The Essential Guide to SQL Server Consolidation

In recent years, application consolidation has been a hot topic within many IT organizations. Why should customers consider database consolidation now? According to industry analysts, companies can typically realize cost savings in the range of 20% by consolidating their database environments.

Virtualization lets you run one or more guest operating systems under a single host. These guest operating systems act just like a physical server. Virtualization obviously saves companies money not only because a new server is not needed each time one needs to be deployed, but because it reduces the time for deployment from months (which may include acquisition) to a matter of hours or days.

Virtualization has been around for quite some time, but only in the past two or three years has it gained more significant popularity in the Windows-based world. IT organizations first started using virtualization for web servers, file servers, print servers, and application servers. But it should surprise no one that the spotlight eventually turned toward servers that run SQL Server.