Jon Brodkin’s post at Network World about 7 caveats or “half-truths” about server virtualization is worth a quick read to avoid naively wading into a manager-inspired boondogle with your eyes closed. But a little research will yield solutions to fill the half-empty glass with compelling reasons to proceed. See my posts here about virtualization and check out the recent Heroix podcast on Virtualization Good News/Bad News to start. Then consider my positive counterpoints below:

Keep it simple to keep it easy. Server sprawl is real when it is so easy to add new machines. So have a plan before you start. The biggest advantage I found for virtualization was the ability to avoid the manual server configuration process. So build a reference server and make sure you keep it up to date. Don’t let yourself end up with 15 slightly different versions of the same OS. Don’t give back your time/cost savings by “tweaking” every new VM. On the other hand, if the purpose of your VM project is to create a playground of servers, fine…but treat them as development servers and when you are ready to go live, use a reference production box as your base, then re-deploy applications to that server so you keep your production environment consistent and you keep yourself in practice for code deployment. Don’t just promote the virtual server spawn to production…rebuild and re-deploy, then wipe the development server.