How is virtualization green? Can it help your business? How do you implement green computing?
Over the years, the heavy reliance on computers and servers has increased exponentially. With that reliance comes an increase in the overall number of machines in service. The server side of the business has ballooned recently to the point where businesses are faced with concerns such as electricity consumption, cooling and space constraints. Although the overall power (or capacity) of servers has grown rapidly over time, the efficient usage of these servers had not.
In most organizations, server utilization was in the low double digits. Very few businesses were able to utilize 80% or more of a server's capacity, yet that server still consumed a lot of electricity and produced a lot of heat. Unfortunately, most applications are not designed to play nice with other applications and co-exist on the same server. This leaves quite an open door with regards to a solution. How can you cram more applications onto a single server thus raising the utilization? Furthermore, how can you do this and consume less electricity and produce less heat?
The answer is virtualization. The beauty of this solution is that you combat all of the above mentioned problems while adding some resiliency. Virtualization is the conversion of a physical machine to a virtual machine which is then placed on a host machine. Each host machine can contain several virtual machines. These virtual machines run isolated from each other, but share the physical resources of the host machine (such as RAM, CPU, Disk Space, Network Cards, etc.) This allows you to condense the number of servers (now virtual) that can run on a single physical machine. This will also have the side effect of raising the utilization of that host machine as more workloads are put on it.
An easy way to conceptualize virtualization is an office suite application. Years ago, it was not uncommon to have a typewriter for word processing, a ledger for tracking finances and an easel with a drawing pad for presentations. All of these took up a lot of space and they were not utilized all of the time. This is inefficient. Imagine if you could get all three to take up the same small space (footprint) and allow them to be used as needed without taking up more space. Along comes the office suite on a computer. Now you can do word processing, spreadsheets and presentations all within the same application on the same device. No additional space or resources are needed. This is an example of how virtualization works.
Take that approach to a web server, file server, DNS server, authentication server, mail server, etc. Those five applications typically required four or five servers depending on what operating system they ran and what applications were on them. With virtualization, we create separate virtual machines for each application, then host them all on one physical machine. If our mail server virtual machine crashes for any reason, it won't affect the other virtual machines on the host. Each virtual machine is an isolated instance with it's own operating system and application stack. Although all virtual machines on a host share the host's resources, they cannot tresspass on the resources of another virtual machine.
So now we have five virtual machines running our critical applications on a single physical host machine. Wha happens if the mother board on the physical machine dies? Logically all of the machines on the host would die as well. This is where we extend the benefits of virtualization into a cluster of virtual hosts. Instead of one physical machine, we have two physical machines tied together in a cluster with shared storage connected to each. The virtual machines reside on the shared storage. If one physical machine dies, the control of the virtual machines on that host are passed to the second physical host. The second host can now power on the virtual machines that failed (since it also has control of the shared storage) and we're back up and running. There is a lot more magic that goes on in the back end to make this happen, but I am just illustrating the functionality of the solution.
So in the end, we were able to reduce five servers down to two servers. In reality, we could place a lot more virtual machines on a physical host. Let's say that we have three of each of the five original servers I talked about in order to service our entire business. That is fifteen servers in total. We would still use the above logic and place about half on one physical server, and the rest on the second. With this configuration, when one physical server fails, only half of the virtual machines go down and have to be spun up again on the remaining host. This ensures that our business continues as normal with minimal impact on the end user experience.
With fifteen servers condensed on to two physical servers, our electricity consumption has dropped to less than twenty percent of what it was. The heat produced by the servers has also dropped about as much, so the cooling requirement is eased as well. Lastly, we are using much less space to house two servers and a shared storage pool than fifteen servers. We also now need less servers, so less raw materials are used to make those servers. What do you get when you reduce electricity consumption, heat production, raw material usage and physical space (land)? You get a very green solution that is often referred to as Green IT or Green Computing. Within that space, there are vendors that further the 'green level' of the individual parts to bring you Green Storage, Green Servers, RoHS compliant machines, power management products and much more. The ability to green part of your business is increasing every day and one of the fastest and most stable ways to accomplish this is through virtualization.
