There's been a lot of talk lately about virtualization. I know Tom Yager's hitting it in his column and in his blog... so you know it's important. I may not be telling you anything you don't already know, but virtualization can help you create a DR strategy that will fit your budget. At my last company, we were able to duplicate over 60 production servers at a remote DR site with just 3 big servers running VMWar There’s been a lot of talk lately about virtualization. I know Tom Yager’s hitting it in his column and in his blog… so you know it’s important. I may not be telling you anything you don’t already know, but virtualization can help you create a DR strategy that will fit your budget. At my last company, we were able to duplicate over 60 production servers at a remote DR site with just 3 big servers running VMWare. I use the same methodology in my lab where hardware is at a premium.I know of three companies off the top of my head who are even using virtual servers for the lesser critical databases by stacking several on a single server. This way, you can fit Oracle, MySQL, DB2 (yeah, like anybody’s using that), or anything else you like on the same hardware. OK, I know I’m not saying anything earth-shattering to a lot of you, but I’m constantly surprised how many companies don’t even consider virtualization in their DR strategy.Something else… I really wish we had this technology when I was learning databases. You can put together an entire LAN of database servers on just a couple boxes. I initially learned clustering in VMWare, as well as DTS and replication. So for all of you guys who haven’t jumped on this yet, I really suggest you do. There are a lot of DBAs out there who know nothing about clustering, and nothing about replication and the like, who could be getting plenty of experience right on their desktop. Think about it. And if you don’t have enough money for a license for Virtual Server or VMWare, then just email me and I’ll give you my key for VMWare…(just kidding VMWare guys, don’t have a cow). Read my book reviews at: https://www.ITBookworm.com Databases