IT Connection Newsletter: Issue 5

Virtual server software from Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix has never been more affordable or powerful. Progent can help you choose a virtualization solution that works best for your business and makes an immediate, positive impact on your bottom line.

Virtualization allows you to run many Virtual Machines (VMs) on a single physical computer, reducing the number of servers you need to run your workloads. Virtual server solutions from Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix are designed to make economic sense for networks of any size. Unfortunately, many small companies are intimidated by virtual technology and unaware of its many benefits.

In addition to the obvious advantage of cutting hardware costs by 50% or more, virtualization offers improved availability, streamlined management, better security, optimized performance for critical applications, faster recovery from unplanned downtime, lower costs for data center space and power, shortened development cycles, more thorough testing of new applications, plus faster software deployment and hardware provisioning.

Licenses for the entry-level virtual server software from Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix are free. The net result is that businesses can save 50-70% on overall IT costs through virtualization, a return on investment unmatched by any other technology initiative. When used properly, virtualization is one of the most leveraged ways to add business value to your information network.

Windows Hyper-V
Hyper-V is a role of Windows Server 2008 R2 that provides the tools to deploy and manage virtual servers. Hyper-V's hypervisor-based architecture, which requires an x64 host with hardware-assisted virtualization, offers better speed, capacity, and security than Microsoft's previous virtualization platform. Hyper-V supports enterprise-class features such as symmetric multiprocessing, live migration, dynamic storage, expanded memory, and host clustering. An entry-level edition with a single-role version of Windows, called Hyper-V Server 2008 R2, is available as a free download.

Hyper-V works along with Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) to provide a comprehensive backup and recovery solution, and Hyper-V's integration with System Center Virtual Machine Manager unifies the administration of a virtualized environment. Hyper-V Management Console and Windows PowerShell provide advanced tools for remote and automated management.

VMware vSphere
VMware is the leading source of virtualization software and offers a free entry-level hypervisor, vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), to provide a fast start for companies new to virtual server technology. VMware offers an easy, affordable upgrade path to vSphere Essentials to add improved management and security features or to the powerful vSphere Essentials Plus, which offers high availability and live migration.

Unlike Hyper-V, which runs in conjunction with Windows Server 2008, all editions of vSphere install on bare metal as purpose-built, low-overhead hypervisors that require only about 100 Mb of disk space. This improves security by exposing a small attack surface. Advanced versions of vSphere and its predecessor, VMware ESX, have been adopted by the world's largest enterprises.

Citrix XenServer
The entry-level version of XenServer from Citrix has advanced features that include live migration, central management of multiple servers, and unlimited servers, VMs, and memory. XenServer has a bare-metal hypervisor, like vSphere, but it also has an open architecture (proven by use in the world's largest virtual technology deployment, Amazon's Elastic Cloud). Like Hyper-V and unlike vSphere, XenServer utilizes paravirtualization to achieve near-native performance, which makes it practical to support more VMs per physical server.

Progent's Hyper-V, vSphere, and XenServer Support
Progent's certified Microsoft and VMware engineers can help you assess the potential benefits of virtualization and select a product that meets your business needs, perform pilot installations to test virtual servers with your production applications, organize your network and server architecture for optimal performance with virtual technology, help you migrate from an older virtualization platform, follow industry best practices for rolling out virtual servers, and train your IT staff to monitor and manage Windows Hyper-V, VMware, or Citrix solutions.

If you plan to deploy Hyper-V, Progent's Microsoft Gold-certified consultants can help you configure, manage, and troubleshoot all aspects of Windows Server 2008 R2.

Contact Progent for Virtualization Help
For help with Hyper-V, vSphere, or XenServer virtual server software, call Progent at 1-800-993-9400 or visit Contact Progent.

For a more detailed description of virtualization technology from Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix, visit Server Management with Virtual Servers.

Click here to go to the table of contents of the IT Connection newsletter.