Virtual Environment

MSI Systems Integrators in Bloomington, an information technology services company, recently was called on by a client suffering from a sizeable space problem. It seems that the company was literally bumping into the boundaries of its filled-to-capacity data center, which housed roughly 200 servers. “It was to the point that they were going to have to expand the data center,” recalls Jim Rice, MSI’s principal solution architect. To do so, he explains, the firm would have to build more physical space, increase power capacity, and install a new, higher-performing HVAC system to counteract the substantial heat generated by the hardware. The price tag on such a project could fall between $3 and $5 million, Rice notes: “Building data centers is not cheap.”

MSI reviewed the firm’s existing server infrastructure, which was populated by X86 servers—the microprocessor architecture first developed by Intel that now dominates the desktop, portable computer, and small-server markets. MSI discovered that its client was using only 7 to 10 percent of its overall server capacity. Rice notes that the firm’s ankle-high utilization rate “is a little bit higher than what you’ll find at most companies,” whose servers commonly operate at about 5 percent capacity. Even so, the company was a prime candidate for server virtualization, which enables a single server to run several “virtual” machines with heterogeneous operating systems, be they Microsoft, Linux, Novell, DOS, or others. In short, you can equip one server to do the work previously done by several.

"There is a lot of inefficiency out there."

“They virtualized and went from [a couple] hundred physical servers down to about 20, each running about 8 to 10 virtual machines,” Rice says. “We were able to reduce that physical infrastructure dramatically. So, basically, they avoided the build-out of a new data center.”

Plus, with a smaller data-center footprint and fewer physical servers to care for, the company’s energy consumption and IT maintenance costs also will recede. “As a byproduct of quantity, you’re going to have more problems with 10 servers than you will with one or two servers,” says Jaime Gmach, president and CEO of Hamel-based Evolving Solutions, Inc., an IT consultancy that addresses storage and business continuity issues. “And one [full-time equivalent] person can only manage so many servers. So you can either redeploy that personnel or get more done without hiring more people. That’s a big deal for IT departments.”