On average, modern server systems utilize only between10-20% of available computing power. Furthermore it makes sense to install only one core application on each Microsoft operating system. This causes an uncontrolled server growth and cost explosion. Besides hardware cost, rack space, controlled environment and power, primarily administration expenditure and unused or under utilized hardware resources (primarily CPU and storage) offer a great savings potential.
The operating system can be separated from the hardware by introducing a logical virtualization layer. This makes it possible, to logically operate multiple operating systems on one server hardware (Intel/AMD).
This helps utilize the server resources better. Microsoft Windows Server 2003 from release R2 onwards supports up to 4 virtual servers with one Windows license. For more details, visit the Microsoft website.
Leading vendors like VMWare or XEN offer a central management. This helps in efficiently managing resources and, from experience, is one of the main benefits of the virtualization technology. The virtualization focuses the IO load on the servers. Without adequately sized disk or storage systems this will quickly lead to performance bottlenecks. Fiberworks would be happy to advise you. We support VMWare and XEN (Open Source).
Fiberworks recommends the following standard areas of application:
- Development environment
- All applications and services with few users
- Test and quality environments
- Disaster environments to keep your services online in case of failure
- Server and storage migrations and consolidations