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Virtualization saves money. The more extensively you implement virtualization, the more savings you can realize. An end-to-end virtualization strategy can maximize your investments and lower the cost of ownership across your IT infrastructure.

The most common way, to date, to improve TCO is by virtualizing hardware and consolidating servers. This lowers equipment costs and electrical consumption for server power and cooling. And by implementing a comprehensive management strategy, you can dramatically cut the costs of managing both virtual and physical assets.

But the TCO benefits of holistic virtualization extend beyond server assets. Presentation and/or application virtualization can enable applications written on older operating platforms to be supported in a current OS without time-consuming and costly software code revisions. Even better, by virtualizing applications and delivering them on demand to desktops or servers, application-to-application conflicts are nearly eliminated. This significantly reduces the regression testing required for deployment, saving labor and associated costs.

Microsoft Virtualization Solutions for TCO

Microsoft has a host of products that maximize ROI across the infrastructure. Use Hyper-V as part of Windows Server 2008 to consolidate servers and improve server infrastructure planning and agility while saving time and reducing costs, and Microsoft Application Virtualization to run more applications on a single server, increasing utilization. Implement the System Center family of management products to streamline virtualized and physical server management, simplify change management, and minimize downtime and lost revenue from lost data and files. For application-related savings, use Microsoft Terminal Services to consolidate applications and data in the data center, Virtual PC to run legacy applications not compatible with desktop OS's on the desktop, and Microsoft Application Virtualization to slash costly compatibility testing and application-related helpdesk support calls.

Use the Microsoft Integrated Virtualization ROI Tool to estimate your return on investment in Microsoft virtualization tools

To learn more about how Microsoft virtualization solutions can improve your return on investment, use the Microsoft Integrated Virtualization ROI Tool. This ROI tool, developed independently by leading ROI tool developer Alinean, Inc., helps you examine current production server, development / QA lab, desktop and application virtualization opportunities, quantifying the potential savings, service level and agility benefits, investment and ROI for implementing Microsoft Integrated Virtualization solutions. For help with the ROI tool, view the online training session.

Flexible Server-based Virtualization Licensing

Licensing Microsoft products for a virtual computing environment is essentially the same as it is for a physical environment. You can apply the same Microsoft licensing models, for instance, server and Client Access Licenses (CAL) licensing, to your virtual environment.

Microsoft customers can also benefit from unique license rights for server virtualization products. These rights are designed to help you take advantage of existing and future virtualization technologies.

Microsoft’s new server-based virtualization licensing offers enhanced flexibility and value:

Licensing by active instance—Create and store an unlimited number of instances, and pay only for the maximum number of running instances at any given time.
Expanded license rights—Move active instances from one licensed server to another licensed server without limitation, with no added costs or administrative overhead.
Greater flexibility—With Microsoft Server products that are currently licensed by processor, such as Microsoft SQL Server, you can run multiple virtual instances (VMs) on a machine, licensing each instance by the number of virtual processors being used.

Here are a few scenarios that demonstrate how to apply Microsoft licensing rights to maximize the value of Windows Server virtualization:

One Server/
One VM 10 Servers/100
VMs Hosting/Regional
Offices

Scenario 1 - One Server/One VM

A small, budget-conscious organization or branch office wants to add one or two virtual machines (VMs) to a single server, and doesn't foresee the need for additional physical servers.

Best-Bet Solutions:
- Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition with Hyper-V virtualization
- System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (requires Software Assurance)

Rationale:
This is ideal for smaller organizations or branch offices that only require one server for their entire workload, but who might also have a finicky legacy application that tends to destabilize neighboring applications. With Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition, customers can acquire a single license and can run their entire workload on a single server while “offloading” their legacy workload to a VM using Windows Server 2008's built-in Hyper-V role and functionality to achieve application isolation.

From a management standpoint, we recommend System Center Server Management Enterprise, which includes System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

The customer would license Client Access Licenses the same way as in a physical environment.

Scenario 2 - 10 Servers/100 VMs

This organization is focused on addressing management costs and wants to streamline their existing virtualization infrastructure which includes 10 servers with 100 virtual machines (VMs).

Best-Bet Solutions:
- System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise

Rationale:
This is the most cost-effective way to manage 10 physical servers managing 10 VMs each. Both Hyper-V and Virtual Server 2005 R2 can be managed using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), which is a part of the System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (SMSE). SMSE is licensed per managed host and includes Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), Data Protection Manager, Configuration Manager and Operations Manager.

VMM simplifies and streamlines the management and deployment of VMs. New systems can be configured and deployed with System Center Configuration Manager, and data can be backed up and restored with System Center Data Protection Manager. The System Center Operations Manager provides a comprehensive management solution for both virtual and physical machines. All three of these products are also included in the Enterprise Management Suite. By using Microsoft System Center for virtualization management, the company can leverage existing System Center expertise to manage entire virtual and physical infrastructures with a unified set of tools.

Scenario 3 - Hosting/Regional Offices

This company, with no prior Windows Server licenses, will be hosting 20 instances of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for 20 regional offices located throughout the country. It wants to move to a datacenter hosting model.

Best-Bet Solutions:
- Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition
- System Center Server Management Suite Enterprise (requires Software Assurance)
- SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition

Rationale:
For the server operating system, we recommend Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, which is licensed by physical host and provides the Windows Server usage rights for up to four virtual machines (VMs). This company could opt for the Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Edition instead, which is licensed on a per-processor basis and provides Windows Server usage rights for an unlimited number of VMs on that host. This would increase the total cost. However, depending on the company's plans for adding future VMs, this may be a smart strategic investment.

For the database, we recommend licensing SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition on a per-processor basis because it provides an unlimited number of VMs per licensed processor. From a management standpoint, we recommend System Center Server Management Enterprise, which includes System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

The customer would license Client Access Licenses the same way as in a physical environment

About Microsoft Virtualization