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Should Companies Repurpose Older Servers as Virtualization Hosts?

April 10th, 2009 |

Author: Rich Brambley

As IT budgets decline, old servers called to virtualization duty is an article written by Alex Barrett and Colin Steele on SeachVirtualization.com. Other then asking some pretty good virtualization sources their opinions , I think the article does a great job explaining why the expense of buying modern hardware still makes sense even in today’s economy. Whether to buy new servers is a common decision being made today as more and more companies are conducting capacity planning studies for consolidation to virtual infrastructure analysis.

Read the entire article for several great points, but here is one quote as an example argument:

“The first thing to determine is whether installing virtualization on older hardware actually saves money. Today’s servers are equipped with quad- and six-core CPUs that can deliver much greater consolidation ratios that single- or dual-core models, he said. “VI3 [VMware Infrastructure 3] is licensed per socket, so you’re paying the same cost for older CPUs but you’re getting less bang for your buck.”
But if the budget for new hardware simply isn’t there, consider the age of a server and how much life it has left in it. When identifying a candidate for a virtualization host, identify a box that is three years or younger and has “had a relatively low runtime,” the systems administrator said.”

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Should Companies Repurpose Older Servers as Virtualization Hosts?

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