As data mounts, small and midsize businesses cope with a sprawling and often costly infrastructure. This paper shows how these businesses can benefit by implementing a virtualization strategy. A well-executed strategy can result in fewer, better-utilized servers, rapid provisioning of servers, affordable business continuity, and more streamlined, efficient management.
Virtualization strategy for mid-sized businessesIBM and VMware virtualization bene?ts for mid-sized businesses
April 2009April 2009
Virtualization strategy for mid-sized
businessesReduce cost, improve service and manage risk with virtualization
Virtualization of business applications allows IT operations in companies of all sizes toreduce costs, improve IT services and manage risk. The most dramatic cost savingsare the result of reducing hardware, space and energy usage, as well as the productiv-ity gains that also lead to cost savings.Service improvements include high availability of x86 application workloads and rapidprovisioning of new services to meet the dynamic needs of the business. Virtualizationcan also mitigate risk to business operations. For example, when faults are detectedor server load is too high, workloads can be moved out of harm's way.This paper shows how mid-sized companies can bene?t by implementing a virtualiza-tion strategy. Unique, industry-leading capabilities from IBMŽ, IntelŽ and VMwareŽare highlighted.Virtualization now provides a variety of capabilities and ROI bene?ts for mid-sizedbusinesses that helps them keep their competitive edge in the marketplace.
Small and medium-sized companies often struggle to Virtualization began on mainframes 40 years ago and hascope with server sprawl, cost control, unwieldy manage- grown on x86 servers over the past decade to the pointment of the IT infrastructure and a lack of responsiveness where it's a robust, mature technology with VMware. Theto dynamic business requirements. adoption of virtualization on x86 platforms provides fourbene?ts to mid-sized businesses:Studies indicate that approximately 20 percent of servers ?today are 'virtualized' and that number is projected to dou- Fewer, better utilized serversble over the next two years. Another study predicts the ? Rapid provisioning of serversnumber of logical servers generated on virtualized servers ? Affordable business continuitywill surpass the number of non-virtualized physical ? Streamlined, efficient managementservers by 2010.By implementing virtualization on x86 platforms, each In these challenging times, mid-sized businesses need tophysical server can host multiple application workloads, simplify IT infrastructure and reduce costs. Yet, witheach with its own operating system in an independent diverse storage, server and network requirements, andvirtual machine (VM). This consolidation capability can often with limited physical space to store and manage sys-greatly increase server utilization and ease deployment tems, their options can be limited by both the amount ofof systems. available physical space and budget concerns. Where vir-tualization can offer small and mid-sized businesses signi?-Virtualization has become a critical IT strategy for small cant bene?ts is not simply in server consolidation, but alsoand mid-sized businesses. In addition to cost savings, vir- with affordable business continuity.tualization with IBM and VMware addresses business con-tinuity issues and allows IT managers to: IBM, Intel and VMware are simplifying the transition to virtualization for small and mid-sized businesses with ? Eliminate planned downtime, for hardware maintenance, a powerful, end-to-end virtualization solution: for example IBM BladeCenterŽ S chassis and BladeCenter HS22? Reduce unplanned downtime, leading to higher system blade and SAN storage in a single chassis-as well asavailability high performance IBM System x3550 M2 and x3650 M2rack servers. All feature Intel XeonŽ 5500 series proces-? Test and implement disaster recovery plans sors and are available with VMware ESXi embedded? Protect data, including nondisruptive backup and restore hypervisor.processes? Balance real-time workloadsVirtualization strategy for mid-sized businesses
What is virtualization? What is virtualization for mid-sized businesses?
Virtualization is technology that Today, a data center or computer room, regardless of the size of the organization,allows application workloads to be must be carefully planned and managed. It must provide the essential energy tomanaged independent of host hard- power servers, cool them, and expand capacity over time without running out ofware. Multiple applications canshare a single, physical server. room or overwhelming the power and cooling capacity.Workloads can be moved from onehost to another without downtime. Virtualization technolog... [download for more]
