Chapter 9. Migrating to Your New Virtualized Environment
In This Chapter
Seeing the Big Picture
Getting ready to move your existing systems
Converting your physical servers
Comparing manual and automated system conversions
Moving into production
Did you ever see any of those funny work‐related cartoons designed to poke fun at the sometimes‐infuriating, always‐chaotic environments that all workplaces tend to be?
One of my favorites depicts a project manager standing in front of a whiteboard. You see a bunch of jumbled boxes drawn on the whiteboard's left side, illustrating the disorganized present situation; on the right side, you see a neatly arranged set of boxes indicating the project outcome: a well‐ordered, calm, efficient system.
In the middle of the whiteboard you see a big cloud labeled “then a miracle occurs,” indicating that something happened to transform the incoming mess into the outgoing superorganized outcome; the implication being that no‐one could foresee how the mess was going to be fixed.
The theme of the cartoon is that it's easy to see the unsatisfactory present and easy to envision post‐project perfection, but the stuff in the middle is where the challenge lies.
As you've probably realized, that “challenging middle” part is pretty good shorthand for what awaits you when you take the virtualization plunge.
Everyone recognizes the messy, inefficient sprawl that is typical of today's data centers. And everyone responds with oohhhs and aahhhs to the beautiful vision of a data ...
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