After your operating system and applications plans are complete, you need to develop a plan for virtualization technologies. Virtualization improves IT resource utilization by allowing system administrators to access and manage resources across a heterogeneous environment. These resources are available virtually, as a single pool, rather than by physical location.
The IBM® Virtualization Engine™ is a set of technologies and systems services that lead you into on demand computing. Its systems services simplify IT resource management by virtualizing data, applications, servers, and network resources.
By binding individual resources into one integrated infrastructure, the IBM Virtualization Engine:
- Simplifies network infrastructure
- Reduces cost and complexity by optimizing resource utilization
- Increases the value of IT investments
Complete these to gather the necessary information for your Virtualization plan:
| Before you begin | |
|---|---|
| __ | Use these resources to learn about virtualization::
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| __ | Have your operating system and application plans done. |
| __ | Develop a list of business processes that could be improved through tighter integration and centralized management. |
| __ | For each such business process, draw a diagram that connects the applications, operating systems, and hardware systems that share resources for those business processes. |
| __ | Perform capacity planning to identify resources
that are under-utilized and areas in your business where you could use more
capacity. Refer to the IBM Systems Workload Estimator Web
site. |
| Virtualization Engine planning tasks | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| __ | Plan for virtualization system services The IBM Virtualization
Engine provides a single set of integrated systems services that reduce
the complexity of your IT infrastructure by virtualizing data, application,
server, and network resources. See System services |
||
| __ | Plan for virtualization technologies The IBM virtualization technologies provide virtualization intelligence in the processor, memory, I/O, and network devices. Virtualization technologies are embedded in IBM hardware and delivered as features of the eServer, System p5® and TotalStorage® brands. Seevirtualization technologies to learn more about the various aspects of virtualization technologies, which include:
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| After you finish | |
|---|---|
| __ | You should have a plan for virtualizing your server environment. The plan should include how you plan to virtualize your resources and how you plan to manage those resources using the Virtualization Engine systems services. |