Companies are virtualizing to optimize their hardware resources, lowering the number of servers and consequently power needed to run jobs. Virtualization can also boost overall efficiency beyond just lowered costs, to include an increase in performance and agility as well, but you need to get it to work first.

Bert Latamore wrote up a piece that discusses the impact of the cloud on the enterprise’s IT infrastructure.  EMC exec Jackie Wynn detailed how adoption will be slower, or rather less wide-scale than some forecast, which will further complicate the backend.  This is because a lot of legacy in-house systems will stick around, and as time passes companies will discover a lack in people who can manage them.  Identifying issues will also be more difficult, among other woes.

Tim Lustig of QLogic made a similar point, looking into the networking layer of the virtualized datacenter.  The mapping a traditional network would rely on to manage traffic is n longer valid, due to the decoupling of software and hardware in virtualized infrastructure, and moving VMs around only makes that more complicated.  This resulted in several industry standards and virtualization-aware capabilities emerging in the market.  Wikibon Analyst Stu Miniman also dug into the network, noting how virtualization is  raising the bar in terms of backend requirements.

Vendors are adapting to the market beyond the networking industry as well.  AMD debuted its Opteron 6200 and Opteron 4200  processors today, “the world’s first 16-core x86 CPU” that boost server performance by up to 84 percent while maintaining low power consumption and requiring less floor space. TDP Power CapT technology further optimizes overheads.  The chipmaker worked with VMware to provide full vSphere 5.0 and vSphere 4.1 Update 2 support at launch.