Everybody's talking about virtualization and server consolidation these days, and many companies are taking some kind of action, with large enterprises in the lead. Server consolidation through virtualization is a proven way to save money in many ways: less hardware, lower power consumption, less floor space and more.

And that’s just server virtualization. There's also storage virtualization, data center virtualization, application virtualization and desktop virtualization, all of which promise significant economic and performance benefits. Without doubt, virtualization is the future of computing, because it decouples computing operating systems and applications from the hardware, lending enormous flexibility and agility to an enterprise's computing system.

For all its benefits, however, server virtualization can be difficult to implement and could actually increase your costs and complicate your life. The objective is to avoid potential pitfalls, many of which are described in this whitepaper.