Virtualizaton: Better Resource Utilization and reduced Total Cost of Ownership

A virtual machine is like running a PC on a PC. You can run Linux on Windows XP or run Windows Server 2003 on a Windows XP system, as simple as that. A VM [Virtual Machine], enables IT professionals and developers to test and evaluate their applications and other tools without having a need to install it on separate physical servers or systems. Imagine a developer who would like to have 20 desktops to connect to his centralized application and test it. Under ideal conditions, he should have 20 desktops and 1 server or a high end system, on which he will install his application, then connect the desktops to the server [over the network] and perform his tests. This translates into hardware worth 21 systems.

Using virtualization, you can quickly deploy these desktops [as Virtual Machines] on a system with powerful hardware and test your applications. Effectively, instead of spending 21 x $1000 = $21,000 [assuming each system to be $1000], you consider spending $10,000 to buy a powerful, multi-processor system with more RAM and it will suffice your testing requirements. This approach saves over 50% in hardware and testing costs. Not only that, you will also be able to install hundreds of virtual machines on a single server depending on the hardware you are going to use.

In bigger organizations with several hundreds of servers, virtual machines or server virtualization can significantly reduces hardware costs associated with testing and deployment. You can leverage virtual machines instead of traditional hardware to cut down on cost incurred towards spending on hardware.

Main advantages of virtualization are:

1. Cost savings on Hardware and Software - Since you are running your infrastructure in virtualized environment, you not only save on hardware but also save a lot of money in software licenses.
2. Less downtime - It’s very easy to move an application from one server to another. In an event of a scheduled maintenance or unexpected hardware failure, an application from one virtual machine server can easily be moved to another server and the application will start running right away.
3. System Management and Administration - Since it’s very easy to manage the deployment and recovery of virtual machines, it not only saves lot of time for system administrators but also that IT Managers who will have a simple environment to manage.
4. Effective utilization of resources - If 10 servers had average CPU utilization of 5%, with server consolidation the effective utilization can be increased to 80%.

Let’s look at some example that will demonstrate advantages of using virtualization over extra hardware.

Example #1 - Company ABC Corp, uses 10 servers to host 10 different applications and each server having its own database instance as well. Each of these server has 1 processor, 1GB RAM and 80GB Hard Disk. The maximum utilization on any server, at any given point of time is not more than 10%. If they consider 1 server with 4GB RAM, dual-processors and virtual machine based solution, it will not only bring down the number of systems but also increase the utilization from 10% to a little over 80%. What do they save? Well, they save on hardware cost, management, hardware support contracts and overall they achieve effective utilization of their resources.

Example #2 - Company ABCD uses 100 servers for its intranet based applications. There are 20 servers running only databases, 20 of them used for backup [NAS] and storing application related data and 60 servers for running only applications. These servers have variety of hardware including servers with 1GB RAM, 1 processor and two 80GB hard-disks. Consolidating them onto less number of servers with virtual machines will bring down on hardware costs. The company can put all the databases on 2-4 high end servers within virtual machines, instead of running applications on 60 servers they can put all of them on 10-12 high end servers and instead of 20 servers dedicated for backup, they can buy 3-4 servers with more hard disk capacity. Imagine the savings in hardware costs they might achieve!

Virtualization can be used for various purposes. Some worth mentioning are software virtualization, application virtualization, server virtualization and NAS virtualization.

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