Virtualisation Solutions
Do more with Less - Virtualisation
The headline figures are overwhelmingly compelling. Physical server utilisation post-virtualising jumps to 60-70% utilisation, compared to 5-15% pre virtualisation. Put another way, deliver your computing needs and cut hardware expenses by up to 90%.
Whether Green Issues are your driver, or simply pragmatically pruning away any waste, stemming the inexorable growth in server numbers is an obvious place to start. Blade servers go some way to helping in terms of data centre real-estate and power consumption terms but the real gains are to be made through virtualisation.
It’s all about sweating the assets – the server room is full to overflowing, but the servers are virtually empty. Run a check now – how busy are your servers and desktops? How much computing power is lying idle and unused for most of the day, every day? If that spare capacity can be made available in a pool of IT Power, then significantly larger numbers of users, applications and workload can be processed for free.
The ‘do the same with less’ case will be compelling to the business, but within the IT Department the potential benefits stack up further. For instance,
- Near instant provisioning of servers when needed, no delivery lead times
- DR and load balancing become straightforward, service continuity made easy
- Centralised, ‘pooled’ storage simplifies backups and information management
- Server and desktop ‘lockdown’ becomes more straightforward, reducing support costs
- ‘Non-Stop’ computing provided at an affordable level
In fact VMWare quote figures for their customers of ‘43% deploy most new production applications in virtual machines’, implying that for the next generation datacentre, increasingly all servers will be Virtual Machines from the outset.
Right now, it isn’t a question of why or when you will virtualise your datacenter, but how?
Where NNT add value
We have a number of ways in which we can help with any virtualisation project.
Consultancy Services – our team of VMWare Accredited Virtualisation Consultants have worked with numerous medium to large enterprises and can advise you on where to start and how to go about reaping the benefits of virtualisation for your organisation.
Virtualisation Site Audit – as a software developer, we are experienced in harvesting key metrics regarding the behaviour, utilisation and saturation of your IT infrastructure and can pinpoint exactly what, where and how you should be virtualising – desktops, storage and servers.
Management and Implementation Services – Everyone now appreciates the cost reductions on offer through virtualisation, but we can advise you on how to leverage the technology for hitherto unaffordable ‘non stop’ computing. Utilising VMWare high-availability ‘virtual server bubbles’ means that anyone with business-critical systems can enjoy the benefits of fully fault-tolerant computing whilst avoiding buying expensive clustering versions of applications (assuming they even exist for your application). This advantage alone can justify the cost of virtualisation for some companies at such a trading-sensitive time – any downtime of core systems can prove fatal much sooner than in the past as customers switch to other suppliers. Talk to us for more advice, and on any level, if you want us to deliver the project for you, you can leave it with us to progress.
Zero Capital Expenditure computing - We find that almost all customers are looking at Virtualisation as a cost saving tactic (reducing physical server numbers), but what many do not appreciate before speaking to us is that hardware that has reached its life expectancy (i.e. 3-4 years old and more) can be dumped for good and the capital outlay for replacements avoided completely. How? We offer a wholly hosted virtual environment model to keep costs down, paid for on a fixed, predictable rental basis. This may be an option for you and we can advise on the benefits and every aspect you need to be aware of.
