Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
You will find that the more RAM you can add to the server the better. It also goes without saying that you would want RAID 5 SCSI hard drives – as any server should have – for maximum performance.
Depending on the workload the virtual machines are under there is going to be a limit on how many an individual physical machine can run and this may need experimentation and tweaking. However, even if the ratio is four virtual servers to one physical server you’ve still achieved a massive 75% hardware reduction.
Best of all, it is a snap to move any virtual server from one physical machine to any other. Each consists of basically two files on disk – a configuration file that defines the server’s parameters such as connected devices and amount of visible RAM, and the virtual hard drive which is itself just a disk file.
These can be copied onto any other server and the virtual machine re-mounted there. It doesn’t matter if the hardware is of a different architecture to the original server; the virtual machines do not require any hardware-specific device drivers.
You will also find that virtual servers in this way are more disaster-resistant than the original machines. It is a trivial exercise to stop a virtual machine, backup its virtual hard drive, then restart and perform a change. If something goes wrong, it is equally trivial to stop the virtual machine and restore the virtual hard drive. This can be performed in a fraction of the time it would take to do the same level of backup and restore on a real disk on a real server.
Sure, products like Symantec LiveState or most good backup software can achieve this but firstly, they cost money if you don’t already have them (which is good for Symantec), and secondly, how often do company’s go to the extent of using these for anything but the most drastic of changes? This is particularly true if your data centre is off site, like in a co-location facility.
Instead, with virtualisation you’re effectively able to implement more stringent processes than you would realistically follow on physical servers. This is not a very compelling argument for people that sell Microsoft software as you are slashing expenditure and their profits, dammit!
If you go back to that cancerous Linux aspect: by deploying this free open-source operating system you are not spending a cent on software to provide the virtualisation platform and that in itself is impressive – but not for Microsoft’s bottom line. It’s terrible!
Additionally, you’re not imposing any burden or requirement on your servers that have been virtualised. No matter if you are a Microsoft shop or not, you have not altered the way any of these servers behave or work.
You can join the Linux host system to your Active Directory domain if you wish, using Samba, or not at all, and hey, Windows Server 2008 does this too. In one sense, you could consider the host system to be much like ILO – or “integrated lights out” as implemented in Hewlett Packard servers which permits you to control a server through a dedicated console which has no relationship to your domain.
Check it out; with a Linux-based virtualisation solution you can decrease the amount of money your business spends on its existing server hosting as well as new hardware and maybe the job you save could be your own. But do this and it will be the death of Microsoft, and then who will Linux zealots have to fight against?
Only themselves. It’s a terrible, horrible future for both Linux lovers and Microsoft. Do what the US Government is doing, and pump some money into the IT industry – do you really need it? They’ll love you for it, and whether you’re still around in the future to spend more money, commercial software companies certainly will be!
To read David’s original, money saving, Linux loving article, click here.
David Bass
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