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      Deployment of a Virtualised Information
      Technology Infrastructure 

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Executive Summary                   
This paper introduces the concept of a Virtual IT Infrastructure for a flexible, reliable and scalable architecture that can easily and cost-effectively be extended to support a multiple-site solution to meet disaster recovery and business continuity requirements. It focuses on the needs of medium-sized organisations, typically between 200 and 2,000 users, although the architecture and economics work just as well for larger and smaller organisations.

We have divided IT infrastructure into three layers: access, applications and storage. The infrastructure may immediately comprise all three layers, or you may choose to build towards the eventual system design by implementing one part at a time or growing the system organically.

The access layer allows users access to IT services, applications and data from any location, whether it be from a desktop PC, thin client terminal or other device.

The application layer runs business applications, allows them to operate in a flexible and protected manner, improves application deployment time and reduces downtime by allowing Virtual Machines to be moved easily from server to server.

The storage layer is the system foundation and in most scenarios is the obvious first step. It will provide the business with storage capacity and, more importantly, enable processes such as data replication to ensure that data is securely stored and available from more than one location. We will look at two approaches to delivery of the storage layer, the first using traditional storage arrays, and the second using virtualised storage systems. Either approach is viable, but the more innovative virtualised storage approach offers many benefits analogous to the virtual servers in the application layer and is, therefore, worthy of serious consideration in a virtual infrastructure deployment. 

There are two key business benefits of the Virtual Infrastructure. The first is system flexibility; it can be scaled and adapted easily to meet the constantly changed demands of modern business. The second is cost-effectiveness, Transam has relatively modestly sized clients quoting savings of over a quarter of a million pounds in hardware costs alone achieved in the first year of Virtual Infrastructure deployment and there are many more in the wider world.  

A simple example of more cost-effective deployment relates to business continuity, where it has been normal to expect each server that required protection to be duplicated at the secondary site. With the Virtual Infrastructure that is no longer the case, as each physical server is able to run several applications. Adopters of the Virtual Infrastructure have also found themselves able to make much better utilisation of existing IT investments, a compelling story for business managers.

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