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Managing your virtualized environment effectively generates lower overall IT costs. But perhaps the most important reason to manage virtual resources well is to improve the ability of IT to respond quickly to requests for resources.

When properly managing virtual machines, IT can simply open a self-service portal and see what resources are available when end users request compute resources. If the resources are available—and if the project is budgeted—those resources can be easily provisioned. The difference between knowing and not knowing what you have all comes down to management and the tools you use for that purpose.

Here are four ways VMware helps you take on this challenge:

  1. Control Over Virtual Sprawl: Given how simple it is to deploy virtual resources, IT has to guard against virtualization sprawl and creating more virtual machines than needed. Because virtual machines require the same support, security and compliance issues as physical machines, the cost of server sprawl can be significant. By leveraging VMware, IT can pinpoint sprawl and reclaim virtual resources no longer in use.
  1. Custom Dashboards: You can’t manage what you can’t see. Using VMware to create customized dashboards gives you the ability to oversee your environment on a day-to-day basis—all from a single pane of glass. You also gain the ability to monitor the effectiveness and efficiency of your environment as well as the strategies and solutions you have in place.
  1. Capacity Planning: After reigning in virtual sprawl and setting up a dashboard for clear visibility of your resources, capacity planning is the next step in effectively managing your environment. VMware helps you know exactly when you need to add compute, memory and storage resources.
  1. Automation and Orchestration: Once you have a highly-efficient environment, automation is the next evolutionary step. By using VMware to automate important processes and create templates for routine procedures, you can ensure best-in-class IT performance while keeping staffing and other overhead costs low.

To find out how Logicalis can help your organization manage virtual resources, visit http://www.us.logicalis.com/partners/vmware/virtualization/