w h i t e p a p e r | June 2008

Server Virtualization
Strategies for Success
Insights for Small and Midsize Enterprises
 table of contents
Server Virtualization: Extending Value to Smaller Companies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

The Payoff: New Savings and Efficiencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Facing Challenges Head-on . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Key Steps for Successful Virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Server Virtualization Strategies for Success © 2008 Virtual Iron Software, Inc. 2

In a 2007
IDG Research/InfoWorld
Research Report, 96% of
respondents said they were
currently investing in various
forms of virtualization.
Although 95% of
those surveyed by
IDG Research/InfoWorld
Research plan to invest
in virtualization in the next
two years, many of these
smaller organization have
limited their deployment
of the technology for now.
server virtualization:
extending value to smaller companies
Type the phrase “server virtualization” into any search engine, and more than 15 million hits
pop up. However, virtualization is more than just a hot IT trend. Because it enables
organizations to reduce operating expenses and boost the efficiency of essential corporate
support systems, virtualization is generating universal and keen interest.
Many large organizations have already deployed server virtualization solutions. In a 2007 IDG
Research/InfoWorld Research Report, 96% of respondents said they were currently investing
in various forms of virtualization. As a result, the value and efficiency improvements that
virtualization solutions can deliver are widely known and understood. Server consolidation,
for example, can lead to lower capital costs, reduced floor space requirements, and lower
power and cooling consumption. Virtualization improves server management by allowing
administrators to perform upgrades faster and more easily. Virtualized servers provide high
availability, enabling rapid failover and the ability to keep applications up and running with
minimal down time.
It might seem surprising, then, that most small and midsize enterprises have not fully
embraced virtualization, preferring to deploy only small server consolidation pilots or limit
the scope of their initiatives. Although 95% of those surveyed by the IDG Research/InfoWorld
Research plan to invest in virtualization in the next two years, many of these smaller
organization have limited their deployment of the technology for now.
In truth, many small and midsize enterprises have the same needs for virtualization as their
larger cousins. However, in the IDG Research/InfoWorld Research survey, 29% of respondents
said they lack the necessary skills or expertise to invest broadly in virtualization. Nearly one-
quarter need additional senior management support, and approximately one-fifth reported
that virtualization is either too costly or too specialized to meet their needs.
Smaller organizations are further burdened by a relative lack of resources. Compared with
larger enterprises, these companies have much smaller technology budgets. Moreover, their
IT staffs are tasked with a wide range and a large number of IT projects. No wonder that small
and midsize enterprises often struggle to make virtualization an actionable priority in their
annual plans.
Yet, small and midsize enterprises cannot afford to forfeit the benefits of virtualization.
In fact, the limited resources of the average smaller company may be the best reason for
adopting virtualization, since it provides a solution that can genuinely cure resource and
capacity problems.
To help these organizations take the first steps toward achieving virtualization’s dramatic
value, this white paper explores the benefits and challenges of deploying server virtualization
technology in smaller enterprises. The paper also provides recommendations to help IT and
business decision makers choose their virtualization solutions wisely and deploy them in a
way that delivers maximum value. Additionally, this white paper describes the experiences of
one leading server virtualization vendor, Virtual Iron, which has deployed virtualization
solutions for numerous small and medium-sized enterprises.
© 2008 Virtual Iron Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved Patents Pending 3

