The local launch this week of Microsoft's Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtualisation technology looks set to shake up the market and redefine how companies think about their computing resources.
Virtualisation is a technology that allows companies to take their existing servers, 'virtually' consolidate or put them together, and make the combined computing power available across their entire network. It also allows companies to use fewer servers than before, resulting in a smaller hardware footprint, lower energy consumption and less complexity. Or as Riedwaan Bassadien, the server product manager at Microsoft South Africa, puts it: “It can save you money. Lots of it.”
Hyper-V, part of the broader Windows Server 2008 range launched earlier this year, offers a reliable, scalable and high-performance virtualisation platform designed to fit straight into a company's existing systems. It is available as a free download (and is built into Windows Server 2008) and integrates with the Microsoft System Center product family to create a complete solution for managing physical and virtual computing environments.
“People are increasingly using virtualisation to deliver lower costs and reduced risks - it's moved from being a tactical technology towards a key transformation strategy, and helps companies respond more rapidly to the volatile market conditions we have today,” said Bassadien.
“However, to date virtualisation has been too complicated and expensive for most organisations - we see less than 12% of servers virtualised today. Our goal in offering Hyper-V as a free download is to bring the benefits of virtualisation to a far broader audience.”
Although the virtualisation market is still relatively immature, there are significant growth opportunities for Microsoft, its partners and customers.
“Virtualisation is becoming a key part of companies' business strategy,” said Himal Ramjee, a director at Johannesburg-based systems integrator iSolve. “It's not just about cutting costs, but about looking where their money is being spent and finding ways to leverage their investments across the company. Virtualisation holds a lot of promise in helping our clients maximise the value of their IT investments.”
Carlos Gouveia, Professional Services Manager at Dimension Data, said the business and technical benefits of virtualisation make it a default component of any IT strategy going forward. “The key to unlocking its full potential is dependent on thorough planning and management of the virtual environment, many organisations will be tempted to just wade in expecting legacy issues to be magically resolved. Virtualisation should be the number one strategy for achieving operational efficiency,” said Gouveia.
While Hyper-V is built into Windows Server 2008, the download is a standalone product that allows you to virtualise almost any computing environment. “It's a great choice for companies wanting a basic and simplified virtualisation solution for consolidating different kinds of servers, or even for development and test environments.”
Customers who started evaluating Hyper-V during the beta process in December 2007 and as part of their Windows Server 2008 installation are already experiencing more flexible IT systems, greater control, increased business agility and higher performance.
“Dell has always had a vision for the data centre - scalable, dynamic, on demand and simplified,” said Ockert Cameron, head of the Microsoft practice at Dell in South Africa.
“Simplified IT took this vision to the next level, as we believe that the quality and cost of infrastructure services can be greatly improved by reducing execution variability. Microsoft's technology is part of this holistic approach to achieving our vision.”
“By optimising our clients' data centre environments with virtualisation and centralised management, we deliver more functionality at lower cost, and we make IT a strategic contributor to the growth of our clients.”
To make virtualisation easier to manage, System Center offers tools to configure, operate, deploy and backup physical and virtual servers from the data centre to the desktop - all from a single place.
This can help prevent such issues as 'virtual server sprawl' - one of the challenges that can be introduced by the increased use of server virtualisation.
Some IT teams have allowed multiple groups within the organisation to create their own virtual machines, only to lose track of them later. This kind of uncontrolled usage can lead to legal and security concerns.
“To truly see the full benefits of virtualisation, it is critical to have the right processes and tools in place,” Bassadien said. “That's why management tools are so important - they are the glue that holds it all together and helps deliver the real benefits of virtualisation.”
Hyper-V can be downloaded via http://www.microsoft.com/Hyper-V. For more information, visit http://www.microsoft.com/virtualisation.
Share