TheLadders.com Recruits 3PAR and Saves on Storage – Online Job Search Engine Cuts Total Storage Costs by 50%
3PAR, the leading global provider of utility storage, announced today that TheLadders.com, the world's leading online service catering exclusively to the $100k+ job market, cut their total cost of storage in half by replacing their legacy storage infrastructure with 3PAR Utility Storage. The online job search website deployed 3PAR Utility Storage in conjunction with server virtualization from VMware as part of a datacenter virtualization initiative. This initiative reduced the company’s storage capacity requirements by 66%, which also reduced storage administration time. In addition, by consolidating onto a single, highly virtualized 3PAR InServ® Storage Server, TheLadders.com was able to eliminate the use of separate arrays for different applications and reliance on costly consulting services.
“By allowing us to cut our storage TCO by 50%, 3PAR was clearly the most cost-effective solution,” said Frey Kuo, Director of Information Technology and Operations, TheLadders.com. “However, it wasn’t only about the financial benefit. With 3PAR, we now have the ability to add storage at the drop of a hat and the platform’s superior reliability and high performance protects our critical end-user experience.”
With their legacy storage environment, TheLadders.com had to justify the roadmap for data growth on a per-project basis since the total lifetime capacity required for each individual project had to be purchased up front. This situation limited the number of projects that could be initiated in any given year due to cost constraints associated with purchasing all of this capacity at the outset. With 3PAR, TheLadders.com is not only able to scale their storage environment painlessly, but they are able to buy additional storage on an incremental basis and only as needed. This allows the leading online job search website to save on up-front capacity purchases, ease roadmap justification, initiate more projects, and reduce the cost of housing, powering, and cooling their storage.
For TheLadders.com, meeting their growing storage requirements by purchasing legacy storage would have required 200% more capacity than was required by deploying 3PAR Utility Storage. With 3PAR Thin Provisioning software, TheLadders.com is able to purchase only the storage capacity it needs, and only when it is actually needed, thereby reducing up-front capacity and energy costs by 75% and lowering storage administration to a fraction of what it was before. Storage configuration tasks that took days or weeks to complete with legacy storage took just hours with their new 3PAR array.
With the website listing more than 8,000 new jobs each week across every industry, it was important that the storage infrastructure at TheLadders.com be scalable while also protecting the end-user experience. Their 3PAR InServ distributes all workloads over all system resources for reliability and high performance. TheLadders.com has found automated rebalancing with 3PAR Dynamic Optimization, in combination with the array’s native mixed workload support, to be extremely beneficial. This has enabled the online job search website to maintain robust and consistent performance and avoid disruption when scaling their storage environment.
“TheLadders.com is one of many Internet and Web 2.0 companies that have come to us looking for cost savings and have stayed with us for our superior simplicity, efficiency, performance, and reliability,” said David Scott, President and Chief Executive Officer for 3PAR. “Legacy vendors are plagued by inefficient, inflexible architectures and a rigid business model. Our customers understand that there is a far better alternative that is well suited for businesses seeking a leaner, more agile approach.”
VMware View Delivers “Follow Me Desktop” for Healthcare Practitioners
Desktop Environments Tied to User Identities Instead of Devices Helps Healthcare Professionals Reliably, Securely Access Information for Better Patient Service
VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced that healthcare providers are using VMware View™ to furnish medical staff with reliable access to their desktops, applications and information as they roam from room to room and floor to floor within hospitals to care for patients. Healthcare organizations including Norton Healthcare, St. Vincent’s Catholic Hospital and Riverside HealthCare are using VMware View to help deliver cost-effective, flexible, highly available IT services, ultimately improving patient care. Healthcare provider “follow me” desktops deliver the medical information they need to care for patients, while giving IT staff the ability to easily provision, secure and manage desktops and applications from the datacenter.
