Customer Case Study
Rackforce Networks
9/28/2007
Fast-Growing Hosting Service Provider Centralizes and Simplifies Server Management
RackForce was the first hosting service provider to bring Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 technology to market. However, with hundreds of customers and an array of server nodes, managing the company's growing virtual environment was a challenge. Enterprise-ready and easy to administer, Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager lets RackForce centralize and vastly improve virtual machine management. The company can streamline server management and maintain an average of four customers to each physical server, rather than the one-to-one ratio previously supported. System Center Virtual Machine Manager enables RackForce to easily identify which servers have capacity for additional workload, and it significantly simplifies physical to virtual machine migrations. RackForce expects to be able to cut maintenance and provisioning time in half with System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
Industry: Hosting and Application Service Providers
Size: Small, 23 employees
Country: Canada  Canada

Customer Profile
http://www.rackforce.com
Based in Western Canada, RackForce Networks Inc. is one of North America's fastest-growing advanced infrastructure and hosting service providers, hosting more than 100,000 Web sites in the world.
Business Situation
RackForce was the first hosting service provider to bring Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 to market. However, with hundreds of customers and an array of server nodes, managing the environment was quite challenging.
Solution
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager is providing RackForce with a much more efficient way to provision and manage virtual environments and is enabling it to improve service for its global customer base.
Benefit
  • Streamlined server management
  • Allowed easy identification of available servers
  • Simplified physical-to-virtual migrations
  • Increased provisioning efficiencies
  • Improved customer service
Software
  • Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007
  • Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007
  • Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2
Quote
"We hadn't used System Center software before, but we found it easy to move from Linux to Virtual Server and adopt Virtual Machine Manager because Virtual Machine Manager is so well designed, enterprise-ready, and easy to administer."
James Bothe, System Administrator, RackForce