Server upgrades imminent for half of IT leaders

A Crucial survey suggests that nearly half of IT professionals plan to upgrade their server memory over the next 12 months.

The study examined 350 IT decision-makers and found that they would need to add extra servers or memory to deal with the increasing demands of their virtualisation workloads.

On average, IT professionals are running 29 virtual machines per physical server. Almost half (48%) said that unexpected issues such as unpredictable workload demands or rapid user base growth are the biggest challenges they face when dealing with server workload constraints.

“As virtualised workloads grow it will only become more difficult for IT professionals to keep up with the demands placed on server infrastructure,” said Michael Moreland, Crucial worldwide product manager.

“Our study found that 58% of IT professionals are running less than 60% of their physical servers at their maximum memory limit. Whilst 46% of those IT pros said the memory installed was sufficient, others cited that a limited budget, limited time to upgrade and limited skills to upgrade was preventing them from maxing out further servers, potentially hampering their efforts to keep up with demand.”

However, as time goes on, the future server workloads are expected to outstrip current workloads, with more IT professionals maxing out their memory limit to keep up with demand.

The majority of IT professionals allocate at least 64 GB of memory to the ‘hungriest’ apps to ensure virtualised applications run optimally, while 44% are running in excess of 128 GB for virtualised big data and analytics.

“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 futureproofed 32 GB modules to deliver optimal quality of server and scalability at a typically lower price than that of multiple lower-density modules,” said Moreland.

“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.”

Image courtesy of Crucial.