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Departmental Server Hosting Options

Departments with servers under maintenance agreement with ITC Micro Systems that have chosen to have the server hosted in ITC’s secure facilities now have the option to purchase either physical or virtual servers.

ITC has implemented a VMWare cluster that is able to host many virtual servers. This VMWare cluster offers the benefits of high availability for both the servers and storage and includes load balancing across the cluster. For example, if one of the cluster’s physical servers fails, the virtual servers will restart within minutes on other members of the cluster without human intervention. Should the processors on a given pool member reach a designated threshold some virtual machines will be moved to slower pool members.

The virtual server environment is available to departments at the same overall cost as the matching physical server. Instead of purchasing a new physical server every three years, one third of the cost of the physical machine will be added to your annual maintenance agreement if you selected the virtualized option. All costs associated with the server maintenance agreement (http://www.itc.virginia.edu/microsys/mcs_support.html) remain the same. Departments can take advantage of the high availability and load balancing features of VMWare at a cost that would be far less than they could implement on their own and spread it out in a predictable annual basis.

Possible reasons why a department may want to continue to purchase physical servers include the inability to use ETF funds to pay for the virtual server and the delay involved with the purchase of physical server hardware should the department choose to migrate away from ITC-provided services.

Departments contracting for ITC’s server maintenance agreements, of course, retain the option of purchasing physical servers should they so choose. Micro Systems will gladly assist them in choosing the proper options for their server to suit its purpose. In either case the cost of the server to the department would be the same.

 Advantages of the virtualized VMWare environment:

  • High availability
  • Load balancing
  • Obtaining the above benefits far less expensive than the department can implement on their own
  • Predictable annual cost
  • No cost for hardware upgrades or replacement

Potential disadvantages of the virtualized VMWare environment:

  • Inability to use ETF funds
  • Delay in taking physical possession of their server

 

 

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