In the past few years, virtualization became a term that has been talked about a lot in connection with most ICT projects that have been implemented in the Czech Republic. Products for server virtualization, arrangements of high application accessibility or efficient use and management of desktops are developing constantly and their use in various environments provides substantial reduction of acquisition and running costs. The DATASYS company has been a part of this development for more that 5 years now.
With each project, we always do our best to provide a quality implementation of a quality product. Only this combination allows us to fully satisfy our customers. To meet this simple rule we follow two basic objectives. To provide a team of experienced, skilled and creative people to work on the realization of every project and to find a suitable and tested product for a given solution.
On the long-term basis we have had good experience with virtualization products of the VMware and Microsoft companies. With its product portfolio, the VMware company is a clear market leader and it has been setting trends that influence the entire industry for a long time. Virtualization instruments from the Microsoft company can be a great alternative for many customers, since they bring a perfect price/performance ratio for smaller-scale implementations.
Virtualization can be used to solve problems for a broad range of customers from small businesses to multinational companies and state administration offices. These are the basic areas:
Server environment consolidation
The basic and most frequently used scheme for virtualization. It is based on two facts that are typical for most companies in the Czech Republic and in other countries as well.
With a progressive digitalization and massive use of information technologies by a broad spectrum of companies the number of application and servers that need to be accessible is increasing as well. At the same time, the standard x86 platform servers are overdesigned as for their performance for most applications used. Several audits that we have realized have shown that the average server processors utilization is in the range of several percent.
The solution of these problems is server consolidation using virtualization. The virtualization allows us to easily ensure simultaneous operation of several independent operating systems (and applications) on one physical server. This solution brings substantial savings both in acquisition costs - smaller amount of servers and HW items generally is needed to secure the same number of operating systems - and in running costs. There are savings in servers powering and cooling, in the number of racks and space in the server room, in the servicing costs for HW etc.
Business Continuity
However, mere consolidation is a long way from being the only possibility provided by virtualization. On the contrary - by separating a virtual server from the actual HW we can get a broad range of other advantages. Virtualization allows us to easily ensure high accessibility of all servers, to build independent data centers and - last but not least - it provides us with a very efficient way of backing-up. Thus we are talking about increasing business continuity, i.e. ensuring the accessibility of services with minimal (or none at all) blackout in case of HW malfunction or natural disaster. The advantage of virtualization when compared to standard solutions is its independence on specific applications and also the significantly lower acquisition and running costs of such solution.
Virtual LAB
This model is suitable for all organizations that perform their own development or application testing. It can be used with in companies that run two environments simultaneously - production and testing, i.e. SAP.
The basic feature of the virtual machines used in this concept is the possibility to make snapshots. A snapshot - an image of the current state - is a frozen, exactly defined configuration status of a given server (or several servers) that you can return to very quickly.
Virtual desktop
In all the previous scenarios we have used virtualization for servers and server applications. However, the virtualization concept can be used for client stations as well. In the client stations virtualization solutions the user machines are operated on servers with a great number of virtual PCs on one physical server (usually 40 - 80/1). Users connect to their virtualized PC using a thin client or a classic PC. The basic advantages of a virtual desktop are:
- Client environment unification
- Users can connect to their virtual desktop from anywhere (also from the Internet)
- The system ensures high accessibility
- Sensitive data remains in the company's server room
Of course, the aforementioned scenarios and virtualization uses can be combined and supplemented arbitrarily. They all provide high flexibility and easy environment extensibility. If you virtualize your environment, you will no longer be dependent on one HW supplier, the environment can be extended with further servers without the necessity of downtimes.
DATASYS is a technological partner of the VMware (VMware Authorized Consultant) and Microsoft (Microsoft Gold Partner) companies. Thanks to both partnerships we can offer virtualization solutions with high added value. Solutions that lower costs and provide efficient IT functioning:
References
- Regional office of the Liberec region - virtualization, backup, c. 80 virtual machines on the Windows and Linux platforms
- Aviation repair shops Malešice - virtualization, backup, Exchange, c. 40 virtual machines in 3 individual geographical locations
- General Directorate of Customs - virtualization, Disaster Recovery, SQL, c. 50 virtual machines + 4 xMSCS