Detailed P2V Analysis Flowchart for the “Fruit in the Canopy”
July 27th, 2009 | 
Author: Virtualization can be credited for popularizing the phrase “low hanging fruit” as a referral to the set of physical servers so underutilized they are easy virtualization candidates. Now, as virtual infrastructures (VI) mature and larger, more resource intensive applications are being considered for physical to virtual (p2V) migrations, administrators and application owners need to figure out how to adapt existing VI designs to accommodate the “fruit” still left in the “tree canopy”.
Anyone who has already “harvested” their own “low hanging fruit” knows there is so much to consider. The p2v tool and process are the tip of the iceberg, change control is just below the surface, and there are many more technical challenges hidden in the depths. I’ve blogged in the past about treating the migration to VI the same as you would changing physical data centers. It’s not just server builds and operating system installs.
These same challenges experienced during the initial consolidation are still there for the rest of the bunch, but most likely on a much more public and political scale. In fact, since more times than not these same servers were left out of the first consolidation scenario as “bad virtualization candidates, it’s likely time to
redesign the entire environment to now support a potentially 100% virtual data center.
To help visualize what is really needed, Rick Vanover created a great flow chart that, although it illustrates a complex process, may be the simplest starting point for understanding how to get the rest of the applications/servers virtualized. Vanover’s Virtualization Review post titled Advanced Virtual Conversion Flowchart provides for download a Visio diagram he presented recently at the 2009 TechMentor Conference. Vanover says it best:
“This is more detail than you would need for the typical conversion, but is helpful when you have difficult systems that you haven’t converted for any reason yet”
What impressed me is that the flowchart takes you through a logical process to consider all factors and their impact. For example, storage and networking each have their own decision points. Using the flowchart makes the administrator realize that just because the consolidation tool says there is room in the current VI and the hosts have enough RAM, CPU, network ports, and disk doesn’t mean the p2v will be a snap and the planning is over.
Here is a screen shot of one of the tabs in the .vsd.
Read Vanover’s post and get a copy of the Visio. On a server by server basis, combine your favorite capacity planning tool’s results with the flowchart’s process before picking the rest of the “fruit in the canopy”.
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Posted in P2V, capacity analysis, capacity planner, vmetc.com | 
Tags: capacity planning, consolidation, P2V, virtualization
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