When virtualization
grows from a pilot to a
production deployment,
companies are often able
to improve business agility
through enhanced IT
responsiveness, reduce
costs, and improve asset
utilization and management.
the payoff: new savings and efficiencies
In its broadest definition, virtualization abstracts the physical boundaries of the IT infrastructure.
Using virtualization solutions, IT professionals can dynamically allocate resources – quickly and
simply, to meet changing business demands. In practice, most organizations first deploy
virtualization to consolidate servers, a project that typically delivers rapid and dramatic savings
by reducing the number of physical servers in a datacenter by as much as 50%.
For small and medium enterprises, the challenges of power, cooling, and floor space may be an
even more pressing reason to embrace virtualization. By slashing the number of physical servers
in the datacenter, virtualization can free up valuable datacenter floor space while reducing
power and cooling requirements. Some sophisticated products go further, using the physical
server’s memory in lieu of local disk drives in the server.
In fact, the incremental savings and efficiencies are key drivers for many enterprises that deploy
virtualization technologies. As shown in Table 1, increasing the efficiency of server and storage
resources and consolidating these resources are the two most important reasons that small and
midsize enterprises embrace virtualization.
Organizations that expand their virtualization projects to become enterprise-wide initiatives
often increase the return on investment in their solutions. When virtualization grows from a pilot
to a production deployment, companies are often able to improve business agility through
enhanced IT responsiveness, reduce costs, and improve asset utilization and management.
For example, one regional healthcare provider identified server virtualization as a means to
improve its inefficient IT infrastructure. Using a solution from Virtual Iron, the IT group at a
hospital was able to consolidate a three-tier, 8-foot-by-8-foot tower of 30 servers onto a 2-foot-
by-8-inch blade system with just four blades. In addition to the reduced hardware costs and
dramatic savings on power and cooling, the organization also simplified its back-up and disaster
recovery infrastructure, enabling rapid recovery from failure.
Virtual Iron provided cost-effective software that further enabled this customer’s deployment of
server virtualization. The other server virtualization solution evaluated by the hospital was four
to five times more expensive. The customer chose Virtual Iron for its ease of use, rich feature set,
robust virtual infrastructure management platform, and low cost. Together, these benefits
provided a compelling value proposition that led to positive ROI for the customer.
Ta b l e 1 . To p 1 0 O bj e c t i ve s f o r Vi r t ua l i z a t i o n I n i t i a t i ve s
Driver %
More efficient use of server and storage resources 70
Server and storage consolidation 65
Improve disaster recovery or reduce disaster recovery costs 63
Easier server provisioning, storage provisioning, or software deployment 55
Reduced management costs/administrative overhead 52
More flexible development and testing environments 53
Improved systems reliability/availability 54
Streamline operational efficiency 50
More flexibly adapt to variable workloads and changing business needs 42
Automate load balancing and other datacenter processes 36
Source: IDG Research/InfoWorld Research Report 2007
Server Virtualization Strategies for Success © 2008 Virtual Iron Software, Inc. 4

Some organizations
neglect to consider all of
the ways that virtualization
technologies may affect –
or be affected by – the
rest of the IT environment.
Mobility, high availability,
recoverability, performance,
and manageability are also
critical to selecting solutions
wisely.
facing challenges head-on
Despite these undeniable benefits, however, virtualization also poses real challenges. To
ensure the success of their virtualization initiatives, decision makers at small and midsize
enterprises must consider the following issues.
Virtualization Touches the Entire IT Ecosystem
Given the interconnectedness of IT assets, it might seem like an oversimplification to say
that virtualization must be considered in light of the technology ecosystem. Yet some
organizations neglect to consider all of the ways that virtualization technologies may
affect – or be affected by – the rest of the IT environment. Choose virtualization
software only after considering the following issues related to servers, the network, and
shared storage:
E Servers. Which workloads do you want to consolidate? (Hint: consider starting small
but thinking big.) What are the characteristics of these workloads (that is, are they
CPU-intensive, memory-intensive, network-intensive, or storage-intensive)? What is
the best way to balance these workloads on the available processing capacity? Do
you have a heterogeneous environment and if not, are there any live migration
considerations? Are there any licensing considerations? Are there any hardware
requirements that are not supported by the virtualization software?
E Network. What types of network traffic do you expect? Is a new network needed to
support the consolidation goals? Should the enterprise create a virtual private
network to segment traffic?
E Storage. Getting the full benefits of virtualization will require a storage network. If
one does not already exist, which solution would be appropriate for the enterprise’s
needs? Fibre Channel? iSCSI storage area network? Network-attached storage? If a
storage network already exists, which storage features must be supported by the
virtualization solution? How should storage be configured? (For example, could you
use raw storage connected directly to virtual machines or could you use logical
volumes to allow the virtualization software to abstract the underlying storage?)
Mobility, Manageability, and Recoverability Make All the Difference
Although server consolidation offers tremendous benefits, it also poses known risks.
When a small or midsize enterprise runs 20 applications, each on its own server, the
outage of one server only affects one application. With server consolidation, however,
an enterprise may run five applications or more on each server. If one server goes down,
five or more applications become unavailable.
Small and midsize organizations must take steps to ensure that virtual servers are highly
available and that they can be recovered quickly in the event of an outage. Automated
mobility features that allow the administrator to move the virtual image of an applica-
tion from a downed server to another healthy server are therefore critical to any
consolidation project.
Yet small and medium enterprises must not limit their virtualization choices to server
consolidation capabilities. Mobility, high availability, recoverability, performance, and
manageability are also critical to selecting solutions wisely. Virtualization software
© 2008 Virtual Iron Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved Patents Pending 5

