this content is adapted from the small business …index-of.es/z0ro-repository-3/the smb%92s guide...

2 What is Virtualization, and Why Should You Care?

4 Server Virtualization Guide for Small Business

6 Why SMBs Should Consider Server Virtualization

8 6 Tips to Better Small Business Server Virtualization

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This content is adapted from the Small Business Computing website. Contributors: Laurie McCabe, Jennifer L. Schiff, Drew Robb and Nathan Coutinho.

The SMB’s Guide to Wireless Networking

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2 The SMB’s Guide to Server Virtualization a QuinStreet Small Business eBook. © 2011 QuinStreet, Inc.Back to Contents

The SMB’s Guide to Server Virtualization

hen people talk about virtualization, they’re usually referring to server virtualization, which means partitioning one physical server into several virtual servers, or machines. Each

virtual machine can interact independently with other devices, applications, data and users as though it were a separate physical resource.

Different virtual machines can run different operating systems and multiple applications while sharing the resources of a single physical computer. And, because each virtual machine is isolated from other virtualized machines, if one crashes, it doesn’t affect the others. Hypervisor software is the secret sauce that makes virtualization possible. This software, also known as a virtualization manager, sits between the hardware and the operating system, and decouples the operating system and applications from the hardware. The hypervisor assigns the amount of access that the operating systems and applications have with the processor and other hardware resources, such as memory and disk input/output.

In addition to using virtualization technology to partition one machine into several virtual machines, you can also use virtualization solutions to combine multiple physical resources into a single virtual resource. A good example of this is storage virtualization, where multiple network storage resources are pooled into what appears as a single storage device for easier and more efficient management of these resources. Other types of virtualization you may hear about include:

• Network virtualization splits available bandwidth in a network into independent channels that can be assigned to specific servers or devices.

What is Virtualization, and Why Should You Care?By Laurie McCabe

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• Application virtualization separates applications from the hardware and the operating system, putting them in a container that can be relocated without disrupting other systems.

• Desktop virtualization enables a centralized server to deliver and manage individualized desktops remotely. This gives users a full client experience, but lets IT staff provision, manage, upgrade and patch them virtually, instead of physically.

Virtualization was first introduced in the 1960s by IBM to boost utilization of large, expensive mainframe systems by partitioning them into logical, separate virtual machines that could run multiple applications and processes at the same time. In the 1980s and 1990s, this centrally shared mainframe model gave way to a distributed, client-server computing model, in which many low-cost x86 servers and desktops independently run specific applications.



What to Consider

Since virtualization makes it easy to set up new virtual servers, you may end up with a lot of servers to manage. Each server needs to be managed just as if it was a physical server. Keeping track of where everything — and how your virtual resources are using physical resources — is vital, so shop for solutions that have easy-to-use tools that help you monitor and measure use. Virtualization isn’t a magic bullet for everything. While many solutions are great candidates for running virtually, applications that need a lot of memory, processing power or input/output may be best left on a dedicated server.

For all of the upside virtualization isn’t magic, and it can introduce some new challenges. But in most cases the many cost and efficiency advantages will outweigh any issues, and virtualization will continue to grow gain popularity.

While virtualization faded from the limelight for a while, it is now one of the hottest trends in the industry again, as organizations aim to increase the utilization, flexibility and cost-effectiveness in a distributed computing environment. VMWare, Citrix, Microsoft, IBM, RedHat and many other vendors offer virtualization solutions.

Why Should You Care?

Virtualization can help you shift your IT focus from managing boxes to improving the services you provide to the organization. If you are managing multiple servers and desktops, virtualization can help you to:

• Save money. Companies often run just one application per server because they don’t want to risk the possibility that one application will crash and bring down another on the same machine. Estimates indicate that most x86 servers are running at an average of only 10 to 15 percent of total capacity. With virtualization, you can turn a single purpose server into a multi-tasking one, and turn multiple servers into a computing pool that can adapt more flexibly to changing workloads.

• Save energy. Businesses spend a lot of money

powering unused server capacity. Virtualization reduces the number of physical servers, reducing the energy required to power and cool them.

• Save time. With fewer servers, you can spend less time on the manual tasks required for server maintenance. On the flip side, pooling many storage devices into a single virtual storage device, you can perform tasks such as backup, archiving and recovery more easily and more quickly. It’s also much faster to deploy a virtual machine than it is to deploy a new physical server.

