Virtualization Planning -- disaster recovery and power

I have been reviewing a Virtualization plan for the last 12 - 18 months and I getting close to implementation. The key goals of the Virtualization plan are: consolidation of servers, disaster recovery, reduced power consumption, and fault tolerance.

Virtualization is attractive because it reduces sprawl. The key component of Virtualization is the deployment of virtual machines. Licensing of software running on each virtual machine must be managed and in compliance.As all o the corporate servers become virtualized, down time and disaster recovery become more efficient and cost effective.

Lines of management of virtual servers can become blurred as far as who CIO, CTO, data center, systems manager takes ownership. It seems to be dependent on who is making the decisions regarding deployment.

My current Virtualization plan is as follows: assessment of current resource utilization patterns, security implications, internal and external service requirements, and business disaster recovery plans.

I am in the process of testing Virtualization and determine which technology to use base on cost effectiveness (VMS or Hyper V). Since VMS is the most mature product and easily deployed, I probably will start on this track. When VMware and virtual machines where first deployed there were basic issues with vendors related to licensing, compliance, reliability and performance. During the testing and deployment phase, each of these aspects must be reviewed and responsibility for virtual machines (VMS) must be determined. In some organizations the responsibility for VMS does not fall under I.T., but business managers or some other non-technical discipline.  I am in the process of deploying a test virtual server in my environment. Stay tuned as I update my progress!