Salt Lake City, February 25, 2009 – Today at VMworld Europe, senior analyst Chris Wolf announced Burton Group’s production-class server virtualization hypervisor evaluation requirements for enterprise environments.

An industry first, Burton Group’s requirement model provides a hypervisor decision making tool for enterprises. IT decision makers can use the evaluation to generate a detailed list of required and preferred features to challenge hypervisor vendors. Burton Group sees an official criterion necessary because server virtualization is one of the foundational elements of the dynamic data center promoting server consolidation, system mobility, and operational efficiency.

Wolf’s VMworld Europe presentation evaluates VMware VI 3, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Citrix Xen-Server, and Virtual Iron against the production-class hypervisor criteria. The vendor scorecard and requirement model Burton Group uses will be available in Wolf’s upcoming report, “Server Virtualization Hypervisors.”

Burton Group has defined requisite hypervisor criteria in areas such as high availability, networking, storage, and management. Burton Group considers hypervisors unable to meet the requisite criteria as not enterprise production-ready. The requirements were developed with input from numerous Global 1000 organizations in concert with a team of Burton Group analysts.

In Wolf’s presentation he states, “Server virtualization hypervisors are an infrastructure technology and involve a long term commitment. You are the only one who knows your requirements, so it’s necessary to define your organization’s virtualization requirements and stick to them.”

Links:
Blog post: Production –Class Hypervisor Evaluation Criteria
BrightTalk Slidecast
VMworls Europe http://www.vmworld.com/europe