Features

• Service Type:

  Consulting, Professional Service

• Business Need:

  Virtualization Solutions and Services

• Works With:

  Virtualization Server - Hyper-V + SCVMM, Virtualization Server - Hyper-V + SMSE, Windows Server 2008 R2

• Industry Focus:

  General - Applicable to All

Description

Professional Advantage works with Windows 2008 R2 and Hyper-V to deliver our clients cost effective and highly efficient virtualised environment.

We also use Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) to enhance deployment and management of Virtual PCs and Microsoft Application Virtualisation (App-V) to decouple applications from the operating system and allow them to run as network services.

Microsoft’s Hyper-V offers a feature rich set at a reduced investment compared to the more expensive alternative providers.

Server virtualisation delivers substantial benefits such as:

- High availability and rapid server deployment;
- Better use of hardware resources;
- Reduced power requirements
- Simplified systems administration;
- A more flexible system that can quickly grow to meet requirements.

If a new Windows server needs to be commissioned, a virtual server can be deployed rapidly on existing hardware. Similarly, if an isolated development or test environment is required, it is a simple process to clone existing servers and deploy into an isolated network running on the same hardware.

Once an environment is virtualised, servers benefit from high availability features. All virtualised servers utilise the clustering capability of the Windows Hyper-V hosts.

Traditionally, servers are inherently linked to the hardware they are installed upon. This means if hardware fails or needs to be upgraded it can be a complicated process often requiring reinstallation of the base operating system. In a virtual environment the server is abstracted from the hardware making it very easy to move it to different hardware in an upgrade or disaster recovery scenario.

Hyper-V has built-in snapshot capability meaning an administrator can take a point in time copy of a virtual machine. A snapshot of a server could be taken before system maintenance is carried out (updates/service packs etc.) enabling fast rollback if a problem is encountered.