Server Virtualisation
If you’re new to virtualisation and have numerous servers running dedicated applications, you are almost certainly in a great position to gain significant benefits by virtualising your servers.
Many enterprises have built up a considerable number of physical servers to run their business applications and supporting utility software. The traditional approach has been to provide a single server per application. However, independent studies show that those servers are being utilised on average at 15-18% capacity. By separating the direct relationship between software (applications and OS) and servers the physical resource pool can be used as needed. This allows individual physical servers to host multiple virtual servers or be consolidated and used at higher capacity levels, with fewer servers being needed to perform the same tasks. A 50% reduction or greater is not unusual.
Benefits:
- Hardware Savings – Less servers equates to less spares and less units to refresh.
- Power Savings - Every server taken away results in a saving of its power, the cooling requirement and a corresponding reduction in carbon footprint.
- Space Savings - The elements required to connect it to the network infrastructure can also be removed. The space it occupied becomes available for re-use or rationalisation.
- Maintenance Savings – less servers, less to go wrong and less time to put it right.
- Increased Resilience – If a server fails, software can rapidly be ported to other physical resources in the resource pool, typically on an automated basis and possibly without any interruption to the service. This of course assumes an appropriate resilient architecture has been implemented.
Improved Performance - Improved customer service and responsiveness from reduced downtime and potentially more performant systems - Rapid reaction to business needs – new applications can be tested and deployed more quickly, resources can be re-configured very rapidly to be used where they are needed, the system can be scaled up or down with much less management complexity and time.
Contact Arcus for a discussion on how to realise the potential for your particular IT environment.
Next: Desktop Virtualisation
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