When and how should SMBs Virtualize?

First off, I wanted to apologize for the lack of postings to my blog.  I’ve been a little under the weather of late.  Still, I saw this article and thought that it brought up some important points about virtualization and small and medium businesses (SMBs).

While the article headline is a little over the top, the actual post and the reference document it links to brings up important themes.  This line in the article sums things up well.

In fact, if there’s such a thing as “over-virtualization,” an SMB server room is where you’re most likely to find it. Schultz says that in some cases, SMBs may actually be virtualizing to an unhealthy degree. These smaller businesses sometimes find themselves “going on a craze of trying to over-consolidate, and trying to over-optimize, to the (detriment) of performance.”

Again, it all goes back to understanding why businesses should virtualize and how much virtualization they need.  I’ve said it again and again, that too much focus is on implementing virtualization and not enough on planning virtualization.

Does this mean that SMBs should not virtualize?  Absolutely not.  I think that SMBs may benefit the most from virtualization.  The difference is to actually plan and use virtualization to benefit you, not have you benefit virtualization and virtualization vendors.