Virtualisation
Virtualisation is the use of software to emulate hardware including operating system and applications. Each emulation, or virtual machine, runs as a self-contained computer and many virtual machine instances may run on a single computer.
There is a number of PC or server based virtualisation software products in the market place. Key products in the technology area include
Workstation, ESX and GSX servers from VMWare and Virtual PC and Virtual Server from Microsoft.
"Use of virtualisation technologies in servers will dramatically improve server utilisation rates, increase server flexibility and reduce the overall spending required for servers."
Gartner Group
What Embrionic and Virtualisation can offer
Embrionic has experience in assisting companies develop solutions that benefit from virtualisation in the following ways:
Consolidate the workloads of several under-utilized servers to fewer servers
Run legacy applications, particularly those that may not run on newer hardware and / or operating systems
Rapidly deploy test servers within virtual machines while minimising hardware requirements
Provide secure, isolated sandboxes for running untrusted applications
Run multiple operating systems simultaneously
Extend recovery possibilities
Application testing environment for developers
Create test scenarios for application upgrades, service packs and hot fixes to validate the processes prior to implementing in the production environment
And many more
Although a Microsoft Partner we also have in-house expertise with the VMWare product range and are happy to give unbiased information and opinions.
Virtualisation Tools from Microsoft
Microsoft Virtual Server Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 monitors the performance and availability of Virtual Server and virtual machines. It is a free download from
Microsoft Corporation
Virtual Server 2005 Migration Toolkit is a free download which enables
you to migrate a physical server (thats operating system and installed
applications) to a server running within a virtual machine. Note: The virtual
machine has to be running on Virtual Server 2005 and there are a number of
pre-requisites into setting this up. For more information and to download the
toolkit visit
Microsoft Corporation
Virtual Server Deployment Manager (VSDM) provides a way to manage and
deploy virtual machines. It can be configured to enable non-administrators to
create and manage their own machines, without impacting other users' machines.
If you manage a large number of virtual machines or need to frequently recreate
images based on a master image then this is the tool for you. It is available at
the
Microsoft Corporation web site
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Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware
virtualization software
In October 2005, Microsoft announced that customers who have a Premier-level
support agreement, Microsoft will use commercially reasonable efforts to
investigate potential issues with Microsoft software running in conjunction with
non-Microsoft hardware virtualisation software. As part of that investigation,
Microsoft may require the issue to be reproduced independently from the
non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software.
Where issues are confirmed to be
unrelated to the non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software, Microsoft will
support its software in a manner that is consistent with support provided when
that software is not running in conjunction with non-Microsoft hardware
virtualization software.
For more details see the Microsoft knowledge base article
Support policy for
Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software
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Support policy for Microsoft Exchange 2003 running on Virtual Server
With the release of Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2, Microsoft has published the
support policy for Exchange Server 2003 running on hardware virtualization
software in the following
Knowlegde Base article
Youll need:
It should be noted Exchange cluster are not supported
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