothing but the way you manage resources – almost in real-time to bring about the maximum leverage- - for your IT resources.
The more you shift towards the cloud, the more the need for capacity planning and optimization thanks to the immediacy of the need to remove the common constraints that come with network provisioning or infrastructure management. Plenty of information exists for your benefit.
For starters, consider the detailed guide on Techtarget on How to Develop a Capacity Planning Strategy -- perhaps you might also want to look at how Capacity Planning and Virtualization Management is done. If you are on the road already, you might want to peek at the Advanced Capacity Planning Best Practices. If you are methodical, there’s even a Capacity Planning Checklist.
If you would like us to help you with capacity planning, implementation of virtualization itself or any IT related issues with strategy, execution, resolution or implementation, do feel free to contact us at The Network Pro.
We are always around to help.