• Reduce desktop management headaches. Managing, securing and upgrading desktops and notebooks can be a hassle. Desktop virtualization solutions let you manage user desktops centrally, making it easier to keep desktops updated and secure.

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erver virtualization is one of the most popular tech trends going today, and it seems as though everybody is jumping on the small business virtualization bandwagon.

But does virtualization make sense for your small business?

Server virtualization is really all about gaining more from what you have. It allows companies to make one server act as five, 10 or even 20 virtual servers. The need to do so has become more apparent as processors have become far more powerful in recent years.

“The increase in the power and memory capacity of today’s servers means they are often underutilized, and have excess capacity,” said Tony Parkinson, Dell’s vice president of consumer, SMB enterprise solutions.

Historically, businesses used to add a new server for each new application. One server acted as a mail server, another as a central repository for office files, another for the customer database and so on. Technology from the likes of Microsoft and VMware, known as a hypervisor, enables a single server to be sub-divided to run multiple instances of operating systems and applications, which lets small business use the full power of that server.

A hypervisor, then, is a computer program that allows multiple operating systems to share a single piece of hardware known as a host. This host, is the home of

multiple virtual servers — also known as guests, virtual machines or VMs.

A good analogy is the hard drive on a PC. Although there is only one actual drive, it can be split into several volumes, which are really virtual hard drives.

“A typical server may use 10 to 20 percent of its computing power and 20 to 30 percent of memory at any given time, the rest ends up being wasted,” said Parkinson. “Instead of utilizing 10 to 20 percent of your resources, you now have 65 to 75 percent of your resources working to make your company’s IT resources more productive and efficient.” The Benefits of Server Virtualization

Small businesses benefit from server virtualization by not having

to buy more servers. Another plus is consolidating many physical servers onto one. This means that some small businesses can dispense with several of their existing machines and load everything onto one server — or move from 20 physical servers down to a few. This means less time spent on maintenance and less money spent on powering multiple servers.

According to a survey by CDW, 25 percent of small businesses have virtualized at least some of their servers. Among small businesses that have not yet implemented server virtualization, 73 percent report they are investigating or planning to deploy the technology.“Two-thirds of small businesses that have virtualized

Server Virtualization Guide for Small BusinessBy Drew Robb

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their server environments say doing so has significantly increased the return on investment of their IT — but virtualization also requires new skills and knowledge to manage effectively,” said Jill Billhorn, CDW vice president of small business sales.

“Small businesses that have virtualized say that the top drivers for their decision to do so were replacement of aging hardware (43 percent), server consolidation (36 percent), improved backup and disaster recovery (35 percent), greater efficiency of IT infrastructure (27 percent) and reduced IT operating costs (23 percent),” said Billhorn.

Simpleview Inc. is an 85-employee firm that provides software and Web-based services for marketing organizations operating in the tourism business. What drove the company towards virtualization?

“We had several clients that were requesting that their services be isolated from the others and this was going to push our need for even more space, power and cooling,” said Sean Smith, director of network operations at Simpleview. “So we really were primed for the opportunity of virtualization.”

The company has 15 primary servers and it turned them into 60 virtual servers. Smith cites benefits such as ease of server deployment, the capability to upgrade or downgrade server components — such as memory, hard drives and processing power — at will and needing less floor space.

Is Virtualization Right for You, and Does it Make Financial Sense?

This isn’t to say that server virtualization is for everybody. Small outfits with only a couple of servers have no need to bother with virtualization. The benefits for them are likely to minor, far outweighed by the costs of buying new gear and hiring in the talent to implement it.

Tony Parkinson of Dell sees the make-or-break point at around the five-to-seven server threshold. That’s

where virtualization starts to make sense, especially if a company has low, per-application server utilization rates. Certainly any company in the 10 to 15 server range will experience the benefits, he said.

However, it is important to realize that not every application is suited for virtualization.

“There could be the need for physical security or other security features or even the need for applications to be attached to specific peripherals for them to function correctly,” said Parkinson. “For these situations, the customer might be better off just buying extra hardware.”

How to Begin the Virtualization Process

If virtualization makes sense for your business, there are various steps you can take to ease the transition. Dell, for instance, offers small business tools such as vStart 50, which simplifies the deployment and management of virtual servers, as well as online support.

