Transam has recently revised
their popular Virtual Infrastructure Discussion Document. This document
introduces the concept of the Virtual Infrastructure from the
perspective of end user access, virtual server and virtual storage
platforms. Virtual Infrastructure is perhaps the most important
development in IT Infrastructure for many years and makes a compelling
story. The benefits of a Virtual Infrastructure include reduced hardware
and management costs, more flexible platforms, improved support for
highly available systems, simpler application and storage provisioning.
The papers target audience is IT
managers and Directors, plus server and storage administrators looking
for more flexible and cost effective solutions.
The Executive Summary introduces
the concept of a flexible, reliable and scalable architecture that can
easily and cost-effectively be extended to support multiple-site
solutions and 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.
It divides IT infrastructure into three layers: access, applications and
storage. It shows how the infrastructure may immediately comprise all
three layers, or how the user 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. The application layer runs business applications
and allows them to operate in a flexible and protected manner. The
storage layer is the system foundation and in most scenarios is the
obvious first step.
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 changing
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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