Empower Information Systems

Introduction

Virtualization is a key enabling technology that can be leveraged to achieve business benefits. Virtualization technology enables customers to run multiple operating systems concurrently on a single physical server, where each of the operating systems runs as a self-contained computer.
Today there is more pressure than ever on IT with shrinking budgets, rapidly changing technologies and increasing security issues. As companies grow, their IT infrastructures grow along with them. But more often that not, the pace of that growth is uneven, driven as much by the conditions under which they operate as the model they aspire to. IT is being increasingly viewed as a key value generator for most organizations and the focus in shifting from merely keeping the business up and running to an engine to drive responsiveness and agility across the organization.

Driving agility across IT, reducing costs and management complexity all need to happen in an integrated fashion. Microsoft’s Dynamic System Initiative (DSI) leverages virtualization as a key pillar to address these business concerns and closely ties with adding intelligence into the applications and at the management layer to enable the vision for self-managing dynamic systems across the application lifecycle and across all roles within the organization. Virtualization as a technology has the capability to address some of these business concerns and needs to be part of the overall IT strategy.
Today, Microsoft® Virtual Server 2005 R2 hosted on the Windows Server™ 2003 operating system delivers the capabilities necessary to carry out time and cost saving tasks through virtualization technology in an enterprise-ready computing environment with advanced levels of scalability, manageability and availability. Microsoft’s approach to integrate the management capabilities into existing System Center family of products enables customers to manage their physical and virtual infrastructures in an integrated manner and ease the adoption of the technology.

Windows Server virtualization, as a part of Windows Server “Longhorn”, take a big step forward in bringing some of the advanced capabilities of virtualization to bear and providing customers with a scalable, secure and highly available virtualization platform. As the platform technologies advance, it is important to ensure that overall management continues to be simplified. Microsoft System CenterTM Virtual Machine Manager – the management application for virtualized data center provides an unified, integrated management solution as a part of the System Center family and helps to drive management costs down as the IT environment becomes more agile.

Virtualization Benefits

• Efficient use of hardware resources.
  Virtual machine isolation and resource management enable multiple workloads to coexist on fewer servers, allowing organizations to make more efficient use of their hardware resources. Windows Server virtualization, a part of Windows Server “Longhorn” and Virtual Server 2005 R2 with Windows Server 2003 provides the broadest interoperability with existing storage, network and security infrastructures. With advancements in server hardware with 64-bit technology, multi-processor and multi-core systems, virtualization provides an easy way to optimize hardware utilization.
• Enhanced administrative productivity and responsiveness.
  Windows Server virtualization enables IT organizations to enhance their administrative productivity and rapidly deploy new servers to address changing business needs. Easy integration into existing server management tools, such as System Center Operations Manager and sophisticated tools such as System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) facilitates management of Windows virtual machines. The ability to consolidate workloads in a hardware agnostic environment and an integrated physical and virtual IT management framework enables administrators to lower operational costs and create more agile datacenters.
• Well-supported server virtualization solution.
  Virtual Server 2005 R2 is extensively tested and supported by Microsoft in conjunction with its server operating systems and applications. Hence Virtual Server 2005 R2 is a well-supported virtualization solution both within Microsoft and across the broader ISV community. With Windows Server virtualization being an integral component of Windows Server “Longhorn” and Virtual Machine Manager being part of the System Center family, you can be assured that the upcoming virtualization solutions from Microsoft will also be extensively tested and well-supported. The use of a common virtual hard disk (VHD) format ensures investment protection for all the virtual machines created for Virtual Server with a transparent migration path to Windows Server virtualization.
• A key deliverable for Microsoft’s Dynamic Systems Initiative. A
  s a part of the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), Microsoft’s industry wide effort to dramatically simplify and automate how businesses design, deploy, and operate IT systems to enable self-managing dynamic systems, Microsoft is providing businesses with tools to help them more flexibly utilize their hardware resources. Virtual Server 2005 R2, Windows Server virtualization, and Virtual Machine Manager are key examples of how Microsoft is continuing to deliver technology those results in improved server hardware utilization and provides for more flexible provisioning of data center resources.

If you would like to see a demonstration of virtualization technology, click here.