The company also offers DPACK, the Dell Performance Analysis Collection Kit. This provides a simulation of how an SMB’s environment will look if consolidated by virtualization. This analysis is then used to determine the level of performance a company needs to maintain and the resources to accomplish that goal.

“These tools let IT generalists easily operate and manage their physical and virtual environments,” said Parkinson. “Our experience shows that customers should start out small with one or two applications, and build from there.”

Sean Smith at Simpleview concurs. He began with one Web server and expanded from there. His advice is simple. “Read the documentation,” he said. “VMware has a huge library of knowledge — use it, and research it.”



“With a virtualized server, everything [i.e., all that data you stored on that virtual server] essentially fits into one big file, which you can copy onto another virtualized server,” Egmont explained. It’s similar to how “you can take one DVD out of a DVD player and put it into another DVD player without losing any data,” he explained.

Egmont compared that process to an application running on Windows on a physical server. “In order to get that application onto another server, you would first need to install or reinstall Windows. Then you would need to reinstall that application and reconfigure it. It’s a pain in the butt – and incredibly time consuming, especially if it’s a custom application.”

If, however, you had a virtual server, instead of taking 100 hours to configure (or reconfigure) that application

on a new physical server, it would take just a few hours, including testing, he said.

How to Decide if Server Virtualization is Right for Your Business

If you are a very small business, with just one server, you probably don’t need to go virtual. However, “anybody with more than one server should consider server virtualization,” said Egmont. “And anybody with more than three servers really should.” He also includes anyone replacing or upgrading their existing servers in the should-consider-virtualization category.

Why SMBs Should ConsiderServer Virtualization

By Jennifer L. Schiff

ntil recently, server virtualization was thought of as something that only larger companies — with dozens or hundreds of physical servers — needed and could afford. But

times, technology and the cost of virtual servers have changed, and today mid-sized and even small businesses with just a few servers stand to benefit from going virtual.

A virtual server consists of software called a hypervisor running on a physical server, which allows you to partition that one server into many virtual machines and manage them all through a single interface.

“Server virtualization enables companies to run many applications on fewer physical servers without having to worry about application incompatibilities and support issues,” explained Mark Bowker, a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. Moreover, he said, “server virtualization allows IT to improve asset utilization and potentially lower IT operation costs.”

Server virtualization also makes disaster recovery — or any kind of application backup and recovery — a snap. That’s because virtualized data is independent from whatever hardware it’s running on, making it highly portable. “That’s really a key thing,” said Mike Egmont, a partner at Flagship Networks, a company that helps small and mid-sized businesses go virtual, who likened virtual servers to DVDs.

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“A good candidate for server virtualization would be a company that is going through [or planning] a hardware refresh, an application upgrade or is looking to improve their disaster recovery strategy,” added ESG’s Bowker. Server virtualization can also help smaller businesses better control IT costs and free up IT staff for other tasks. Similarly, it can also free up valuable real estate as a single virtual server can replace several (or more) physical servers.

Can Migrating to a Virtual Server Damage Data? The short answer to the question is “no.” While in the past there were some issues with data migration, both Bowker and Egmont (and other experts) said that migrating from a physical server to a virtual server today is easy -- and will not mess up your data. In fact, most new physical servers from the leading vendors (e.g., Microsoft, Dell and IBM) now come virtualized, and there are plenty of tools available (if not included) to help you quickly and easily migrate data from a physical server to a virtual one.

That said, not every application (at least right now) will run or run optimally on a virtualized server. Things like software for scanners and fax boards, i.e., proprietary and/or specialized applications that are tied to a piece of hardware, are not good candidates for virtualization. So before you make the move to virtualization, you need to determine which applications can be successfully virtualized (experts advise that you check with the vendor).

While managing virtual servers is similar to managing physical servers, you may want or need to work with a virtualization specialist to help you get up and running if you have a small IT staff.

“Server virtualization requires IT generalist skills, which range across server, application, networking and storage skills,” explained Bowker. “In the mid-market, typically the IT person already has those skills,” though that may not be the case at smaller businesses. Added Egmont, “if someone has the skill set to manage a Windows server,

they’re about 75 percent there. There’s a bit of learning curve, but it’s not like learning a programming language.”

Choosing a Virtual Server

When it comes to choosing a virtual server, the experts cite VMware vSphere (with VMware ESX) for small businesses, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer as the best options for smaller businesses.

