1-page Solution Brief - Posted 6/16/2008
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Medical Center Reduces Costs, Improves Application Performance with Virtualization
“We are saving up to $3,700 per guest server through lower hardware and software costs. That doesn’t include electrical and cooling savings and the cost avoidance of expanding our data center.”
—Robert McShinsky, Senior Systems Administrator, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center
Business Needs
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) embraced virtualization three years ago to preserve limited data center space, lower costs, and better utilize servers. The center adopted Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 in 2005 and created 150 virtual machines. Still, DHMC could not run multithreaded applications or implement clusters using virtual machines.
Solution
In early 2008, DHMC joined the Microsoft Virtualization Rapid Deployment Program to get an early look at the new Hyper-V™ technology. Hyper-V would provide DHMC with increased application performance and clustering for high availability. Adding Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 would simplify server management.
DHMC expects to create upwards of 36 virtual guests per host server using Hyper-V and will soon convert 125 servers to virtual machines to consolidate server workloads.
Benefits
- DHMC saves approximately U.S.$3,700 per guest server; with 36 guests per host, that’s a savings of $133,200 per server.
- The center anticipates a reduction of an additional 170 physical servers due to performance gains with Hyper-V.
- DHMC can now assign multiple processors to demanding applications that previously could not run on virtual machines.
- Using Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, DHMC enjoys simplified virtual machine deployment and cluster management.
