“We now have over 100 virtual machines running on a dozen physical servers and we have room to grow. We don’t expect to purchase any server hardware in the next 12 months because of the tremendous capacity that Hyper-V has given us.”
- Joe Stocker, Catapult Director of IT
Catapult Systems implemented Microsoft’s Hyper-V to consolidate our servers, and improve infrastructure planning and agility. We chose Hyper-V because it gave us a simple, reliable and optimized virtualization solution with these tangible benefits:
1. Cost Savings
When our IT department took 25 old servers (which were at the end of their useful lifespan and needed to be replaced) and consolidated them onto a single, newer server it didn’t take a PhD to do the math. That decision alone saved us over $50,000 in hardware costs.
2. Going Green
By consolidating multiple underutilized servers onto a single virtual machine (VM) we instantly reduced our electric consumption, the physical space needed in our data center and the amount of air-conditioning needed to cool hardware. For Catapult’s 25 servers, the annual energy savings was 165,475kWh—enough to power over a dozen homes for a year. It also reduced the number of spare parts that we need to run our operation by 64%, as well as the number of physical servers that could ultimately end up in a landfill.
3. Better Performance
With virtualization Catapult’s applications now leverage more CPU power and memory. Applications that used to talk to each other over a traditional network (like a Web server pulling data from a database server) now reside on the same physical hardware and connect to each other 10 to 100 times faster. We saw a three-fold increase in our accounting system responsiveness alone. And, our VMs now reboot 100 times faster than physical systems, resulting in less downtime during scheduled maintenance.
4. Reliability
Each VM is essentially a self-contained file that can easily be relocated from one physical machine to another as needed. Now if one of our VMs exceeds the computing capacity of a physical server it can be easily moved to a more powerful one. We were even able to automate this process so that each VM is monitored by software which will instantly relocate it to another server if performance suffers. And, because VMs are easily portable we’ve greatly simplified our disaster recovery.
5. Easier IT Management
Virtualization has helped Catapult’s IT department be more responsive. One of the most time-consuming and repetitive tasks in IT is the procurement of hardware and installation of operating systems. We can now create a VM with a complete server operating system in just five minutes on an existing server, versus hours (and possibly weeks to order new hardware), and it doesn’t cost anything. We’ve found that it’s easier to perform routine maintenance such as hardware upgrades and security patches, and it's faster to back them up. And, with System Center Virtual Machine Manager we can view the health of 100 virtual machines simultaneously enabling us to respond faster.
How can we help you?
Catapult offers an unparalleled level of expertise in architecting and implementing Microsoft virtualization solutions, grounded in our own experience and other client engagements.
If you’d like to leverage virtualization in your own organization let us know. We have the know-how to help you implement Microsoft’s virtualization technology and improve how your IT department functions.
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