Most enterprises are now utilizing server virtualization technology to reduce costs, improve service levels, and increase agility. We studied how virtualization impacts production process, procedures and controls. This benchmark tool is designed to compare your organization's use of over 45 recommended server virtualization practices, 19 hard and soft performance measures, and 7 other related datacenter metrics -- with 323 IT organizations that participated in the ITPI study.

We found that virtualization management practices evolve as use of virtualization expands to meet different objectives including consolidation, high availability and disaster recovery, and dynamic resource management. To optimize results and minimize risk - use this benchmark to make sure your organization’s management practices match your use of virtualization.

We’ve benchmarked the production server virtualization procedures and controls of 323 IT organizations. Analysis of practices that are common at different levels of maturity can help organizations minimize risk while aggressively consolidating servers, and get comfortable virtualizing business critical systems.

Higher maturity practices can help organizations move beyond static consolidation to more dynamic computing models. Higher maturity practices set the stage for increased use of automation, and help build experience needed to leverage cloud computing strategies. Research report, executive summary and benchmark are now available.