Battles were fought between software vendors and customers regarding the use of virtualization, with vendors steadfastly refusing to support their software on virtual servers, regardless of mountains of evidence showing hypervisors to be perfectly functional platforms. It had become readily apparent by around 2003 that this was absolutely going to be the future of IT, but it took the better part of the decade for the pieces to fall into place. Nobody could have predicted the impact that computer virtualization would have back in 1999. What good was this? Why would we want to do this? What about performance? How much RAM was in this box anyway? Of course, there were a few AS/400 guys around as well, and they chuckled softly to themselves and went back to their LPARs. A group of admins clustered around and tried to figure out exactly what they were seeing. In the summer of 1999, I booted a Windows 98 system in a window of a Windows NT Workstation system. It’s damn cool stuff, though it may be making newer admins a little soft around the middle. We’re able to move resources around like never before and even automate all of it so that we’re running only the physical hardware we need, when we need it.

We’re virtualizing desktops, applications, databases, storage, and networks.

We’re now enjoying what virtualization can offer across other areas of IT. Compared to previrtualization days, when an upgrade involved updating a physical server that could not be easily reverted if something went wrong and recovery times were generally measured in hours, builds and upgrades are a piece of cake.

We no longer worry about rebuilding a server or wrestling with ancient server building technologies like ghosting an image. We blithely make bold actions on production systems now because we know that we can easily revert to a snapshot or, at worst, recover the VM from a recent backup in minutes. It would be hard to overstate how much virtualization has changed the way IT works. The features and functions available to server admins at this point in time are simply stunning to behold - even more so if viewed through the lens of IT from a few years ago. I posted a first look at vSphere 6 late last week, and while the new version is not without its challenges, vSphere is definitely still the top of the crop. With the official release of vSphere 6 today, VMware is ushering in the next stage of the virtualization era.

Tech for less reviews