Server consolidation and Virtual Server

Server consolidation and Virtual Server

In many enterprises today there are numerous departmental or branch office servers dedicated to running applications that only partially use the servers' available resources. This may occur when different applications require different operating systems, or when incompatible applications cannot run together on the same operating system.

This costly situation can be addressed by deploying Virtual Server 2005 to consolidate such applications onto a single physical server. This is possible because Virtual Server allows you to install multiple operating systems on the same server hardware. You can then run previously incompatible applications side by side, each one fully isolated from the others.

The following figure illustrates the consolidation of three separate physical servers onto three virtual machines running on a single physical server.

Enterprises deploying Virtual Server for departmental server consolidation can improve service-level delivery and realize cost savings as follows:

• Reduce administrative and operations cost. Decreasing the number of servers under management reduces administrative overhead, as well as rack space, power, and hardware replacement costs.
• Reduce downtime costs. Virtual Server allows you to create and maintain a mirror image of your production environment, which can be rapidly deployed in the event of a system failure.
• Improve resource utilization. Each server under management is fully used; its resources are not wasted.
• Improve standardization. Deployment of standard hardware allows for improved security and reliability across your organization’s network.
• Enable end-of-life hardware replacement. Virtual Server reduces the risk and cost of deploying applications developed for older operating systems on new server hardware.

For more information about other scenarios in which deploying Virtual Server can be beneficial, see Virtual Server Usage Scenarios.