For a long time, Information Technology has burdened business with its high cost.
As data centers keep growing, businesses face new challenges to manage and utilize growing data. System Administrators have to support mobile devices that require dedicated servers.
E-mail is now at the heart of every business; and to meet government compliance, storage of e-mail over many years has become standard practice.
All of this means companies have to shell out big bucks for costly hardware.
With the purchase of each new server, quotes and bids are required. Budgetary approval is the next hurdle. And all this must occur before you can start testing and deploying the server.
When this process takes weeks or months, business cannot move forward and information technology actually becomes a hindrance. Oh yeah, did I mention security? Security (a huge issue all by itself) usually becomes an after thought because of the time spent to deploy the new servers.
Now, add in the additional costs each server brings in for dedicated hardware, high-end CPUs, and server software that constantly requires patching. And although Storage Area Networks are being developed to help ease the burden of the data, they are expensive and still in their infancy. So what is a company to do?
Fortunately, there is a solution and it is called Microsoft Virtual Server …
Welcome to the Future — Where Virtual Servers Actually Save Money
With Virtual Server, for the first time, Information Technology truly becomes a business enabler and in many, many ways. For starters, Virtual Server offers a no cost solution to optimize deployment speed, server utilization, and legacy application support.
If you examine a baseline of most servers’ CPU, hard disk, and memory usage you will find that most servers are not being overloaded but rather extremely under utilized. Why are servers underutilized? Because the old way of doing business required putting each server application on a separate hardware box out of fear one service or application would crash and take down the entire server.
And this is where the real beauty of Virtual Server comes into play … by allowing businesses to deploy new applications without ever jeopardizing the underlying operating system!
Plus, deployment speed can be drastically increased because the hardware is already in place and it only requires the Virtual Server to be built. What used to take days to accomplish can now be done in a matter of hours! Virtual Server also allows for the seamless upgrading of machines. It’s no longer a one way process.
Now the virtual machine can be copied, upgraded and tested while the original server is still operational or in production. Talk about increased reliability! And as an added bonus, today many vendors are offering pre-built virtual servers to test their software.
If It Ain’t Broke — Virtual Server Makes It Better
Does your company support an old legacy server?
Legacy products run on old hardware and are often maintained with the old philosophy — if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And this works fine until the server actually stops working! Virtual Server gives your company the opportunity to port these systems on to new hardware with better reliability while still running the legacy operating system as a Virtual Machine.
But overall, cost is still king. Remember, each time you purchase a new server you are spending thousands of dollars on the expensive dedicated and required hardware. And unless your spending budget is really flexible, the cost of new servers can be crippling to your bottom line.
How many servers are you adding each year?
If you are adding more than two servers annually, Virtual Server can provide cost savings that can add to your profit margins each and every year. But Virtual Servers will do much more than save your company money, they will also save valuable time. When you can deploy a new server tomorrow instead of next week or next month, you save hundreds of hours each year — and that kind of time adds up to a lot of money!
Virtual Server is Low Maintenance and User Friendly
Today’s business is changing at light speed and companies that want to compete need to leverage existing talent and infrastructure. Can your company afford to waste technology dollars? I doubt it. With the money you save using Virtual Server, just imagine how you can leverage additional services to your organization!
But the savings don’t end there. Virtual Servers mean less servers and less servers require fewer preventive maintenance procedures, lower power consummation, smaller data centers, all while providing better management and monitoring capabilities. By utilizing the Virtual Server’s web administration, you can manage all your virtual machines from a single console remotely.
The other great advantage for Microsoft’s Virtual Server is that it uses the same familiar administration that your staff is already comfortable with. Virtual Server is simplicity made even easier; and that means no more outsourcing to an expensive technological expert!
You can take a Virtual Server and “practice” on it until you are confident that everything is working without a hitch before you deploy it. You can also create back-up servers that can be clustered so you can take the main server down for maintenance while you patch, upgrade, or rework your existing servers.
Get Started Today — It’s FREE!!
History repeats itself, so the saying goes. As businesses once ran all applications from a mainframe, Virtual Server allows the process of consolidation to single dedicated hardware with uncompromised security, speed, and reliability — while at the same time keeping costs at an all-time low.
Because a Virtual Sever can handle up to 3.6 Gigs of Ram per virtual machine and 64 Virtual Servers can run on standard 32-bit architecture, it should be able to handle even the most demanding environments. If you need more power you can switch to the 64-bit version supporting 512 virtual machines.
Plus, it’s easy to get started. First, start by downloading the Virtual Server Migration Tool. This is a FREE download from Microsoft that allows you to copy a physical server and creates its corresponding virtual server.
As you move forward with your consolidation plan, Virtual Server can utilize your Storage Area Network (SAN) and even be used for disaster recovery. Virtual Servers can be brought up quickly, even in the event of disaster recovery. Because the hardware is virtualized, the system can be brought up on different physical hardware allowing you to get the data center back up and running.
With all these features, isn’t it time to take the next step and get your FREE copy of Virtual Server? It’s the first step in saving your company a TON of money!
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