Simple, affordable virtualization for midsize businesses

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A lot of midsize companies undertake server and storage consolidation initiatives to cut costs and maximize investments. Consolidating through virtualization can amplify all of those benefits. Why? Instead of running one operating system on one server, you can virtualize that server so that it can run many operating systems—and applications—at the same time. HP’s ProLiant iVirtualization technology lets you start creating virtual machines in minutes—affordably and easily. Simply plug a USB key into a ProLiant server. The server boots directly from the USB key, which contains the virtualization software you need.

That simple change leads to some dramatic benefits. First, you can boost each machine’s utilization rates, leading to faster return on investment. You can buy new servers less often and even retire some of those old machines that have outlived their use. Fewer servers require less physical space, saving money by powering and cooling less equipment. You can improve reliability and performance by connecting virtual servers to a storage array enabling high availability and load balancing between different physical hosts. Finally, a single IT employee can manage far more servers in far less time.

Midsize companies can get even more benefits out of server virtualization by deploying a virtualized blade environment. (See sidebar: “Virtualization or blades? both below”)

Virtualization and shared storage enables high availability at a single site, but what about offsite disaster recovery? Many companies plan for disaster recovery by replicating a single server to a failover server in a second location. Some businesses maintain that one-to-one ratio of primary servers to failover servers as they grow. Over time, however, that ratio can become expensive to maintain. Every server purchase actually requires a second server purchase for failover, along with twice the expenses: installation, real estate, and power and cooling, to name a few.

Implementing virtualization as part of your disaster recovery plan changes the one-to-one ratio into a many-to-one ratio, minimizing the cost of business continuity and availability. In other words, you can replicate multiple servers or applications to a single failover server running multiple virtual machines. All of the consolidation benefits you would get at your primary site are matched at your backup site.

Most midsize businesses assign one PC to one user. That seems like the most straightforward approach, but it presents some big management issues. Each machine requires individual support, upgrades, security patches, backup and administration. The more the business grows, the larger the PC management headache becomes.

A virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) can help mitigate those management challenges because it increases security, decreases management and hardware costs, and increases PC availability while continuing to give users the same functionality of a stand-alone desktop. Using VDI, you can host desktops inside virtual machines that run on centralized servers. Employees simply use a thin client—such as a basic, inexpensive laptop or a handheld device—to access their virtual desktops remotely. Instead of loading personal machines with sensitive information and risking exposure, employees save all of their data to a centrally managed storage environment. Supporting, upgrading, securing, administering and backing up PC data is a much simpler, centralized task—a task that can be automated and managed by far fewer people.

All of HP’s virtualization solutions for midsize businesses were created specifically for companies that don’t have sprawling IT departments, massive budgets or an army of IT employees. That’s why HP offers not only simple and affordable virtualization technologies, but also the services and support to help you decide what you need and ensure a smooth implementation. HP Virtualization Support Services can help you show a faster return on your IT investment, whether you’re deploying new solutions or optimizing your existing ones—finally turning your IT into the competitive differentiator you’ve always known it could be.