Virtualization Services

Business Challenge

Servers are expensive. While the overall cost of computing has dropped over the years, the cost of physical servers has remained relatively high, and the shelf-life of servers (i.e., how long they operate under warranty) has remained a relatively short 3-4 years.

Regardless of the cost, the need for businesses to have more and more servers continues to increase. We need servers to run financial systems, HR systems, business applications, print and file servers, etc. We all recognize the power of these servers has increased dramatically, to the point where we are significantly underutilizing the horsepower available to us.

So the business challenge is simple: is there a way to get more value out of the infrastructure hardware you buy? The answer – finally – is yes. It’s done using virtualization.

Details of Service

The idea behind virtualization is simple – we make one physical device appear as if it is multiple devices each performing a dedicated function. What’s new is that it is now possible, and at a relatively affordable price.

Historically there has been a one to one relationship between an application and its operating system (defined as a logical server such as a database server or email server) and the physical hardware that it resides upon. Virtualization is the process of decoupling this logical server from its underlying hardware. This is made possible through the use of a software abstraction layer called a hypervisor. The hypervisor allows a single piece of hardware to run multiple logical servers because each logical server believes that it has exclusive use of the hardware.

Similarly, it is now possible to use shared storage to support these logical servers as a virtualized storage infrastructure. Using an ISCSI storage area network (SAN) we can have these logical servers all behave as if they had a dedicated storage available to them. The benefit of a SAN is better reliability, easier to maintain and backup, and a simpler overall architecture.

MikeTango has implemented this virtualization process for a number of our clients, and each has seen an immediate impact on their business. We work closely with your team to identify the specific virtualization architecture to be used based on your requirements and budget, identify the specific hardware and software requirements to implement the solution; and execute the project to you’re your timelines.

We have also taken the step of implementing our own virtualized environment to support both our own operations and those of some of our smaller clients. We offer this as part of our managed hosting service. The idea is that we believe strongly in the benefits of this technology, and recommend all of our clients consider either implementing their own virtualized environment, or if more appropriate, to take advantage of ours.

Business Advantage

The benefits of virtualization include:

• An immediate and significant reduction in the number of physical servers you need to lease or purchase.
• The life cycle of your infrastructure hardware can be extended. Without going into the detail here, each individual component plays less of a critical role and therefore can be used longer than it might otherwise.
• The cost associated with adding new servers is greatly reduced. We have seen clients who in the past held off on creating, for example, proper development and test server environments due to the cost of creating these; these clients have now created a much more suitable infrastructure for their business, while seeing overall cost savings.
• Your organization is saving on power, cooling, battery, and overall wasting of computing and storage capacity – all helping to reduce your carbon footprint.
• Most organizations are seeing a constant, significant growth in their requirement for data storage, and this is expected to increase at an even faster rate in the future. By using virtualized storage, your business is ready to support this growth by adding additional SAN units. This is an incremental cost as opposed to a replacement or reworking of your architecture.

MikeTango has the knowledge needed to make your virtualization project a success. There are a number of key decisions that go into architecting a solution that works for you; we will work with you to find the best solution for your specific requirements, both for today and in the future.