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> Why choose Virtual Servers / Virtualisation?
Why virtualise your servers?
More IT managers and decision makers are leveraging virtualisation as an essential
strategic part of their ongoing IT infrastructure. Whether the need be cost reduction,
consolidation, outsourcing, or deploying new applications – some of the benefits
IT managers enjoy include:
- Maximising the use of hardware.
- Not paying for resources that go un-utilised.
- Lower cost of ownership compared to physical servers.
- Being able to rapidly test new software and “undo” snapshots of servers.
- Rapid provisioning of new servers.
- Development & test environments.
- Disaster recovery.
What is virtualisation?
Virtualisation is a proven software platform which is rapidly transforming the
IT landscape and fundamentally changing the way servers and data centres are deployed.
Today’s powerful computer hardware was originally only designed to run a single instance
of an operating system and application – but virtualisation allows multiple, individual
operating systems and multiple applications to run on the same computer hardware,
increasing the utilisation and flexibility of today’s powerful platforms.
When a server is virtualised, it’s hardware set is standardised – which means there
is less hardware exposed to the operating system, meaning fewer drivers and fewer bits
of software to potentially cause a system crash. Because the hardware set is standardised,
hardened drivers can be installed into the virtualised server, increasing efficiency and
reducing the likelihood of errors.
High Availability Hosting use virtualisation software from
VMware – the undisputed
leader in virtualisation solutions.
Ensure business continuity
Thousands of businesses world-wide experience significant service interruptions every
year, at the cost of reputation, data, or revenue. Disasters can be small such as a
power disruption, or major in the case of a natural disaster; but the most common form
of disruption to business continuity is either planned or unplanned downtime caused by
server maintenance or hardware faults.
By virtualising your data centre, along with outsourcing its’ day-to-day maintenance
you can ensure continuity of your IT systems with:
- Data protection – including SAN storage and non-disruptive backup & restores.
- High Availability – hardware and network redundancy is built-in from the ground up.
- Disaster recovery – with hardware independent recovery procedures.
- Better stability – through reduced planned and unplanned downtime.
Virtual is green!
Powering a server is more than just plugging it into the mains. When you add up
the total cost of powering the server, network and storage, air-conditioning, data
centre overheads, security etc... the cost can be over £1000 per year, per server!
Each hosted virtual server however takes as little as 20% of the energy that a
physical server needs. Severely reducing the carbon footprint your IT infrastructure
takes up.
Virtual servers vs Physical dedicated servers
Hosted virtual servers deliver better availability than physical servers because
they can be migrated live from one cluster node to another with no downtime.
Hosted virtual servers are also easier to scale and upgrade hardware. Hosted servers
offer Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) advantages over physical servers because the virtual
hardware can be upgraded and refreshed dynamically without substantial investment in
infrastructure.
Virtual servers vs shared hosting
Hosted virtual servers are superior to shared hosting or a virtual private server
(VPS) because they get their own dedicated operating system and are fully isolated
from other servers running on the same physical hardware. Hosted virtual servers
are more secure because each virtual server is completely abstracted from the hardware
and isolated from other virtual servers.
Basic cost comparison
This is a basic cost comparison of 10 physical servers, compared to 10 virtual servers
hosted on our VMware infrastructure, over a typical 3 year refresh cycle.
| |
Traditional physical |
H.A. hosted virtual |
| No. of servers |
10 |
10 |
| No. of physical servers |
10 |
1 / 2 dependant on load |
Servers inc maintenance
|
£20,000
(£2000 / server) |
£19,800
(£55 / server / month) |
OS costs
|
£5,000
(£500 / server) |
£4,320
(£12 / server / month) |
Power / Air con / racking
|
up-to £30,000
(£1000 / server / year) |
£0
|
OS management / support
|
up-to £15,000
(£500 / server / year) |
£12,600
(£35 / server / month) |
| Total |
£70,000 |
£36,720 |
Notes:
- £55 per month per server price assumes Data Centre Hosting
- Internet costs not included
- OS assumed; Windows 2003 Standard, Windows 2008 Standard, Redhat Enterprise 5
Contact us
To virtualise and migrate your servers to our Data Centre,
contact us
directly to discuss your requirements.