Sometimes you need a whale, sometimes you need a minnow

In the old days, when buying a server, you brought the most powerful you could afford. You need capacity to grow, and you were intending it to last three to five years.

So you buy the big box (the whale), install your app and as new apps came along you load them up until the box struggled, then buy an upgrade.

In the world of virtualized servers, this is no longer the wisest choice. Capacity is no longer dictated by the processor speed, or the hardware capacity. The key value is in how many discrete workloads your overall environment can manage.

For this, you need a minnow – or rather, a school of them. Small, fast, light and easy to squeeze through narrow spaces, or spread out when there’s room to grow.

When building your virtual servers, remember this principle – Keep each guest operating system lean and tune each one for speed and efficiency – it will make your overall environment faster and more adaptable as workloads change.