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GuestPost at MS Virtualization Team blog:
Hi, my name is Dominic Foster, Chief Technology Officer at MaximumASP, which is a web hosting and IT services provider that sells/markets/services Microsoft technologies to the SMB business market.
A core element of the MaximumASP business model is a complete commitment to exclusively offering hosting solutions that deliver Microsoft technologies. This overall market and product focus has been the leading success factor in our growth over the past eight years.
Server consolidation was a very appealing aspect of virtualization - it quite simply allows us to reduce the amount of physical machines in our datacenter. This consolidation gives us greater utilization on our hardware and reduces costs on machines, licensing, and power. Reducing the amount of our physical servers in the datacenter also means less power and cooling costs and lower overall total energy consumption.
Virtualization also gives us the flexibility and scalability we need to make smooth changes to the underlying infrastructure with minimal impact on systems or applications.
During our research we found the TCO of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V with System Center to be a less expensive solution than a similar toolset from VMware. Being completely manageable by System Center allowed us the flexibility to use the same management tools for both Hyper-V and physical servers. An added benefit was the consistent Microsoft look and feel for System Center so there was not the typical steep learning curve associated with a new toolset. Strong support from Microsoft and the MVP program facilitated our quick adoption of Hyper-V.
It was important for us to be involved in the Hyper-V Go Live program to get access to resources and contacts that could help us bring our solution to market faster. It was also an opportunity to connect with Microsoft to allow us to get our questions answered, and brainstorm our ideas. We've been able to get our questions answered, and/or routed to the product team. We've been able to connect with technical, and marketing Microsoft contacts that help us further develop relationships in one of our 'core' competencies and focus areas.
In May of 2008 we dispatched a virtualization survey to 2,313 customers and received a 10% response rate. The response was overwhelmingly positive with 79% of respondents saying they would consider running their web applications on a virtual server.
Here are some open ended comments from the survey:
- "Being able to store a configured image of a machine and just click-and-drag that image into reality is earth shattering. Deploying virtual SANs, load balancers, and firewalls for pennies on the dollar would give my company a real advantage in our niche."
- "The line between software and hardware is becoming increasingly blurry. Companies like mine must leverage these innovations or yield market to those who can."
Virtualization will continue to be a major focus for us, not only for reasons of consolidation and reduction in operating costs, but also to enable more rapid deployment of new application servers, reduced down time for server maintenance, to reduce driver dependencies for new hardware, and the assistance in disaster recovery planning.
Dominic Foster, Chief Technology Officer, MaximumASP www.maximumasp.com
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