A comprehensive review and assessment of all current server assets should be undertaken as a prerequisite to virtual server implementation. This tool includes a ten assumption questionnaire to measure the business and operational readiness of the IT department. It also includes a server-by-server data entry sheet to gather information on server utilization.

• The critical differentiators for technical assessment are the four utilization metrics of processor, memory, storage, and network I/O. These define whether a candidate is suitable or not. Beyond these differentiators, candidates that are end-of-life and those with legacy single processor configuration are even better candidates.
• The business/operational assessment is differentiated by the score on the questionnaire plus the application owner. Scores must be high (7 to 10) in order for an externally owned server to get the green light. If a candidate server or its application is owned external to IT, the score in this questionnaire must be seven or higher for the assessment to give that server a green light.

Use this tool to prioritize servers for virtualization as well as to understand what needs to be done in planning and process development in order to move to a majority virtualized environment. Regardless of near-term plans, machine virtualization will increasingly become standard for x86 server infrastructures in the future.

This downloadable tool is associated with the research note, "Establish Business and Operational Baseline Measures for Virtualization Success."