SERVER
VIRTUALIZATION
Jonas Bowersock & Greg Parmer
Alabama Cooperative Extension System – Auburn
University

Where We Were!
2
2 Dozen+ Physical Servers
Aging Hardware
Server Hosted Storage
Inadequate Server Room
 Electricity
 PhysicalSpace
 Connectivity
 A/C
Rising Backup Costs

Some Unexpected Help
3
Storage Space Needed
 College Of Ag
 Paperless System
 Project Funds
Central Campus Server Room
 Redundant Network
 Redundant A/C
 Backup Generator
 Secure Access
 Video Monitoring

A New Vision
4
Product Pros Cons
Microsoft Virtual Familiarity Not For Enterprise
PC Free
Easy
Microsoft Virtual Familiarity Slow
Server Low Cost Clunky Cluster
Central
Management
VMware Free Not For Enterprise
Fast
ESX Fast Cost
Central
Management
Support

The Sales Pitch
5
 Environment
 Power
 A/C
 Space
 Ease of Administration
 Reduce Operating Expenses
 Minimize Lost Revenue

Practical Reasons
6
 Remote Management
 Power Down
 Adjust Hardware
 Flexibility
 Create machines/clones
 Converter
 Recovery
 Snapshots
 Restore Entire Machine
 Redundancy/Uptime
 Clustering
 Load Balancing
 Fix Physical Hardware
 VMotion

Where We Are!
7
VMware ESX
 Central Console
 4 Physical VM Hosts
 95GHz
 64GB RAM
 32 Processors
 19 Virtual Machines
 2 Equallogic SANs
 16TB RAW Space
 Central Console
 2 Cisco Gigabit Switches (SAN)
10 other Physical (work in progress)

Demo
8
 Equallogic SAN Console
 Virtual Infrastructure Client
 VMware Converter

Questions?
9