Everybody is interested in the upcoming launches of Windows Vista, 2007 Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and Longhorn Server. But a higher priority for most companies is solving today's problems. Because many organizations have recently started using Windows Server 2003 Release 2 (R2), this month's survey focuses on the server's Enterprise Edition (R2 EE), particularly on its virtualization functionality. This functionality is now available for free in R2 EE and will become increasingly important in the next year.
What are the day-to-day problems that companies need to deal with right now? Of our survey's 442 respondents, 74.9 percent said patch management was one of their biggest headaches in managing Windows servers, 36 percent cited server sprawl, 29 percent struggle with resource utilization (e.g., power, cooling, facilities), 19 percent specify downtime, and 14.9 percent mention interoperability. (Respondents could select all applicable options.)
Microsoft's Rik Wright (group product manager, Windows Server and Tools) and Jim Ni (group product manager, Virtual Server) told me R2 EE and Virtual Server 2003 directly address all those headaches. Rik said that with R2 EE, "patch management is a key focus. Server sprawl and resource utilization are connected to the reason why Virtual Server is in EE. UNIX interoperability is a key focus in R2." (R2 integrates into the OS newer versions of most of the same functionality as Services for UNIX—SFU, such as Subsystem for UNIXbased Applications, Identity Management for UNIX, and Server for NFS.)
Our discussion drilled down into how virtualization can help solve these problems,
what workloads IT pros are virtualizing, and why. Also, because licensing is
always an issue, I asked Rik and Jim to clearly explain R2 EE's licensing model
for Virtual Server. (To address readers' requests for additional virtualization
functionality, we also talked about Longhorn's hypervisor technology. To read
more about that technology, see the Web-exclusive sidebar, "Moving Forward with
Longhorn and Hypervisor.")
Server Workloads and Virtualization
The workloads readers reported using most on R2 EE are file and print (80.5
percent), database (78.5 percent), email (75.1 percent), business applications
(69 percent), Web (67.6 percent), and networking (62.4 percent). Rik said that
Microsoft recognizes these widely used workloads and noted, "Those are our key
applications. The value proposition of R2 EE is about business applications,
clustering (file and print clustering and application clustering), and email
and database."
Because of Microsoft SQL Server's and Exchange's high I/O levels, I was surprised that survey respondents reported running those servers on virtual machines (VMs). But our results are consistent with what Microsoft hears. Jim explained, "If you have big transactional SQL, you probably don't want to virtualize it. But departmental SQL and smaller databases are great for virtualization. Virtualization makes a lot of sense for most production workloads, but do it wisely. Because of the ways virtualization technologies are implemented, I/O and networking requirements should dictate whether you virtualize."
A production role that's well suited for virtualization is disaster recovery, which 27.7 percent of respondents currently virtualize. Jim explained, "Scenarios such as backup and recovery can take advantage of the fact that virtualization lets you roll back and forward quickly. Internal Microsoft surveys show that disaster recovery was the number one reason people deploy virtualization. It's a great way to build up redundancy."
Along with disaster recovery, respondents cited clustering as a use for VMs. Jim explained, "Because of the high-availability capabilities in R2 EE and because Virtual Server leverages those, people are deploying mission-critical applications in this environment. Now you can fail over, say, eight VMs at once. In the past, I might have looked at a specific application and it might not have been clusterable, but with VMs, cluster awareness is built in at a lower level."
Rik added, "Server utilization popped in the survey," with 42.5 percent saying they use VMs for improved hardware utilization. Jim agreed: "Previously, people deployed a server for a dedicated purpose, but then utilization would be low on that server. Virtualization lets you put multiple workloads on one server and greatly improve utilization." (However, keep in mind that as a server's utilization increases, its performance decreases.)
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