Hardware savings are the first thing that comes to mind with virtualisation, but the real gain is usually somewhere else. Splitting three or four applications running on a single physical server into virtual machines removes the dependencies that make them interfere with each other.

Three things to check before deciding

First, the current server count and resource usage. If your servers run at twenty percent capacity for most of the day, consolidation delivers a real gain.

Second, the need for redundancy. Taking a snapshot of a virtual machine and moving it to another host is incomparably faster than recovering a physical server.

Third, team capability. An unmanaged virtualised environment can become more complex than a physical one, so the operating plan matters as much as the deployment.