Server Virtualization is an amazing innovation that lets you shift your focus from maintenance to efficiency and innovation. An automated environment built on virtualization lets you respond to market changes and user demands faster and more efficiently. You’ll see significant reductions in the number of servers, server maintenance, datacenter space, power, and cooling. You’ll also eliminate planned downtime and provide immediate recovery from unplanned issues.
Microsoft® Hyper-V™ Server 2008 R2
Windows Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 holds the update to Microsoft’s virtualization technology, Hyper-V. It’s designed to help organizations reduce operating costs and increase efficiencies. Additionally, it provides better energy efficiency and performance by reducing power consumption and lowering overhead costs. And since it provides a highly-redundant design, it can provide a local virtual server to fill the role of the primary server during disaster recovery. It easily plugs into existing IT environments, and there’s a minimal learning curve because IT pros can leverage their existing skills with Microsoft virtualization products and their knowledge of the Microsoft community. In addition, Microsoft provides comprehensive support. You’ll get these powerful benefits:
- Consume up to 18% less power. Windows Server 2008 R2 lets you lower the power states of processors and even turn off individual cores when the server is at low utilization.
- Reduce branch-office-network bandwidth up to 40%. BranchCache™ lets you cache huge bandwidth-hogging files locally.
- Help improve uptime and productivity. Live migration lets you move virtual machines among servers with no downtime, and clustering wizards help you set up a cluster in three steps.
- Cut back on additional software costs. Besides the built-in hypervisor, Windows Server 2008 R2 includes DirectAccess™ which lets you eliminate virtual private networks and manage remote computers as if they’re in the office.
- Flexible storage support. Hyper-V Server offers direct attach storage, networked storage, and Dynamic VM Storage which allows for hot plug-in and removal of storage.
- More efficiency. You’ll have intelligent allocation of space based on resource needs.
VMWare® vSphere™
VMware Server provides a stable, easy-to-use hosted virtualization platform that supports a broad range of operating systems and hardware. It can provide a portable, virtual copy of your primary server to maintain business continuity if the server ever crashes. It offers a web-based management interface to provide a consistent experience for Windows and Linux users, and machine consoles can be accessed remotely independent of the interface. VMware Server uses its virtualization capabilities in the latest hardware to deliver higher performance and lets you:
- Provision additional servers in minutes without investing in new hardware.
- Run multiple operating systems on the same physical server.
- Move virtual machines from one physical server to another without re-configuration.
- Easily evaluate software in ready-to-run virtual machines without installation and configuration.
- Simplify IT testing of patches, new applications and operating systems by allowing systems’ administrators to test in a secure virtual machine environment and be able to roll back to a clean restore.
- Utilize enterprise-class product support.
You can easily move virtual machines to VMware vSphere5. Multiple virtual machines can be run simultaneously on a single server, and if one virtual machine crashes, all others are left untouched.
VMware Server makes it easy to back-up, move or copy files. It optimizes power consumption and allows dynamic allocation of storage, based on need. You’re also protected with a second VM that mirrors a primary one in lockstep providing continued operation if the first VM or its hardware fails.
VMware is available for companies of all sizes at varying costs, and the experts at Entec will be happy to explain the many benefits of VMWare vSphere.