VMware View lets businesses run virtual desktops in the datacenter which are then accessed using thick or thin clients. End users see a familiar desktop environment with all their productivity and clinical applications available in a single view. In healthcare environments, where minutes or seconds can make a difference in patient care, it is crucial for staff to be able to quickly and reliably access medical information. VMware View enables healthcare organizations to host virtual desktops on servers in a central location, protecting valuable medical information, while providing secure, mobile desktop environments for medical staff as they care for patients throughout a hospital. Administrators also benefit from being able to manage, provision and update desktops from a central location saving valuable time and resources.
Norton Healthcare Gains Increased Flexibility and Improved Support with VMware View™
Norton Healthcare is the largest health care system in the Louisville, Kentucky region with nearly 10,000 employees and a network of five hospitals and eleven immediate care centers. With nearly 950 virtual desktops deployed, Norton uses VMware View to better service their practitioners at all locations by providing a flexible and reliable desktop model with a single view of all their applications and data in a familiar, personalized environment on any device at any location.
“With VMware View™, our physicians can go to a thin client, login, access a patient list and then walk down the hall to another thin client, and their patient list would be right where they left it,” said Brian Cox, director of customer service for Norton Healthcare. “The staff recognized the benefit of that capability immediately. The moment we switched over to VMware View™, the staff stopped calling us with support issues related to their access to clinical applications being disrupted or disconnected. The overall response was great.”
Additionally, VMware View helps Norton to streamline previously time-consuming tasks like application upgrades. “We have all the virtual machines on the backend, so we can easily push out new software,” said Cox. “Application upgrades are non-events now. Recently, we upgraded one of our main applications—Meditech—and received zero helpdesk calls for the virtual desktops. Everything just runs so much more smoothly with VMware View.”
St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center Saves Money and Power with VMware View™
St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center is one of New York’s most respected healthcare providers. The St. Vincent system treats nearly 150,000 patients each year and is anchored by St. Vincent's Hospital Manhattan, which also serves as the academic medical center for New York Medical College. With VMware virtualization platform, the renowned healthcare system virtualized 85 percent of its infrastructure and retired 185 servers in 90 days.
“Implementing our EMR solution required us to refresh our existing desktops so could address the demand for new applications and functions,” said Tony Antinori, vice president of technology and operations, St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center. “We took this opportunity to re-evaluate our current solution and look at alternatives that could save us money, help the environment and satisfy the need for a more flexible and accessible model for our clinicians.”
“With VMware View™, we are able to move to a ‘zero footprint’ device, reduce power consumption and provide our emergency staff department an always on and available desktop,” said Kane Edupuganti, director, IT operations and communications, St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center. “We plan on continuing desktop virtualization across nearly 5,000 endpoints in order to maximize ROI in areas outside of IT."
Riverside Medical Center Gains Improved Mobility with VMware View™
A nationally recognized and award-winning hospital with leading programs in heart care, cancer care, neurosurgery and orthopedics, Riverside Medical Center serves nine communities throughout suburban Chicago. Riverside has 17 different locations and two medical campuses and has been successfully using VMware virtual desktops for throughout their organization for over two years.
“Riverside originally decided to move to a virtual desktop solution to avoid an upcoming desktop hardware refresh and to help roll out new applications,” said Wayne Kelsheimer, corporate director, Information Services at Riverside Medical Center. The VMware solution allowed us to centralize our desktop operations and maximize our IT resources. We can provision a desktop in less than 15 minutes without having to be onsite. Our nurses are able to go up to any workstation or mobile medical cart and get their same desktop on any device. We were also able to re-purpose some of our existing desktop devices into thin clients, leveraging the investments we had already made in this equipment.”
VMware View™ 3.1 Streamlines Workflow, Offers Localization in German and Japanese
The latest version, VMware View™ 3.1, now generally available, delivers a client information feature that helps administrators track the location of the access device and location of the caregiver so they can set policies to help streamline processes and workflow. VMware View 3.1 also includes localization in German and Japanese and increased scalability with the ability to accommodate the requirements of organizations with a larger number of VMware View users.
For more information on how VMware View™ solves the unique desktop challenges in the healthcare sector, please visit: http://www.vmware.com/solutions/industry/healthcare/
A VMware “Healthcare Virtualization Information Packet” is also available at www.vmware.com/go/desktop-healthcare-em
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