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A new survey from memory and storage providers Crucial argues almost half (47%) of IT professionals are planning to upgrade their server memory in the next 12 months as virtualisation workloads bite.
Given who is providing the survey data, the results aren’t exactly a surprise. But some of the statistics are illuminating.
Taking its findings from 350 IT decision makers in the US and central Europe, on average IT professionals are running 29 virtual machines per physical server. Yet – and here’s the rub – if they needed to run more virtual machines, two thirds (66%0 would need to add more memory, compared to 42% who would need more servers.
Almost three quarters (73%) of IT managers are using at least 64 gigabytes for big data and analytics applications in their organisation, the most of anyone surveyed. More than half said similarly for databases (58%), content hosting (55%), email (55%), file sharing (51%), and content creation (50%). Going up to the next step of 128GB, the trends are broadly the same. Again, big data and analytics topped the list (44%), ahead of email (33%), databases (32%), and file sharing (31%).
Around half (48%) of respondents said unexpected issues, such as unpredictable workload demands or rapid user base growth, is one of the biggest challenges they face when dealing with server workload constraints.
Michael Moreland, worldwide product manager at Crucial, argues the need for future-proofing when it comes to workloads. “It’s possible for IT professionals to get the most out of their IT budget by identifying high growth, business critical applications and then installing future-proofed 32GB modules to deliver optimal quality of server and scalability at a typically lower price than that of multiple lower-density modules,” he said.
“By installing enough memory, IT professionals can deliver optimal quality of service today and for the foreseeable future. Server memory is a long-term investment that’s never just about the here and now, it’s about predicting future workloads,” he added.
If you want to find out more, Crucial has put together an infographic around the issues surrounding memory and virtualised apps, which can be found here.