...some of the contenders in virtualization. Along with that conversation is the desire to help you determine what you really need to get virtualization in your company as inexpensively as possible -- while still meeting your requirements. Even VMware isn't the only solution out there. There are some lower-cost options that will work just fine.

From the article:

Where a lot of people in smaller organizations get caught up in the hype is in focusing on the hipness of VMotion. That's not to say that it isn't cool, which it is. But it's also very expensive, both in licensing costs as well as the needed infrastructure (SAN storage et al.) to make it work. Many organizations don't have a very high uptime requirement for their servers. So for many, this added feature may not be worth the added cost.

VMware also quietly supports lower-level versions of its top-tier product. These versions do not have the same SAN-based capabilities and don't support the VMotion feature. With Virtual Infrastructure Starter Edition, you can host your servers on local, direct-attached storage only. Standard Edition goes a step further by enabling SAN storage support, but without VMotion. Both editions are substantially less expensive than the enterprise product.

Remember that for any version of the product -- indeed, with any virtualization product -- the ability to do a "cold migration" is always possible. The idea of a cold migration is a copy from one virtual server host to another of the virtual machine's files while it is powered off. This process does incur an outage. But if your organization's uptime needs can support it, you can break into virtualization at a much lower cost.

Check out the article over at MCP Magazine:
http://mcpmag.com/features/article.asp?EditorialsID=746

You can also check out the first article in that three part series at this address:
http://mcpmag.com/features/article.asp?EditorialsID=735

Part I talks about the steps you need to do before you ever buy a virtualization product -- looking at your environment, getting an understanding of your system performance, and inventorying servers. All of this is critically necessary before you ever pull out the check book.