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Virtualisation: 'The most important trend for servers'

Virtualisation will become the most important trend for servers in coming years, but organisations should consider implementing several best practices first, one analyst has said.

Gartner has warned that return on investment – which is major reason to virtualise - could be hampered if an organisation does not make a proper assessment of costs, management strategy, approach, architecture and software beforehand.

It explained many stumbling blocks can be avoided if firms make sure they conduct a full and proper assessment before virtualising their machines.

John Enck, research director at Gartner, believes the server virtualisation market will mature in the next five years.

"[But] most enterprises can't afford to wait for the market to mature - server sprawl, data centre space and power problems are here now," he added.

Among the best practices recommended by Gartner were starting small before implementing a full-scale deployment, virtualising appropriate applications only and defining a clear and consistent storage strategy.

Meanwhile, the analyst recently predicted that four million virtual machines will be installed on x86 servers by 2009, adding that virtualisation was beginning to affect the server market growth, as organisations look to "do more with less".