OK, we’ve selected who our new vendor is, we’ve decided on which products we’re going to use, we’ve worked through how we’re going to migrate, and we’ve figured out where we’re going to serve/store everything while we move. The last and, arguably, most important question remains: When are you going to start your virtual machine migration?
The Strain on Infrastructure Teams
The IT industry as a whole seems like it has been waging war on infrastructure people for the last decade. Developers often refer to infrastructure people derisively as plumbers compared to their perceived ‘high functioning’ jobs (I like to remind them that they can’t code their way out of a sewage backup, but I digress).
Infrastructure jobs are some of the most understaffed and overworked jobs in America at this point in time, and now we’re going to do a major migration to a whole new hypervisor and possibly a whole new ecosystem suite. Even if everything goes perfectly smoothly and you already have equipment available, space available, a vendor chosen, and tools available, these migrations still have to happen in a maintenance window and get tested. Moving without testing is just asking for user dissatisfaction.
Workload Considerations
So, now your overworked IT staff are going to have to start working more nights and weekends to move stuff on top of doing their normal jobs. While this would obviously be a perfect situation for Mirazon to plug our services, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that these services aren’t free.
Further, no matter how self-sufficient and capable of handling projects like this our team is, we still have to work with your IT team to make sure that dependency trees are identified, we know what order things need to be moved, and either know how to test them ourselves or who we can work with to get things validated after we move them. That’s still additional work for your team, even if significantly less than fully doing it yourselves.
Training Needs
Also, don’t forget to train everyone who interacts with VMware on how to use the new product. At some companies, the only people who touch VMware are a couple of IT professionals. At others, there are large IT departments that have loads of role-based permissions.
Some developers may need to be able to restart their specific servers, backup operators may need to be able to find and backup new servers, as well as test restores – and there may even be situations where ‘normal’ people have limited access. All of these people have to be trained at some point on the new ecosystem and how they can do the same job in the new environment.
Budgeting and Timing Constraints
Finally, after you’ve figured out all the logistics of the migrations and have everything lined up, can you do it in time? VMware renewals are now ticking time bombs, counting down to potential budget busting. The worst situation would be to spend all the energy, time, and money to prepare to migrate and then still have to pay your VMware renewal once… or multiple times, depending on how quickly you can move.
Once we’ve answered the sixth key question, it’s time to put together our overall ROI for this project. After all, if migrating doesn’t work for your budget, it doesn’t really work for your business either.
If you’d like more information about the evolving changes coming from VMware and how it may impact your IT infrastructure, please contact us by calling (502) 240-0404 or emailing info@mirazon.com