IT Services Delivery- “From the Ground to the Cloud” Part 2
In my previous blog IT Services Delivery- “From the Ground to the Cloud”, I touched on the five major pillars of ITIL v3 library: 1) Service Strategy; 2) Service Design; 3) Service Transition; 4) Service Operation; 5) Continual Service Improvement, as they pertain to “physical” – non-virtualized IT environments. For this blog, I will examine the pillars 1) Service Strategy and 2) Service Design, as they pertain to virtualized or cloud based IT environments. IT Service Strategies in virtualized environments require a great amount of thought and planning. Speaking of planning – planning is a definite must have when exploring virtualization initiatives. Implementing virtualization technology by consolidation and “going from many to one” of servers, workstations, network switches, OS’s and Applications, can appear to be deceptively simple; however, many of the IT software and hardware components fall under the “umbrella” of one system – the virtualization host. What is an Administrator to do?
For starters who will manage the storage, the switches, the OS’s or the applications? It is getting much crowed in this space. Luckily there are number of wonderful software tools that will make these tasks very manageable. Tool’s such a Altiris from Symantec that are built around a CMDB (Configuration Management Database) can tackle the task of managing the “technical”, “ownership”, and “relationship” elements in virtualized environments. In fact before going from “physical” to virtual, with tools like Altiris, Administrators and planners can discover and inventory existing systems and use this intelligence for planning their strategy for migrating from physical to virtual. Ultimately the IT Service Strategies in virtualized environments task more manageable by leveraging a tool like Altiris.
IT Service Design in virtualized environments task can benefit from Tool’s built around CMDB (Configuration Management Database). Again many of the “planning” requirements of IT Service Strategies in virtualized environments are definitely a must when it comes to IT Service Design in virtualized environments. Understanding the “technical” and “relationship” aspects of virtualized IT environments will improve the outcome of the design process.
In my next blog I will conclude with the remaining three pillars of ITIL v3 as they pertain to virtualized environments. 3) Service Transition; 4) Service Operation; 5) Continual Service Improvement.
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