In today’s business climate, IT environments are becoming more complex, and the people who manage them are often asked to lower costs and improve operational efficiency. With greater demand on IT to solve business challenges, data centers quickly fill to capacity, and each new server purchase increases capital and operating expenditures as well as power and cooling costs. At the same time, servers are underutilized; on average, only 5 percent of a typical server’s capacity is actually used. Provisioning new machines is a lengthy process measured in days and months, making it difficult for IT to keep pace with the rate of business growth and change. In addition, managing servers can be labor-intensive, and the need to provision and tear-down test and development environments can consume valuable resources and time. Virtual machine technology has great potential to change the cost of IT. Many IT organizations view virtualization as the disruptive yet promising technology that will help them get more from their servers and create a more adaptable and agile data center.

• Increased asset utilization – Servers running virtual machines can operate at 60 percent utilization or greater, depending on the availability requirements of their workloads.
• Lower power, space, and cooling costs – Data center operations are more efficient with more applications on fewer physical machines.
• Faster response to business needs – Instead of having to manually set up a new physical machine, IT administrators can easily provision new virtual machines for development teams and business units.

Virtualization Issues

Although virtual machine technology offers compelling benefits, it also presents challenges unique to a virtual data center. Before engaging in a virtualization project and while evaluating virtualization technologies, IT organizations need to carefully consider the following issues, among others:

• How to integrate virtual machine management into other data center management solutions.

• How to make use of current investments in Microsoft® Windows Server technologies.

• How to reduce the risk of operating in a new virtual environment.

• How to make use of current investments in Microsoft® Windows Server technologies.

  Microsoft System Center

  For IT professionals responsible for managing their virtual infrastructure, Microsoft® System Center—the Microsoft family of system management products—is a comprehensive solution optimized for the management of Microsoft Windows Server operating systems running in the virtualized data center.

  • System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM) - Delivers simple and complete support for consolidating multiple physical servers within a virtual infrastructure, thereby helping to increase overall utilization of physical servers. Virtual Machine Manager 2008 (VMM) also enables administrators and authorized users to rapidly provision virtual machines.
  • System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 - Provides continuous data protection on physical and virtual machines for backup and business continuity.
  • System Center Operations Manager 2007 - Provides a sophisticated solution for unified health monitoring of physical and virtual machines
  • System Center Configuration Manager 2007 - Provides a robust solution for ensuring all workstations and servers are up to date and running optimal configurations.

   

  To learn more about System Center Virtual Machine Manager Contact Us at 713.965.7288 or via email at info@redeconsult.com