TABLE OF CONTENTS In recent years the power of servers has grown to huge proportions. In production, the servers perform well but the system is only partially utilized. This makes it fairly impossible to buy a server that is not over-powered.
On the other side, there is the issue with hardware support on that old Windows server that you cannot migrate. These scenarios and a lot more are where virtualization can be a lot of help. There are several virtualization tools available on the market, all of them with specific support and features. We will review the most important ones but our focus will be on the Microsoft Virtualization tool Virtual Server 2005 R2.
The Microsoft Dynamics System Initiative (DSI) was created as a commitment between Microsoft and its partners to create more easily manageable systems that automate many everyday tasks. This will, in effect, streamline IT operations and potentially reduce costs at the same time. Virtual servers play a big part in this initiative by optimizing the way current data centers are run and making them more efficient. Workloads can be optimized by running multiple operating systems and applications on a physical server, which enables it to reach a much higher average utilization. Also, as workloads change over time, virtual machines can be redistributed between other virtual servers to continue to optimize and balance workloads.
DSI applies to all aspects of the application lifecycle. It begins with the design of the application...
