Virtualised hardware technologies represent a fundamental shift in the way customers plan and deliver Windows server infrastructure. In the past 6 months, the majority of infrastructure projects I am aware of have included Microsoft Virtual Server or VMWare in their plans.

This trend holds true from SME, with partners like Castle Computer Services building consolidation business on VMWare virtualisation with workshops for their smaller customers, to the Enterprise, with companies like Barclays Capital building software developemnt and test environments on Microsoft Virtual Server.

This means that any new Windows Servers being installed, or existing servers being consolidated, are as likely to be deployed on a Virtual platform as direct on the physical hardware. Therefore an understanding of the Virtualised environment, Virtualisation product and licensing issues, is crucial for anyone who makes their living around the Windows platform!

Mr. Moore's law still holds true, and x64 hardware and OS platforms are now in common use. Virtualisation is seen by IT dept's as the easiest route to efficient and fully utilised servers - and consequently reduced maintenence, power and management costs.

In the past, it was one application per physical server (usually because an isolated application is a reliable application). By virtualising this application server to a virtual server image, many customers achieve impressive consolidation ratios, with >n virtual images running on a modern n processor server.

So the ongoing cost justification is clear. What is often unclear is the startup costs, which include licensing the Windows OS, the installed Server software and the Virtualisation platform . There are reams of white papers and web pages written on the subject, and knowing that such weighty tomes can be a real turn-off for most sane people, please find below a gross over-simplification of the situation.

Here goes.....

To support a virtualised environment, you 1st need the Virtualisation software (VMWare or Virtual Server), the Windows OS, and the applications running on the WIndows OS.

  • Virtualisation software: VMWare typically works out around $2000 per processor. Virtual Server R2 Enterprise edition is free.
  • Operating System (option 1) - 1 copy of Windows Server R2 Enterprise edition entitles the user to run 4 virtual Windows images on a single server. Typically $4000.
  • Operating System (option 2) - IT Manager with many server images to consolidate will choose Windows Server R2 Datacenter Edition. This is a per-processor license (around$3000) which entitles the user to run an unlimited number of virtual Windows images on the server. Thats a lot of Windows for not a lot of money.
  • Its worthy of note that the crafty IT manager can utilise the Datacenter edition licensing even in a VMWare environment - i.e. there is no requirement to actually run Windows Server Datacenter edition as the host OS
  • Server appliciations - Choosing the example of Microsoft SQL Server - both per processor and per server licensing allow for unlimited virtual instances of SQL on a Virtualised platform. There are some differences for other server applications, but I lost the will to live whilst reading the white paper.
  • Virtual Environment management tools: As consolidating on a Virtualised platform is the IT equivalent of putting all your eggs in one basket, it is key to ensure that the hardware platform, the virtualisation software, the OS and the server applications are all well served by management tools. VMWare would offer their Virtual Center and VMotion management tools, at a cost of around $2000 per processor. The Microsoft Virtual Server platform (plus OS, apps and hardware) can be managed from Microsoft Operations Manager, at a cost of around $400 per server.

...phew

So, to give an illustrative example - for a customer needing 30 8 way servers for server consolidation with high availability, a VMWare ESX based solutionwould cost >$500,000 for software licenses alone. The equivalent Microsoft Virtual Server +MOM solution would cost in the region of $100,000.

In my experience, when customers start on the route to a consolidated, virtualised environment, they are not aware of the typical costs for the entire infrastructure. Clearly its worth understanding these costs from the start, as choice of Microsoft or VMWare can have a significant effect on acquisition costs.