Having been evaluating a new platform for one of the major applications my group supports I've had the "pleasure" of sitting through numerous pitches by various vendors representing server, storage, and backup products. They have all been pushing their own version of virtualization. Virtualization has its place, but why does everything have to virtualized?
Virtual machines have been around for a long time. VMware certainly wasn't the first to do it, but they were quite innovative to do so on the x86 platform. But when you are talking hefty applications on big iron, introducing another layer of complexity doesn't solve my problem.
I don't need a gazillion little machines. I need a few that can support huge loads of I/O and all at once. I also need to not impact an application that runs the factory floor when I go to replace that failed NIC on a development web server. Don't get me wrong, squeezing more out of the hardware isn't a bad idea, I just don't like the idea of putting all my eggs in one basket. This is one thing that VMware managed to improve on by introducing load balancing and VM farms with ESX but it isn't without its caveats.
If I were to build a solution with all the virtulization techniques that all the vendors threw at us, I doubt any of it would work. Vendors need to do a better job at really figuring out how their virtualization options solve real world problems. None of the pitches I've heard convinced me they could fix my real world business or technical problems. Heck, I don't think any of them bothered to ask us about OUR problems before pushing virtualization.
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