Defining Server Virtualization Project Phases

There are five main project phases to complete prior to implementing a server virtualization solution in an enterprise production environment:

• Envisioning The primary objectives of this phase include establishing a project vision statement, problem definition, project scope and preliminary budget identification, project team assignments, preliminary return on investment (ROI) analysis, and initial definition of project risks.

• Discovery The primary objectives of this phase include the manual or automated compilation of current infrastructure hardware, software, and performance information in support of the project assessment phase.

• Assessment The primary objective of this phase is the identification of physical servers that meet the requirements established for server virtualization, based on the information gathered during the project discovery phase.

• Planning and Design The primary objectives of this phase include the development of the Hyper-V server infrastructure design, the overall virtualization solution components, the server workload consolidation plan, and the deployment, management, and operations plans.

• Pilot The primary objective of this phase is the testing and verification of an appropriately scaled virtualization solution deployment that allows validation of the design and the deployment, management, and operations plans.