Once a design has been formulated, vetted, and approved, then comes the time to validate the solution. Validation is normally performed on a representative subset of the full-scale solution. For example, in a solution that leverages two fully populated HP c7000 Blade chassis, a single half-populated chassis may be used to test the provisioning, basic functionality, and underlying storage performance. In some scenarios, disposable hardware is used simply to test the software components.

Leveraging an economically scalable hardware platform, such as the Nutanix converged virtualization appliance (http://www.nutanix.com/) or Pivot3 vSTAC (http://pivot3.com/), can help both prove out the design with a low cost of entry as well as support a production solution in the future.

One of the best ways of validating a solution is to build a pilot environment according to the specifications detailed in the design document. Once the pilot environment is built, a pilot group of users can...