Using virtualization technology, such as VMware, customers have the ability to collapse multiple virtual machines onto a single physical server. In a typical data center environment, Windows servers typically run only 5% - 8% utilized. Virtualizing the work from multiple systems and placing that workload on a single system can boost server utilization much higher--70% utilization is realistic. Collapsing workloads onto fewer physical servers also allows users to significantly reduce their server footprint while reducing power and cooling requirements. Combined with the low power servers and blades that are becoming prevalent in the market, a virtualized server architecture affords significant environmental savings.

The solution provides for diskless booting of all guest operating system types, as well as VMware ESX servers, from centralized storage. This provides a more streamlined, centrally managed OS environment. It paves the way for a much more secure computing infrastructure by removing the hard drives from desktops and departmental servers.

The Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) component of VMware monitors the ESX servers and reallocates resources on the fly to ensure optimal performance. It will automatically invoke the VMotion function to non-disruptively move a running application from an over-subscribed server to a less busy server. VMotion can be employed as needed to migrate a running virtual machine to another physical server while performing preventative maintenance, eliminating OS and application downtime.

In the event of unscheduled server failures, VMware’s High Availability offering (HA) will automatically restart virtual machines on other ESX servers without user intervention. The system monitors and detects virtual machines for guest OS failures and automatically starts virtual machines after user-specified intervals. It also detects server failures automatically, using a “heartbeat” on servers. The system will then restart virtual machines almost instantly without human intervention on a different physical server within the same resource pool.