Powering Through The Downturn – Microsoft Hyper-V
With IT departments under more pressure than ever before to save money without delaying or cancelling planned projects, it can be easy for you to feel that your hands are tied and that you have to just make do with what you have.
However, there are ways for you to update your technology, implement new services and for these to pay for themselves through the savings you can make for the business.
So What Is Microsoft Hyper-V?
Hyper-V is Microsoft’s hypervisor based virtualisation solution which it has placed at the heart of Windows Server 2008. Through using Hyper-V, you are able to turn a single physical server into up to 128 virtual machines, each running their own instance of the operating systems and segmented server-based applications.
What Can I Gain From Virtualisation?
Windows 2008 with Hyper-V and System Essentials 2007 offers significant benefits to both IT and the business in terms of ways to save money:
- Reducing new hardware requirements
- Saving physical space
- Minimising time spent on deployments and troubleshooting
- Lower power consumption
In simple terms, if you have 5 servers all running at 20% capacity, Hyper-V enables you to consolidate these onto a single server that you are maximising to 100% capacity.
What this means is that you are able to deploy new applications without having to invest in new hardware. You have less physical boxes to manage and you are able to spread loads and risk through running multiple instances of business-critical applications across multiple virtual machines.
So Why Microsoft Hyper-V?
A key benefit of Microsoft Hyper-V is that it gives you a single solution that works seamlessly with other
Microsoft components. To you and your IT staff, it provides a familiar interface which enables you to quickly
become familiar and competent in managing your virtualisation.
Hyper-V is also easy to deploy as it is installed with Windows Server 2008 and if you elect to install System Centre Essentials and System Centre Virtual Machine Manager, these both come with installation wizards.
With simplified management tasks and integrated task management, you are able to efficiently manage both physical and virtual resources. And if you have already deployed other virtualisation technology, then Hyper-V is able to run alongside these solutions.
So Why Wouldn’t I Implement Virtualisation?
When we talk to organisations about virtualisation, there are a common set of reasons that people feel virtualisation
is not right for them, in the majority of cases these are simply misconceptions.
Virtualisation is too difficult to manage!
We find that the opposite is true. With Microsoft’s virtualisation solutions, IT management is significantly simplified.
Rather than switching between multiple interfaces, you can monitor both physical and virtual resources through System Centre
Essentials. Management is simplified into two products that are designed to work together, both with the familiar Windows look and feel.
Virtualisation is too expensive!
Microsoft Hyper-V does not cost the Earth and will save you money. Organisations that have implemented Windows Server 2008
with Hyper-V have saved 50-80% in server costs by consolidating their infrastructure onto fewer physical servers.
Our IT environment is too complex for virtualisation!
Microsoft Hyper-V is able to run virtualised versions of multiple operating systems on a single server including both
31-bit and 64-bit operating systems. Each virtual machine looks and acts like a separate server to the applications that
run on it. In our experience, Microsoft Hyper-V can handle even the most challenging of IT environments.
Interested To Learn More?
At b2Lateral, we are Virtualisation experts. We not only help our clients implement Microsoft solutions, but also provide
advice and assistance on solutions from VMware and Novell.
If you would like to find out more about what virtualisation solutions are available to you and how these would work in your specific environment, email our team at info@b2lateral.net