Introduction

Published: November 12, 2007   |   Updated: February 25, 2008

This guide leads the reader, step by step, through the process of planning the server virtualization environments. The first six steps in the guide focus on determining requirements for the guest operating systems, applications, and services; they enumerate the capacity and performance requirements that will be used in planning host systems. By addressing information such as resource requirements, backup approaches, and availability first, the user can determine the size of the load that the virtual applications will require from the host infrastructure.

Steps 7 through 13 in the guide focus on the planning and design issues that affect the physical host infrastructure design. Specific guest workload requirements determine the server form factor, server placement, and the storage and network architecture. Specific steps and an overview of the entire decision process appear later in this document.