Microsoft Virtualization Secrets

Deciding What and How to Virtualize

Windows Server 2012 offers a very rich hypervisor and a complete platform for virtualization, and when partnered with System Center 2012, a complete solution for the entire datacenter and even the private cloud. Once you have decided to find a virtualization solution, you must next figure out what to virtualize and how to go about the process.

The Importance of Discovery and Planning

Make sure monitoring includes any peak times, such as end-of-month processing.

Whether you are moving from physical to virtual or migrating from another virtualization technology, the first step in a virtualization project is to understand the requirements of the virtualization solution and the current usage patterns of the operating systems and applications that are being virtualized. Just knowing the average use of operating systems is not enough; it’s important to know their peak usage scenarios in addition to the average counts. This means that the monitoring of resource usage will likely need to be performed over a period of weeks.

To help gather the performance metrics reflecting operating system usage, Microsoft provides the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit. It runs in an agentless mode and gathers key performance counters, and then provides a report that not only shows performance usage but also provides guidance on the placement of operating systems once virtualized. The MAP Toolkit supports the gathering of information from both physical ...