Server virtualization is a game solely for big enterprises with huge data centers, right? Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) might assume that by virtue of their size, they cannot take advantage of virtualization.

They’d be wrong. Pinnacle Financial Corp., an Orlando, Fla.-based midsize financial services firm, was operating about 30 conventional servers when it began encountering heat problems.

“We had to get the heat down to reduce the load on our AC system,” recalls Rick Chin, Pinnacle’s senior vice president for information technology. The company opted for server virtualization through Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware to consolidate most of its old servers onto a single Dell system with just five server blades and was able to drive the temperature down about 15 degrees.

At Perimeter Church in Duluth, Ga., the concern was availability. The organization was running only about a dozen servers, but whenever one of them went down, the four-person IT staff had to jump into firefighting mode to resolve the problem fast. The loss of a key server could result in days of downtime. “I had been wondering whether virtualization made sense for a small organization such as ours,” says Tony Dye, IT Director at Perimeter, who deployed VMware in early 2006.
The payback in terms of server availability has been dramatic. “If a server goes down, we can get a new one running in 30 minutes instead of two weeks,” says Dye. Given its current configuration, “reboot time has gone from 5 minutes to 30 seconds, and the staff can work on hardware without taking a server offline,” Dye adds.

Results such as these are spurring SMBs to consider virtualization. The Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm, expects virtualization deployments at SMBs to double over the next two years. “SMBs are clearly moving to virtualization,” says Gary Chen, senior analyst at Yankee Group.

With virtualization, SMBs are finding enhanced system availability, fast recovery from problems and easy management. With free versions of virtualization software and the ability to use an existing server, SMBs can try virtualization with little risk.

Adopting Virtualization
Whereas large enterprises opt for virtualization to consolidate hundreds or thousands of physical servers and save money, SMBs turn to virtualization for something different. “They are looking for an easier way to do provisioning, management or availability and recovery,” says Chen.

A recent study of current and prospective server virtualization users conducted by the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), Milford, Mass., found that 70 percent of planned adopters plan to implement the technology in the next 12 months. “Virtualization can make sense regardless of company size or industry and has value even for companies that have only 20 servers,” says Mark Bowker, an analyst at ESG.

The main benefit SMBs are going after is ease of management and availability. “Before virtualization, it was difficult for an SMB to achieve maximum uptime without the added cost and complexity of third-party bolt-on tools. Now server virtualization gives you high-availability capabilities out of the box,” says Bowker.

“The No. 1 IT requirement we hear about from SMBs is for high levels of availability. So we have made high levels of availability not only affordable for SMBs but also simple to deploy and manage,” says Ben Matheson, senior director of marketing at VMware.

With virtualization, a company can put multiple virtual servers on a single physical machine. If one of those virtual machines (VMs) crashes, it doesn’t affect any of the others. Features built into the virtualization software automatically restart the failed server as another VM. If the physical server is part of a resource pool, the new VM can even be restarted on a different physical server. Either way, the SMB gains a level of availability it was unlikely to achieve before.

In practice, SMBs experience several benefits from server virtualization. “You can reduce your server footprint and improve your server utilization,” says Tim Mueting, virtualization solutions manager at AMD. Adds Neil Kelly, AMD’s senior strategic alliance manager for VMware, “At a minimum, it lets the business restart quickly when there is a problem.”

Without virtualization, servers often run at utilization rates of less than 10 percent. That means that 90 percent or more of the server investment sits idle—in effect, wasted. The server footprint, the amount of floor space those lightly utilized servers take up, also costs the organization money. By
increasing utilization and reducing the server footprint through virtualization, the SMB saves money and increases its server ROI.

Management offers another area of savings. To begin with, the SMB doesn’t have handfuls of servers to administer individually. “We were able to greatly reduce the time it took to set up new servers and maintain existing ones,” Dye of Perimeter Church reports. Virtualization enabled the church to manage its growing IT infrastructure without increasing staff, he adds.

“With VMware, you can remotely connect to the management console, which can help eliminate those unwanted late-night trips to the office because a server is
offline,” says John Dolan, principal consultant at Viant Solutions, a Buford, Ga.-based consulting firm serving SMBs.

Other benefits are less apparent but still worthwhile. “Virtualization gives you the ability to prolong the life of legacy operating systems and applications,” explains Mueting. For example, an organization may have an application running on an old operating system. “In such a case,” Mueting explains, “you can just encapsulate it on a VM”—that is, set it up on a virtual machine running on a more modern operating system. The old application’s performance will likely improve, because the virtualization software runs on a newer, faster server.

Similarly, SMBs can test new applications by using virtualization in encapsulated test environments. Because it’s relatively simple to create a new VM, companies can do so to try a new application before rolling it out company-wide.

Implementing Virtualization
For SMBs, implementing server virtualization isn’t nearly as hard as they might expect. “SMBs can tackle server virtualization implementations themselves,” says Bowker, although many still prefer hiring external consultants. “I expect to see an uptick in adoption when Microsoft® introduces its new server virtualization solution, Microsoft Hyper-V, later this year. Most SMBs already have Microsoft skills in house,” says Bowker.

Certainly cost won’t be a problem. Yankee analyst Chen says there are several virtualization products available that enable SMBs to get started at practically no cost. “You can take a server that is 10 percent to 20 percent utilized and install the free software. Add a couple of VMs, and see how it works. You can move to a paid version as your needs dictate.”

This is not to say that virtualization has become foolproof. Many organizations, such as Perimeter Church, turn to experienced consultants such as Dolan. Adds Pinnacle’s Chin, “VM does add a layer of complexity. You need skills.”

Vendors such as Lowell, Mass.-based Virtual Iron Software have tried to simplify the process. “We’ve stripped down virtualization to a simple kernel and drivers. Then we automate implementation as much as possible,” says Mike Grandinetti, chief marketing officer of Virtual Iron.

Storage adds a complication. Virtualization benefits from networked storage, which is necessary to take advantage of such capabilities as automatically shifting VMs for the purpose of availability. SMBs that still rely on direct attached storage should consider implementing a low-cost iSCSI-based storage-area network to enable better VM mobility in their virtualization solution.

Upgrading for Virtualization
Although it is possible to turn existing underutilized servers into virtualization hosts, many organizations prefer to upgrade to fewer but more richly configured physical servers. As the cost of server hardware drops, an SMB can probably buy a new server with a better-performing processor and more memory for the same or less money than what it previously paid for an existing server. The new server, even when running multiple VMs, will usually perform better than the old server running just one application, experts say.

“Server virtualization vendors may suggest that you can repurpose an old physical server, but the server still has to conform to the vendor’s hardware compatibility list. I see most customers purchasing new physical server hardware to support their server virtualization initiatives,” says Bowker.

A conservative sizing of new servers calls for a ratio of VMs to physical servers of
4-to-1 or 5-to-1. Your ratio will vary, however, depending on the configuration, particular applications and usage patterns.

“We do 5-to-1 for our primary application servers but get 10-to-1 overall,” says Dye, taking into account both file and print servers. Virtualization may not be for every SMB, but for the vast majority, virtualization will bring significant benefits in terms of management, performance and availability. “Virtualization is the future of infrastructure,” says Chen.