CDS Virtualization Solutions Practice

CDS Virtualization Solutions Practice FAQ

Is virtualization right for our environment?

One would be hard pressed to find a data center that could not benefit from today's virtualization technologies. Most servers, especially those running Windows applications, have average utilization rates of 5%-8%. Running multiple virtualized systems on a single physical server will greatly increase the work being done by each server, potentially increasing utilization tenfold. An increase in the amount of work done by each server means fewer servers are running. This reduction in servers leads to a much "greener" data center--reducing power and cooling significantly.

The tools available as part of today's virtualization solutions make managing rapidly growing compute and storage demands possible.

• Backup and recovery for dozens of small servers can be difficult, at best. A virtualized, consolidated storage environment lends itself to greater automation and administrative efficiency for both backup/recovery and disaster recovery.
• Difficulties with limited tape backup windows can be eliminated entirely.
• RAID6 technology provides extremely high levels of data protection, at a fraction of the cost of mirroring.
• Diskless booting--the collapsing of OS and application binaries back to central storage while removing the hard drives from desktops and departmental servers-- provides a highly secure and centrally managed environment for desktop computing applications.
• Dynamic resource scheduling provides automatic workload management, maximizing application performance.
• High availability capabilities allow applications running on servers that fail to be automatically restarted on other servers, keeping application downtime to a minimum.

What virtualization technologies are available for my specific need?

Virtualization technologies fall into three broad categories--servers, storage, desktops. In every case, the purpose of virtualization is to make better use of your computing resources, while enhancing manageability, availability, and security.

Server virtualization provides a number of benefits. Running multiple virtualized systems on a single physical server will greatly increase the work being done by each server, substantially increasing utilization of servers. Dynamic resource scheduling provides automatic workload management, maximizing application performance. High availability capabilities allow applications running on servers that fail to be automatically restarted on other servers, keeping application downtime to a minimum.

Storage virtualization offers benefits analogous to server virtualization. Flexible volume technology provides the capability to utilize 70% - 80% of the installed disk capacity, compared to the 35% - 40% typical of traditional storage deployments. This technology also stripes data across more physical spindles, boosting the I/O performance of most applications.

Virtualizing the desktop means removing the hard drives from desktop computers and moving data, as well as operating system and application binaries to centralized storage. De-duplication technology on the centralized storage subsystem will eliminate vast amounts of wasted space, allowing desktops to share common operating system, application, and data blocks.

How do I support a virtual environment with the staff I currently have?

Making an existing staff more productive is one of the goals of virtualization. A number of tools exist to help automate the maintenance of a virtualized environment. Below are some of the products available from VMware to boost the efficiency of an IT staff.

VMware Lab Manager allows customers to create and manage a library of commonly used configurations and dynamically provision them in seconds with a simple mouse click. VMware Lab Manager gives users on-demand access to machines and systems they need - while leaving IT in administrative control - all while achieving significant savings through reduced server, storage, and provisioning costs.

A shared Virtual Machine Image Library can be created which will automate the setup, capture, storage and sharing of multi-machine system configurations with VMware Lab Manager. With its shared image library and shared pool of virtualized servers, VMware Lab Manager efficiently store, and share, multi-machine configurations across teams and geographies.

Computer environments can be rapidly provisioned with a single mouse click. Eliminate the painstaking hours-long process of gathering machines, installing operating systems, installing and configuring applications and establishing inter-machine connections. With a single click, multi-tier systems can be provisioned nearly instantly with VMware Lab Manager. Users can be giver self-service access to the image library, allowing them to fulfill their own provisioning needs while leaving IT in control of user management, storage quotas and server deployment policies--achieving the best of both worlds.

Accelerate and ensure successful recovery by automating the process and eliminating the complexity of managing and testing recovery plans. VMware Site Recovery Manager makes disaster recovery rapid, reliable and manageable so recovery objectives can be met. By eliminating complex manual recovery steps and enabling non-disruptive testing of recovery plans, Site Recovery Manager removes the risk and worry from disaster recovery, helping protect all important systems and applications.

VMware Site Recovery Manager guides users through the process of building, managing and executing disaster recovery plans. It integrates seamlessly with VMware Infrastructure and VMware VirtualCenter to make recovery plans significantly easier to manage and update. It also integrates easily with storage replication software from leading storage vendors to simplify the use of advanced replication software with VMware virtual infrastructure.

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