Virtual Server Application Windows: Tens of thousands of businesses are using virtualization software to consolidate multiple operating systems and applications on Intel processor-based servers. In the process, they are simplifying their datacenters, improving utilization, reducing total costs, improving security, and accelerating new system and application deployments. Learn about today’s leading options and about critical new developments, such as Intel Virtualization Technology, that are delivering better value today, and laying a foundation for future innovation.

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Tens of thousands of businesses are using virtualization software to consolidate multiple operating systems and applications on Intel® processor-based servers. In the process, they are simplifying their datacenters, improving utilization, reducing total costs, improving security, and accelerating new system and application deployments. Learn about today’s leading options and about critical new developments, such as Intel® Virtualization Technology, that are delivering better value today, and laying a foundation for future innovation.

High Value through Affordable Consolidation

Over the years, businesses have watched their data-centers expand to include hundreds or even thousands of systems running diverse operating systems and applications. As server numbers have grown, so has the cost of operations, including people, space, power and cooling. Server consolidation is a key strategy for reducing these costs and today’s virtualization software solutions make it easy to run multiple applications safely and securely on a single Intel processor-based serve. Companies are using virtualization software associated management applications to:

• Carve each physical server into as many as 30 virtual servers, each capable of hosting its own OS and application stack (Figure 1).
• Deploy and manage physical and virtual servers efficiently from a common interface.
• Allocate server resources (CPU, memory and I/O) dynamically, and move running applications, work-loads and sessions very quickly from one virtual server to another. Initially this capability was used for zero-downtime maintenance. It is now beginning to be used as a way of automatically provisioning new capacity when a system fails or workloads threaten to exceed existing resources.

Of course, planning is important in a successful consolidation project. For most organizations, virtualization involves new products and technologies, as well as new IT procedures and usage models. Decision-making policies often have to change as well, since individual physical servers may be shared among multiple business units.

However, the potential cost savings are substantial. A study conducted by VMware documents the following customer savings through virtualization and consolidation:

• Hardware: 28-53 percent savings
• Operations: 72-79 percent savings
• Total: 29-64 percent savings.

Not surprisingly, such savings have led to rapid adoption. Gartner reports that 60 percent of surveyed companies are in the process of consolidating their infrastructure; and 28 percent are planning or considering consolidation (Figure 2). In short, consolidation through virtualization has already become a mainstream IT strategy that delivers fundamental advantages in datacenter efficiency.

Today’s Leading Solutions

The following are a few of the most important software options for virtualization and consolidation on Intel processor-based servers.