Virtual Infrastructure Design & Integration
It's 4:30 on a Friday, and it's your anniversary! You have reservations for dinner that were made two weeks ago, and a babysitter lined up. All you need to do is get out of the office on time. Shouldn't be that hard right?
Your phone rings.
The team lead for the new CRM project has an urgent request. They have discovered yet another issue with the database environment and he needs another server built as soon as possible to run some tests over the weekend, and he needs another gig of RAM added to the two machines he already has.
If you are to avoid your wife's wrath you now have 27 minutes to build and deploy a dual processor server with 2 Gig of RAM running Windows 2003 (fully patched of course), with SQL 2003 and a small gaggle of other applications... AND increase the RAM by 1 Gig in the two servers he is using today! Nice of him to give you some notice.
Are you in trouble? Not at all.
You open up your virtual server management console and select the templates icon. You now have a choice of pre built templates that cover the entire range of servers that exist within your production and development environments. By simply clicking on the appropriate template and selecting "deploy server from template" you kick off the process of creating a new virtual machine. From the same window you select the two servers he is currently using and shut them down. Adding ram is just a simple matter of opening their properties window, increasing the memory allocation from 1 Gig to 2 for each server and then rebooting the server. By the time that is done, your template has been deployed and your new server is starting to boot for the first time, Fully patched, all applications loaded, ready to run. The next call has him telling you how much of a magician you are and that they really should be giving you a raise! You're out the door and in your car by 5:01pm.
So now you're at the restaurant. A swanky little French place downtown, the kind of place that when you order water, it comes in a bottle. You can't even pronounce the menu, never mind know what to order. BUT, this is where she wanted to go! As Francois leans over to explain to you that "soup du jour" means soup of the day, your blackberry starts to vibrate.
What now?
It's an automated email telling you that the fans just died in one of your DL380's named ESX_PROD_01 and the temperature is starting to rise! That box is running four virtual machines on it, a domain controller, a file/print server, a Citrix Metaframe server, and one of your exchange 2003 servers! You confidently order the soup of the day (what is "Potage aux Fines Quenelles" anyway?) and relax. When the next email arrives, it is exactly what you expected, a notification that all the virtual machines running on ESX_PROD_01 have been moved to ESX_PROD_02 with no service interruption. You are also copied on the email from your on call team saying that they have powered down ESX_PROD_01 and that on Monday they will be replacing the fans and doing another hot migration to move the servers back.
Sound like fiction? It isn't.
Virtualization is changing the IT world today. Everything described above is real, functional and deployed at 1000's of customers today. Not only can virtualization allow you to save money on hardware by providing amazing server consolidation, it will allow your organization to manage, deploy and recover complex server environments like never before.
Without virtualization you would have been in deep yogurt, but with a virtual infrastructure you can now relax and enjoy your beef broth with dumplings.
