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VM Sprawl?

We all know how it starts. You said, 'sure, just this once.' Someone said, 'psst, buddy, try this out.'
You were at that wall. You needed a boost. Your business partners needed faster turn around, your budget dollars got crunched. Everyone else was doing it. Maybe you just though it would be cool.

You virtualized your first production server.

And it was good. It was great. You repurposed some VMware licenses from your test lab, grabbed some under-utilized hardware and went to town. Print servers? Check. Ten to one consolidation. Secondary domain controllers? Why not put one on the print host? Great. Marketing database running at single-digit CPU loads? Why not guest that on the new eight-way box in the lab; Marketing will never know...

Another year rolls around, your ops budget received formal approval for an ESX rollout and you learned the joys of vMotioning across 20 hosts. Downtime is a thing of the past. Your x86 service manager is queued up for a fat performance bonus; delivery and performance metrics for service have never been better.

Then it happens. The hairs on the back of your neck start to itch.

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