Small and medium
enterprises should look not
only look at the feature set
of a given solution, but also
at how long the solution
has been in the market
supporting production
environments. This metric
is critical to the potential
success of any company’s
virtualization solution.
should provide functionality that allows rapid, automated upgrades of servers and the IT
infrastructure. Unlike physical server upgrades – which consume tremendous time and
resources – virtual upgrades can be done without downtime, with simple planning, and
minimal effort. Furthermore, decision makers should also look for software that allows
administrators to test the impact of consolidation and change before committing to any
new configuration. With these features, IT administrators can move virtual images from
server to server to ensure that workloads are balanced and that performance and uptime
are maximized.
Server virtualization should also enable rapid recovery in event of a hardware failure. It
can help IT departments in recovery mode to avoid a host of issues, such as how quickly
they can provision a new server, when the reseller can send a replacement box, or
whether there is a spare in inventory. With server virtualization, these issues are no longer
relevant in the case of hardware failure. With server virtualization, the IT group can re-
provision a new server and get users back up and running in minutes.
Small and medium enterprises should look not only look at the feature set of a given
solution, but also at how long the solution has been in the market supporting production
environments. This metric is critical to the potential success of any company’s virtualiza-
tion solution. The more deployments a provider has experienced, the more “bullet-proof”
the solution is likely to be. Virtual Iron, which has been shipping server virtualization
solutions since 2006, has deployed thousands of solutions. A vendor with wide-ranging
experience typically can better understand the variables and nuances needed to maximize
the solution value for any implementation.
Interestingly, Virtual Iron finds that small and medium enterprise customers tend to get to
production faster than many large organizations. Often, Virtual Iron customers are so
successful with their virtualization initiatives that they quickly put all of their production
applications on virtual servers. With this possibility in mind, companies must choose a
solution that is robust and reliable enough to support the mission-critical nature of their
applications.
Quick Start for Best Results
Rapid deployment is essential to launching a virtualized environment, especially for time-
and resource-constrained IT departments. Although some decision makers view deploy-
ment as a once-and-done item requiring minimal consideration, every new IT
infrastructure initiative takes time and effort away from the IT department’s ongoing
responsibilities. By choosing a virtualization solution that supports rapid deployment and
uses minimal IT resources, decision makers can prevent the virtualization initiative from
compromising the progress of other key IT projects.
Easy Does It
Small and midsize enterprises tend to experience rapid, sometimes unpredictable growth
and change. For a virtualization solution to provide maximum value, it should offer easy-
to-use management capabilities that let the product scale to meet dynamic business
conditions. Moreover, making changes should not create inordinate complexity. Selecting
a product that is designed to accommodate change easily can save the smaller organiza-
tion many hours of frustrating, costly effort down the road.
Server Virtualization Strategies for Success © 2008 Virtual Iron Software, Inc. 6
One user, the IT director at a small law firm, considered these needs when performing
product evaluations. “With VMware, the management tools were far too complex and
would have required additional time on a daily basis,” he says. “With Virtual Iron, the time
that we spend on a daily basis is minimized. In fact, when an IT staffer left the company,
the job didn’t need to be refilled, saving the firm about $70,000.”

Software is Just the Beginning

In most small and medium enterprises, virtualization projects are executed on a fixed
budget. Certainly some monies must be allocated to virtualization software, but it is
important to set aside funds for other project needs, such as buying new servers or
addressing incremental storage or network requirements. Be wary of high-priced virtual-
ization software that claims the lion’s share of the virtualization budget. In doing so, it can
also compromise the ability to create a true best-in-class virtualization environment.

