It’s an age old ‘virtual’ discussion and one I’m working with at the moment. A raft of virtual machines all *needing* 4xCPUs but when challenged no qualification can be evidenced.

Stuck on the motorway this morning this analogy leapt to mind.

Consider, you’ve organised a road trip holiday, more than likely you’d plan like this.

Yes, good idea

1. Full tank of fuel
2. Pack a kit bag with your clothes and essentials
3. Pack enough food to get you started and keep you running for a predictable while
4. Subsequent stops during the tour would be for re-fuelling to keep the balance going
5. A happy medium would be found

That would seem a sensible approach and would be similar to adjusting the resources within a Virtualised Infrastructure to meet the demands of a virtual machine to be shaped around business needs.

No, bad idea

A somewhat daft approach would be:

1. Divide total mileage by the estimated range in the tank and realise you need 12 full tanks
2. Accommodate the 12 tanks by stripping out the seats out and filling the vehicle with jerry cans
3. Calculate roughly how much food you’d need for the few weeks journey
4. Pack boxes and boxes of food (some perishable)
5. Clothes, well they may well fit into the glove box…
6. Additional passengers? Hmm, squeeze in and sit on the lap of the driver or jerry cans

Top heavy virtual machines?

Throwing everything in one go really doesn’t work for a holiday so why apply the “I need all resources immediately” for a virtual machine requirement.

I’ll be using this analogy again… and again… and again…