Did you know that blade servers and virtualization can be combined now to move forward in efforts to consolidate and reduce the number of servers needed in the data center?
Customers use virtualization to help resolve a variety of challenges. Many begin as part of a server consolidation strategy to reduce the purchase of hardware and reduce management, But the benefits of virtualization go well beyond the reduction of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). The Virtualization can also help reduce the development cycle and deployment of new applications. Furthermore, it can be used to increase the uptime of the systems and add more flexibility with all the advance features offered by virtualization vendors, which never deemed possible in a physical environment.
However, historically blades systems were not good candidates’ for your virtual infrastructure implementation, mainly due to the limited Scalability of these systems. For example the limited slots of network cards & memory slots in older blades were a real show stopper for using blades as the hardware platform for your virtualization environment.
Today, the server virtualization technology on Blade Servers can be an ideal solution for many customers with challenges such as; limitations of space, power, & cooling in the Data Center.
Blades systems today is the solution, from the energy point of view, the most efficient, and some hardware vendors already have dared that blades spend up to 19% less energy than the traditional model of 1U & 2U servers. Further more, Blades can highly improve the wiring of the Data Center.
In addition, further to find out how the best bladecenters are competing, and help you find out the one for your virtualization project check out: HP blade server vs Dell Blade Server. Further more to find out how the best virtualization product for your need check out how they compare at: VMware ESXi vs Microsoft Hyper V Server
By: Julie Cole
Posts Tagged ‘Server Consolidation’
Blade Servers and Virtualization: How Can They Now Go Together?
December 25th, 2009Virtualization Technology Will Re-shape it Infrastructure
December 19th, 2009In a fiercely competitive auto industry, Mazda North America depends on IT to inject the same “Zoom-Zoom” that characterizes their cars into its business operations. As Mazda’s IT initiatives such as increasing field managers’ effectiveness grew, so did its server count – from 150 to nearly 300. “With a one-application-per-server approach and pressure to heighten system availability, all we could see was server sprawl. Complexity rose to the point where our IT staff was spending most of its time just maintaining those servers,” says Jim DiMarzo, CIO of North America Operations. In addition, increasing energy costs were causing power and cooling expenses to overtake equipment costs. To help solve their problems, Mazda turned to virtualization technology.
As virtualization technology becomes increasingly affordable and more consistently provides measurable business value, more and more organizations are following in Mazda’s footsteps.
Virtual Machines (VMs) – the heart of Virtualization Technology
At the heart of virtualization solutions are virtual machines (VMs), which allow multiple instances of operating systems to run on the same physical server at the same time. The primary benefit of VMs is increasing the number of software applications you can run reliably on a single physical server. Historically, due to concerns over potential conflicts, applications such as email or timekeeping software have each been installed on their own physical server.
Server Consolidation – the Key to Cost Reduction
Virtualization techniques help contain server sprawl. For example, virtualization technology allowed Mazda to consolidate 75 of their servers onto five powerful, energy efficient servers. It also enabled them to decrease the number of people required to manage almost 300 virtual and physical machines from eight to five. In addition, VMs have allowed Mazda to reduce the amount of power as well as data center and office space they require.
Additional Benefits – Cost-effective Business Continuity, Rapid Software Deployment, Improved Legacy Application Management
There are several additional benefits virtualization technology provides. For example, organizations can help ensure high availability for critical applications using virtualization solutions. These solutions enable them to act as if their application is supported by multiple machines without the cost, complexity and time required to support physical machine clusters.
Virtualization technology enables organizations to implement a disaster recovery platform that allows them to make all their company information available within hours in the event of hardware loss without investing in costly one-to-one mapping of production hardware to disaster recovery hardware.
Virtualization solutions also enable organizations to move or implement new applications within hours rather than days because virtualization technology helps shield software from hardware variability.
In addition, organizations can migrate legacy operating systems and software applications to VMs running on upgraded hardware for enhanced reliability and resource management.
Looking Forward – Virtualization Technology will Re-shape IT Infrastructure
Virtualization is becoming an increasingly cost-effective way, even for midsize organizations, to obtain more value from IT. We expect virtualization to be one of the most significant factors shaping IT infrastructure and operations over the next several of years. As a result, we have invested in becoming certified as a VMWare Partner. We anticipate incorporating virtualization techniques in 2008 as part of a program to reduce hardware costs and provide much more affordable disaster preparedness.
About Xantrion
Xantrion – offering gold-certified Microsoft support – continues to revolutionize computer network support by providing systems that work, along with seasoned consultants at a fixed price. Xantrion allows growing businesses to do more with fewer resources and focus on what they do best.
By: Tom Synder Ph.D.
What Is Virtualization?
December 15th, 2009There is a lot of buzz going around about Virtualization. What is Virtualization, and what benefits does it provide? In this article we will take a look at the technology to see how it can provide a great deal of flexibility and cost effectiveness for IT professionals and software developers.
Virtualization technology allows multiple virtual machines to run on a single host computer. These virtual machines can run different operating systems, such as Windows, Linux and UNIX. Each virtual machine has its own set of virtual hardware resources (e.g., CPU, RAM, Hard Drive, etc) allowing the operating system to run as if it were installed on a physical machine.
The benefits of Virtualization technology are far reaching. Many organizations have moved to the virtual machine solution to consolidate multiple servers, running side by side on a single physical machine. Server consolidation allows IT professionals to fully utilize server resources, while isolating virtual machines and allowing them to run different operating systems and applications. Software developers utilize virtual machine technology to quickly test applications on different operating systems, without the hassle of setting up multiple physical machines for testing or taking the risk of causing problems by testing in a production environment.
You can run Virtualization software on pretty much any platform. Once the software is installed it is simple to create virtual machine instances. Virtual machines are just a set of files located on the host machine. You configure your virtual machine settings on the host computer, install the operating system and you are ready to go. It is a very common practice to use a master image of a virtual machine. This master image can be a fully configured machine, with the operating system and all required applications installed. You can then rapidly deploy virtual machines by copying the master image to multiple Virtualization hosts to provide zero downtime and 100% server availability.
There are a number of Virtualization products available. VMWare, which is probably the most popular, recently announced that it will be releasing a free version of its GSX Server product. This will allow any organization to host virtual machines on either Windows or Linux hosts. Other Virtualization products include Microsoft’s Virtual Server and SWsoft’s Virtuozzo, just to name a few.
By: Matt Peterson
