Things to consider when migrating to another hypervisor solution
In today’s economic climate, healthcare organizations of all sizes are looking for ways to reduce costs and get additional value from existing assets. Information technology is often one of the top 3 areas evaluated, along with staffing and nice-to-have services for patients and employees.
When looking at IT, healthcare leaders are looking for ways to be more efficient with resources while providing the same level of service. Recently, VMware has made this extremely difficult to do with the recent software bundles that offer features your organization does not need. In addition, software renewal prices for VMware have increased significantly too.
There are a couple of strategies to consider to reduce or eliminate VMware’s footprint in your environment. The first strategy is to migrate virtual servers (VMs) that are not dependent on VMware Hypervisor. For example, if you are providing virtual desktops or applications that require VMware or you have an application that only supports the VMware hypervisor, you cannot migrate that solution. You can however reduce your CPU core count, effectively reducing your VMware software licensing costs. This is accomplished by migrating those hypervisor-agnostic solutions to a more cost effective platform.
If hypervisor dependency isn’t an issue in your environment, migrating to another solution is pretty straight forward. You just need to decide when and where to start. Some points of consideration would be:
When do existing support contracts expire?
The expiration date of existing contracts dictate how much time you have to plan and which systems you can move with minimal or manageable risk.
Will there be a learning curve for the technical team?
At its core, all hypervisor solutions have the same core features and functionality. The difference is in how you configure and manage the solution. If your team is made up of talented individuals who enjoy learning then this is a non-issue. The team can spend the first year managing the new environment containing 2nd tier apps while you devise a strategy to migrate tier 1 solutions.
Can I switch hypervisors before, during or after my major project(s) for the calendar year?
Combining your virtualization project with other business initiatives can help address budget, resource constraints, and project sponsorship. This is ideal when the business initiative requires the installation of net-new applications with compute requirements you currently don’t have.
On the other hand, you don’t want to start moving VMs across hypervisor platforms when those existing systems are integral to an upcoming project project. Introducing a new risk to a project is not ideal.
The good news is that there are alternatives to VMware that can provide the same core features and functionality that healthcare needs. My personal favorite is Scale Computing’s Hypercore HCI solution. It’s more reliable than Microsoft Hyper-V and typically costs significantly less than VMware and Nutanix.
Scale Computing’s HyperCore solution has been around since 2012 and has won many CRN awards and has been recognized as an established HCI solution by Gartner. Scale Computing has customers of all sizes including Coca Cola, McDonalds, Summit Pacific Medical Center and Paris Community Hospital.
If you’d like to know how you can reduce your hypervisor software spend with Scale Computing solutions, feel free to email me at aaron.brooks@bcs-tech.biz or visit our website https://www.bcs-tech.biz/partners/scalecomputing.