VMotion and HA for Free?

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Written by Rynardt Spies

Wednesday, 20 May 2009 11:28

Mike Laverick from http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/ gave some comments on Eric Siebert's interesting article named "Will VMware give away VMotion and HA for Free". The article can be found at http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/virtualization-pro/will-vmware-give-away-vmotion-and-ha-for-free/

At first I though that I didn't see the need to comment on this, but when I read Mike's comments on his blog, something caught my attention that cheesed me right off! Mike says that many people dismiss VMotion as some kind of nice-to-have toy. Now, Mike obviously disagree with that statement, and so do I.

Here's my comments on that simple one-liner:

As for VMotion being a critical part of the package, I simply can't see how it can be dismissed as just a nice to have tool. I guess those who dismiss VMotion as "Nice to Have" simply don't work in enterprise environments where a single change request can take days to be reviewed let alone approved. The ability to move VMs from one physical box to another certainly makes life in enterprise IT bearable.

Just to get a simple change through to fix or enhance something on a physical host can be tough enough. Imagine doing the same change request but having to include "The following 15 systems will be unavailable..." in the impact clause of a change request? That kite is not going to fly mate!

My view, charge for VMotion. It saves a lot of time in the long run, and in this world time=$$money$$. Why complain about forking out some $$$ in the first instance if it’s going to save you money in the long term? Or, of course you can opt to go with MS and save the cash on licensing only to lose more cash on techie salaries and SLA breaches. It’s up to you.