Consultant at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
Mar 25, 2014
The best answer I can give as to an Evaluation Criteria Matrix is to know your environment, know who you have on your teams and what best fits for your company. Are you willing to spend time and money on training?
Knowing your environment will help you decide workloads that your infrastructure can handle. If you have critical Applications that are resource intensive, then you need to be aware of what products can handle the load. For example; SQL, Exchange or SAP are heavy applications on your storage and servers, not to mention networking if you are not set up to handle everything in your company correctly. The product should handle high IOPs, handle outages, Business Continuity and ease of use. There are more things to keep in mind as your business grows and needs of the business grows (DR practices, backup processes, ease of migrations).
Knowing your teams will help you decide what they can handle now and what they can learn later. Some companies have one person that wears many hats in the IT area. Make sure the product is easy to work with, low administrative work (automation is key for a smooth operations). You don't want to overload that one person to a point where they don't want to work.
What I mean with knowing what best fits your company is if you are a large company and have a team for each IT area, you have a better chance of specializations of any products. You may not be so picky on the products that gives low administrative drives as a company that is smaller.
Overall, you need to run your evaluations side by side if you can, so you can see the differences next to each other. simultaneously. It will come down to what your team feels comfortable with.
Search for a product comparison in Server Virtualization Software
Works at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Mar 25, 2014
I do not have a written "Evaluation criteria for virtualization". My experience is around VMware and Hyper-v 2012 R2. What I would do is write down my requirements..list what you must have and what is good to have..etc.
In addition, look at the following websites for additional information (see below) . Virtualization platforms have increased their capability and matured a lot in the last few years...we now have several option to look into.
Product Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Consultant
Mar 25, 2014
Different virtualization vendors have different ways of evaluation criteria. The most important is the customer POC objectives, and what does he want to achieve at the end of the POC and the timeline of the POC.
There are a few others but I'd go with something vendor-independent since any specific vendor can tout their hypervisor or virtualization method as superior.
Server Virtualization Software enables a single physical server to run multiple virtual machines, optimizing resource use and maintenance. This approach offers greater flexibility and efficient workload management.Businesses leverage Server Virtualization Software to enhance agility and manage IT resources effectively. By partitioning physical servers into multiple virtual environments, organizations can consolidate workloads, reduce hardware costs, and streamline IT operations. Users often...
The best answer I can give as to an Evaluation Criteria Matrix is to know your environment, know who you have on your teams and what best fits for your company. Are you willing to spend time and money on training?
Knowing your environment will help you decide workloads that your infrastructure can handle. If you have critical Applications that are resource intensive, then you need to be aware of what products can handle the load. For example; SQL, Exchange or SAP are heavy applications on your storage and servers, not to mention networking if you are not set up to handle everything in your company correctly. The product should handle high IOPs, handle outages, Business Continuity and ease of use. There are more things to keep in mind as your business grows and needs of the business grows (DR practices, backup processes, ease of migrations).
Knowing your teams will help you decide what they can handle now and what they can learn later. Some companies have one person that wears many hats in the IT area. Make sure the product is easy to work with, low administrative work (automation is key for a smooth operations). You don't want to overload that one person to a point where they don't want to work.
What I mean with knowing what best fits your company is if you are a large company and have a team for each IT area, you have a better chance of specializations of any products. You may not be so picky on the products that gives low administrative drives as a company that is smaller.
Overall, you need to run your evaluations side by side if you can, so you can see the differences next to each other. simultaneously. It will come down to what your team feels comfortable with.
I do not have a written "Evaluation criteria for virtualization". My experience is around VMware and Hyper-v 2012 R2. What I would do is write down my requirements..list what you must have and what is good to have..etc.
In addition, look at the following websites for additional information (see below) . Virtualization platforms have increased their capability and matured a lot in the last few years...we now have several option to look into.
www.virtualizationmatrix.com/matrix.php
blogs.technet.com/b/keithmayer/archive/2013/09/24/vmware-or-microsoft-comparing-vsphere-5-5-and-windows-server-2012-r2-at-a-glance.aspx
No - based on consultant advice and trade reports, went with VMware without hesitation.
Different virtualization vendors have different ways of evaluation criteria. The most important is the customer POC objectives, and what does he want to achieve at the end of the POC and the timeline of the POC.
For features comparison, I would normally look at this link:
www.virtualizationmatrix.com/matrix.php
For VMware, you can look at this link from VMware:
www.vmware.com/pdf/virtualization_considerations.pdf
For Citrix, it is dated from 3 years ago but still ok:
blogs.citrix.com/2010/04/09/four-citrix-products-in-common-criteria-evaluation/
Hope this helps.
For evaluation purposes, the following is useful:
www.virtualizationmatrix.com/matrix.php
There are a few others but I'd go with something vendor-independent since any specific vendor can tout their hypervisor or virtualization method as superior.
Yes. I would be glad to help! Let me know what is needed.