VMware currently has the biggest market share and more than 10 years of virtualization experience. Its VMware vSphere Essentials software supports most operating systems and is easy to implement and manage.

Microsoft Hyper-V, which Microsoft offers as a free download, is also popular, especially among businesses that already use Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (or are planning to purchase it) and Microsoft applications. And while many experts say that Hyper-V is not the best virtual server out there, it’s hard to beat free and convenient.

If you prefer or like the idea of an open source solution, there’s Citrix XenServer, which is also available as a free download. While Bowker is a fan of the Citrix XenServer which, like VMware’s ESX, supports a number of operating systems, including Windows, Linux and Solaris, and has a good track record, Egmont felt it was better suited to “larger, more skilled players.”

So how do you pick the right virtualized server for your small business? “Ask around,” said Egmont. Talk to other business owners about what they use and why — and how they like their virtual servers. Also, talk to the vendors, and/or integrators who specialize in small business virtualization. But be sure to ask about their experience (specifically if they have helped companies of your size and in your industry) and get references before hiring anyone.

Ultimately, the virtualized server you choose should be able to work well with your applications and your IT staff, who, after all, will be managing it.

Energy Impact of Increased Server Inlet Temperature

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6 Tips to Better Small Business Server Virtualization

By Nathan Coutinho

uch like the human brain, most physical servers use only a small fraction of their computing power, and that’s because conventional server technology matches

just one operating system with one physical server. And then — to make sure applications are compatible with the operating system — conventional servers are also paired one-to-one with business-critical software applications. This practice leaves huge portions of server capacity unused.

Server virtualization technology allows multiple, independent operating systems to run “virtually” on a single server, making the most of each physical server’s capacity. In effect, it creates multiple, independent computers on each server. For example, instead of running 10 servers at 20 percent capacity each — and just one or a small handful of applications on each server — virtualization enables many businesses to use only two or three servers, each at close to maximum capacity.

Eliminating physical machinery reduces power consumption – both the power to run the servers and the power to cool the server room. It also simplifies maintenance while keeping the same amount of computing power. When implemented correctly, server virtualization also frees up financial and human resources for more strategic initiatives. Consolidating resources through virtualization can reduce server-related costs by an estimated 50 to 70 percent.

Server virtualization also allows businesses to repurpose their information technology (IT) infrastructure rapidly if necessary, providing greater up time, higher fault tolerance and improved operational continuity in the event of a disaster or failure. However, poor planning decisions can eat away at the very savings that server virtualization offers.

If you’re considering the benefits that virtualized severs can bring to your small business, the following best practice tips will help you get the job done right.

1. Base your virtualization investment decisions on reality, not theory. Conduct a comprehensive assessment of your server environment to identify which pieces of hardware you can — and should — virtualize. Free tools from companies such as VMware or Microsoft can help identify exactly which servers are good candidates for virtualization, enabling you to plan for your specific needs

2. Before virtualizing the servers your assessment targets, be certain that the software applications you use are compatible with virtualization software. Qualified solution providers and most virtualization software vendors will help you determine if your server environment and applications are suitable for virtualization.

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3. Technology advances very quickly, and the virtualization platform you select may not be compatible with aging server hardware. For example, servers that are only five or six years old often aren’t viable candidates for virtualization because they cannot run the common virtualization software systems. Plus, the most common hypervisors — Citrix, Microsoft and VMware — are each a very different platform. Make an informed decision about which hypervisor will operate most effectively with your hardware platforms and meet your specific business needs

4. Revisit your data backup plan as you prepare to virtualize your servers. Many vendors offer enhanced backup products for virtual infrastructure, some priced by the number of virtual servers on a machine (also called a “socket” or “host”). These can reduce costs considerably. However, if your business is tied to a long term maintenance contract for your current data backup infrastructure, you should consider whether making a change will break the contract. Breaking it could result in financial penalties.

5. To realize the greatest cost savings and return on investment, eliminate as many physical servers as possible. That means taking one more step after you have consolidated your applications onto a virtualized server platform. Turn off and recycle or sell the now-unused servers -- that’s where the most savings materialize.

6. Maintaining a virtual server environment is different than maintaining a traditional physical environment. Before virtualizing your servers, invest in training your staff on how to maintain a virtual infrastructure. Often, small businesses don’t invest in training because, depending on the size of your staff, it can cost thousands of dollars per year. However, improperly maintained virtual environment can cost you much more in repairs and lost functionality.

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