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

This guide addresses the most common scenarios, decisions, activities, options, tasks, and outcomes that organizations encounter when implementing a virtual server environment. It does not, however, attempt to address every possible scenario. If an environment is unique, design consultants or specialists should be employed to address specific needs.

Decisions

The following steps represent the most critical design elements in a successful, well-planned implementation of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Virtual Server 2005 for server virtualization:

• Step 1: Determine the virtualization scope.
• Step 2: Create the list of applications.
• Step 3: Determine the resource requirements.
• Step 4: Select the backup approach for each application.
• Step 5: Select the high-availability approach.
• Step 6: Summarize and analyze the application requirements.
• Step 7: Select a form factor for the hosts.
• Step 8: Determine server placement.
• Step 9: Map guests to hosts.
• Step 10: Determine the host backup approach.
• Step 11: Design high availability.
• Step 12: Design the storage infrastructure.
• Step 13: Design the network infrastructure.
• Step 14: Validate the overall approach.

Where an item represents decisions the organization must make, this guide presents a corresponding list of common response options. Other items in this list represent tasks the organization must complete; they appear in this guide because they are needed to complete the infrastructure design.

Decision Flow

Figure 2 shows the flow diagram for the steps, both decisions and tasks, which are included in this guide.

Figure 2. Decision flow diagram

Information Collection

Organizations must have the following information when designing a server virtualization infrastructure:

• General business requirements. Before performing step 1, an organization must have a thorough understanding of its primary business goals for implementing a server virtualization environment to ensure that the technical decisions can be matched to business requirements.
• List of server assets. Prior to beginning step 7, an organization should create a list of the server and network hardware assets present in its environment. This information is used if an organization is considering the reuse of existing hardware.

Applicable Scenarios

Planning for the server virtualization infrastructure may apply to the following types of goals and scenarios:

• Server consolidation
• Support for legacy operating systems and applications
• Reducing deployment and provisioning times
• Reducing data center and hardware costs by increasing hardware utilization
• Implementing training labs

Out of Scope

Although the infrastructure planning information in this guide applies to many applications of virtualization technology, certain details are outside the scope of this document. Such details include:

• Disaster recovery and business continuity planning.
• Creating development and test environments.
• Increasing workload security through virtualization.
• Operating the virtualized environment.
• Considerations for virtualization hosting providers.