© 2008 Virtual Iron Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved Patents Pending 7

IT industry research firm
Gartner, Inc. named Virtual-
ization a “Top 10 Strategic
Technology for 2008” and
defines the next generation
of Virtualization solutions
as Virtualization 2.0:
“With the addition of auto-
mation technologies — with
service-level, policy-based
active management —
resource efficiency can
improve dramatically, flexibility
can become automatic
based on requirements, and
services can be managed
holistically, ensuring high
levels of resiliency.”
key steps for successful virtualization
The challenges are serious, but they can be easily addressed by making careful decisions
about a virtualization initiative from the start of the project. To ensure that your enter-
prise achieves the maximum benefits of virtualization, take the following steps:
Choose virtualization solutions that work transparently with your existing network,
storage, and backup systems. Some virtualization solutions use functionality that
competes with capabilities in organizations’ legacy systems. These products require that
you use their proprietary file system rather than the native file systems of your network
or systems. In some cases, using these solutions requires the purchase of additional
software to handle routine tasks such as backup. The better choice is to select a
standard, non-proprietary virtualization solution that uses the native functionality of
your existing network, storage, and backup systems.
Seek solutions with mature mobility and migration capabilities. The huge popularity of
virtualization has drawn many new vendors into the market recently. Some products
offer mature, stable mobility and migration features that have been proven in mission-
critical production systems. Others are much newer, with few (if any) real users to vouch
for their effectiveness. Ask prospective vendors to refer you to small or medium enter-
prises like yours who are willing to discuss their experiences with the software.
Place a premium on high availability, recoverability, and load balancing features. When
the health of each physical server determines the availability of several critical applica-
tions, high availability and recoverability become essential features. Find out whether
the virtualization solution has high availability and recoverability tools built into the
software, or whether you will have to rely on third-party tools, which may add complex-
ity to the environment. Also ensure that the solution offers mature load balancing
capabilities. Smaller organizations tend to have highly dynamic performance require-
ments. The ability to easily and transparently move virtual machines to accommodate
dynamic performance requirements will enable IT to deliver greater value to the
business by working more efficiently and responding faster to changing demand.
Analyze the impact of virtualization on your operational resources. Look for features
that can speed up not only the initial implementation process, but will also streamline
ongoing support activities. No small or midsize enterprise has the luxury of supporting
inefficient IT processes – whether they occur only during software deployment or
repeatedly during upgrades or migration.
Vi r t ua l i z a t i o n Eva l ua t i o n S te p s f o r S m a l l a n d M e d i u m E n te r p r i s e s
1 2 3 4 5
Configure
Plan the Plan the physical environ- Configure virtual Evaluate
business evaluation ment and install environment use cases
case virtualization through virtual-
solution ization manager
Server Virtualization Strategies for Success © 2008 Virtual Iron Software, Inc. 8
conclusion
Rarely has the IT industry witnessed such a rapid and pervasive adoption of technology
as has been experienced with server virtualization. The reason for this success: server
virtualization provides a clear and easily quantifiable value proposition.

However, the market for server virtualization is still in the early stages. More customer
awareness and education is required for companies to make the optimum solution
choices. No solution or vendor alone is a panacea. To ensure they create the best results,
small and medium enterprises must understand the challenges, nuances, requirements,
and alternatives involved in selecting and deploying a server virtualization solution.

© 2008 Virtual Iron Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved Patents Pending 9
 about virtual iron software

True Server Virtualization for Everyone

Virtual Iron has been providing its server virtualization solutions since 2006 and has
thousands of deployments. The company is focused on providing small and medium
enterprises with cost-effective, production-ready server virtualization software.
Because Virtual Iron doesn’t believe that server virtualization should be a luxury, the
company offers a cost-effective solution. To further enhance and simplify the
deployment experience, Virtual Iron offers an all-inclusive approach providing all of its
software and management features on the product.
At the core of the Virtual Iron solution is Virtualization Manager software, a robust,
intelligent, multi-tenant, and reliable platform that provides the control and virtual
infrastructure management necessary to support production environments. Virtual
Iron provides mobility, high availability, recoverability, CPU-capacity load balancing,
live upgrades, policies, and reporting – all enabled and managed by the company’s
enterprise-class Virtualization Manager software.

virtualiron.com
Virtual Iron Software, Inc. | 900 Chelmsford Street, Tower I, Floor 2 | Lowell, MA 01851 | T 978.849.1200 | F 978.849.1299

© 2008 Virtual Iron Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved Patents Pending