Which virtualization platform would you recommend to a healthcare company with 1000-5000 employees?

Couldn’t resist answering this persistent & interesting question despite noticing its 3 year old question, while responding to today’s Peerspot’s email promotion.

Through Virtualization we use hardware resources more effectively, by virtualizing either at machine level (i.e. by running several VM’s) or at OS level (i.e. by containerization) or both. So based on organization’s current and future needs/roadmap. After this several opensource to proprietary options are available like Proxmox, VMWare, Virtuozzo, Redhat/OpenShift Virtualization, MS Hyper-V, Xen, VirtualBox, QEMU etc for on-Prem solutions. Each product has its own strengths/weakness but the most important deciding factor will be availability of skillset to support it. Based on 30+ years support experiences of OS and hypervisors of various scales. In case of any additional question feel free to reach of directly on linkedin.

Regards

Vinayak Ragho.

https://linkedin.com/in/vragho

I am not sure what workloads you're planning to run on the virtualized platform - databases, SAP, Hadoop, etc. But VMware vSphere is a great virtual platform to run (mixed of different types of workloads). 

It is simple to deploy and maintain. 

Do you still have 3 tiers of traditional infrastructure? Network Storage and Compute? Do you plan to implement HCI (Hyper-Converged Infrastructure)? 

As most have mentioned already, this will depend on various things like workloads, requirements, budget, etc.  

Of the list mentioned above, VMware will be the most recommended due to how advanced they are compared to the other vendors in the virtualization world. 

Hopefully, you can make the right decision from the help given here.

While other virtualization solutions may have their merits, VMware's comprehensive feature set, industry reputation, compatibility, security, scalability, and support make it a strong recommendation for healthcare organizations of your size.

It's important to evaluate your organization's specific requirements, infrastructure, budget, and long-term goals to ensure the selected virtualization software aligns with your needs. Additionally, considering a consultation with a virtualization specialist or engaging in a proof-of-concept can help validate the suitability of VMware or any other solution for your unique environment.

I think there is a lack of data to determine the type of technology to implement. Perhaps it would help a lot to also know how many applications and services are going to be used by employees.

I would straightaway recommend Microsoft Azure Platform where recently we have moved similar healthcare workloads quite relentlessly. For more information, you can go through my article on Microsoft Azure on PeerSpot (formerly IT Central Station).

Consider Linux KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) as a solution. There are many management front ends that are free to use. KVM itself is used internally by AWS, Oracle and Google for their own cloud VMs so that should give you confidence in its ability to scale and be used in production. Aside from that, KVM comes free with Linux (Oracle Linux - not so for RedHat which has CPU based license costs).

If you are using Oracle Linux (no license reqd for production), you can use KVM directly for the VM server hosts and the free Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager (just download using yum) as the front end and you are all set - just be sure you have shared storage among the KVM hosts (using converged servers with 10G+ fiber switches or else conventional shared storage server).

Oracle VM is already deprecated. Hyper-V and VMWare has a license cost per CPU and you are restricted to the vendor for support and fixing of bugs. KVM is an open source solution, you can rely on community or paid support (comes with Oracle Linux support) but has no license costs to use even for production.

Well, need more details, however... If you're only concerned about a Server-based Virtualization selection then VMware is recommended.

For VMware Lic selection & count, make a right-sized hardware selection. This is very critical to get a collectively cost-effective solution.

Shortly, to get the benefit of VMware socket-based Lics, try to reduce # of servers... you need less # of VMware Lics... buy high compute servers instead.

VMware is recommended as it is far advanced Virtualization technology, simple deployment, management, and maintenance; it is costly though and to cut the cost... a possible way forward is explained above.

Hi 

If you are looking for on-premise VMware would suffice most of your requirements.

However,  if you are allowed for Cloud I would recommend to select Microsoft Azure.

I have recently locked the on-premise Data Center to Azure for one of the Healthcare providers in Dubai.