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Comprehensive virtualization solutions

Successfully managing multiple sites and an array of faculty, staff, and student needs is becoming increasingly difficult as budgets decrease and equipment and facilities age. Use virtualization to help cut costs, increase efficiency, and adapt quickly and automatically to changing requirements.

Choose from:

• Hardware virtualization. Run multiple operating systems (for example, Linux and Windows) on a single server.
• Application virtualization. Rapidly deploy applications, even those that conflict with each other, with low administrative overhead.
• Presentation virtualization. Execute an application on one computer and present it with another.
• Desktop virtualization. Run multiple operating systems(OS) on a single desktop. Centrally execute Windows 7 in virtual machines (VMs) running on servers.
• Virtualization management. Manage your entire virtual and physical infrastructures with a unified set of tools.

All the products and technologies we use in virtualization solutions have a common, policy-based management system that helps to ease the load on system managers.

A better way to build

Traditionally, all layers of computing environments—hardware, OS, applications, and storage—were static, configured to interact properly and to support a specific computing solution. Components were installed to particular computers, resulting in a tightly bound system that often made adapting to change difficult. Creating new capability entailed procuring and configuring the hardware, software, and interfaces—which could be costly and time intensive.

Virtualization frees each element of this system from the other. In a virtualized stack, each element is logically isolated and independent. By separating the different layers in the logic stack, you have greater flexibility and more simplified change management because you don’t configure each element to get them to work together. Computing components become instantly available. This makes it easier to add, update, and support all the infrastructure elements which creates the foundation for utility computing—and a much more nimble organization.

Key benefits

With a comprehensive virtualization strategy you can:

• Help reduce your total cost of ownership (TCO) and increase your return on investment (ROI) across your entire computing infrastructure.
• Turn computing assets into on-demand services to improve your business agility.
• Maintain "one application, one server" while reducing physical server sprawl through server consolidation and provisioning.
• Provide optimal desktop solutions for different user needs while still meeting IT requirements.
• Centrally provision and manage both physical and virtual resources.
• Help ensure effective business continuity and disaster recovery by compartmentalizing workflows and maintaining failover plans.
• Rapidly model and test different environments without significant expansion of hardware and physical resources.
• Improve security by isolating computing layers and minimizing the chance of widespread failure.

Customer success case studies

University of Miami cuts costs, improves performance, and speeds provisioning with virtualization.
UM needed a way to cut costs, improve server performance and management, and accelerate virtual machine provisioning. They deployed Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008. It uses System Center products to manage, monitor, and back up physical and virtual machines.

"Microsoft virtualization solutions cost us 60 percent less than VMware. They help us save money today while giving us the capabilities needed to operate even more efficiently and cost-effectively as time goes on." Walter Bechtel Assistant Vice President, Information Technology, University of Miami

Volusia County School District uses virtualization to improve IT and cut costs during budget crisis.
To reduce costs, the school district’s IT department wanted to cut its server acquisition rate and consolidate existing servers—while continuing efforts to improve the quality of education. The department used the Windows Server 2008 Enterprise operating system with Hyper-V virtualization technology to consolidate 70 servers to 6, a 90 percent reduction. It also uses Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 for easier server management. With Hyper-V, the district centralized its servers and expects to reduce server acquisition by about 80 percent annually.

"We needed to be more responsive to the needs of the district, which meant being able to deliver applications and services much faster. " Ken Richmond, Manager of System Engineering, Volusia County Schools

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center reduces costs and increases application availability with virtualization.
Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) embraced virtualization to preserve limited data center space, lower costs, and better utilize servers. The organization adopted Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 and created 150 virtual machines, but it still could not run multithreaded applications or implement clusters using virtual machines. In early 2008, DHMC joined the Microsoft Virtualization Rapid Deployment Program to get an early look at the new Hyper-V technology. Hyper-V provides increased application performance and clustering for high availability, and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 simplifies server management.

Educators in the Kentucky Department of Education aim to improve education and trim servers by 60 percent using virtualization.
The Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) was running out of data center space and wanted to reduce power and management costs. In early 2008, KDE joined the Microsoft Virtualization Rapid Deployment Program to evaluate Hyper-V technology and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007. The use of System Center Virtual Machine Manager speeds server provisioning, decommissioning, and management.

Next steps

• Find a Microsoft partner to help you plan out and create a virtualization solution.
• Contact us to learn more about virtualization solutions and how they could help you.