VMware data protection specialist Veeam Software has launched a new community portal dubbed the V-Index, which charts the penetration of virtualisation into mainstream enterprise businesses.
The free website aims is to take an ongoing snapshot of virtualisation’s penetration within the enterprise, as well as consolidation ratios, use of different hypervisors and possible barriers to further adoption.
According to the V-index second quarter analysis, the current penetration rate of virtualisation within enterprises is 39.4 percent. This means that nearly 40 percent of all servers within all of the enterprises surveyed are virtual.
But perhaps more tellingly it also revealed that the majority of enterprises (91.9 percent) are using virtualisation to some degree. Of these companies, 81.4 percent are planning to increase their level of server virtualisation in the next 12 months.
These findings were backed by another survey last month from Symantec, which found that server virtualisation is widespread among enterprises.
Meanwhile the V-Index portal also discovered that businesses tend to overestimate their actual use of virtual servers in the enterprise. Veeam found that on average, businesses believe their virtual server to physical server consolidation ratio is 9.8:1, i.e. on average enterprises believe that each of their physical hosts is hosting 9.8 virtual machines.
“However, by calculating the ratio of virtual machines to physical hosts for each individual enterprise, V-Index found that the actual average consolidation ratio comes to 6.3:1,” Veeam said.
Meanwhile the V-Index also pinpointed some other interesting facts about virtualisation in the enterprise.
This includes that each enterprise has on average 470 virtual machines. At the same time, the average number of physical hosts is 113 per enterprise.
And it seems that VMware is maintaining its market leading position (84 percent) although 61 percent now use Microsoft Hyper-V, 55.4 percent use Citrix Xen, and 12 percent use other hypervisors.
The V-Index also highlighted some the barriers that enterprises have identified to the increased penetration of virtualisation.
For example 38.8 percent of enterprises are said to be concerned about reliability; 37 percent cited the need to wait for a hardware refresh before deployment; 32.4 percent cited concerns around application performance; 32.4 percent cited concerns around backup and restoration; and 30.8 percent cited concerns around managing the virtual estate.
Another problem associated with virtualisation was also revealed last week in a survey by CA Technologies, which found that more than 60 percent of mid sized and large enterprises were disappointed in virtualisation’s cost savings.
And last September Veeam warned that while virtualisation is improving IT costs and efficiency, similar strides have not been made in data protection.
“While the results show that virtualisation has become a standard technology in most enterprises, it is clear that there is still room for increased penetration,” said Veeam’s Timashev. “We would expect to see consolidation ratios increase over time as organisations look to magnify the ROI they get from virtualisation.
Timashev said that Veeam will publish the V-index results each quarter, and over time will develop V-index.com into a community portal with real-time polls and community driven content.
The current V-index was performed in Q2 2011, and it apparently surveyed 544 large-scale enterprises across the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany.
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The results of the latest Veeam V-Index survey are hardly surprising – the move to virtualised and cloud environments is high on the agenda for many enterprise IT departments. Indeed, our own survey of UK IT decision makers conducted with Vanson Bourne highlighted that 98% of businesses are planning or implementing a virtualisation strategy.
What is interesting however is the concerns cited around a move to virtualisation, namely that management of such environments is not a higher priority for enterprises. Respondents to our recent survey stated that a reduced capability to work on new initiatives following the introduction of a virtualised environment was a major problem (60%). In addition the integration of disparate systems across the enterprise was also a key issue (47%), mainly down to the increased administration caused by more systems for the IT team to manage.
What is clear is that management of virtualised environments is, and should be, a top priority for businesses moving forward in order to reap the potential benefits. The key to removing these worries is to ensure that thorough planning is part of your overall strategy. Providing a test bed for such environments prior to launch, assessing how an implementation will impact your internal IT teams, and ensuring that the necessary management tools such as intelligent automation are in place, are all things that must be considered before moving to a virtual environments.