Jack Loftus wrote an interesting article for SearchOpenSource.com on understanding virtualization.

His top five tips include:

1. Understand your infrastructure
2. Don't virtualize everything
3. Understand your administration model
4. Understand the applications you have
5. Make capacity planning decisions

Virtualization isn't for every IT shop.  And perhaps, before you pull the trigger, you might want to check out his article.

Read it, here.