C Infinity has announced the launch of their new managed virtual server hosting infrastructure based on Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2008.
Microsoft recently released their new machine virtualisation solution, Hyper-V. Based on Windows Server 2008, allows machine virtualisation using a hypervisor. This provides greater performance and flexibility.
C Infinity had planned to develop a new machine virtualisation platform for hosting client’s managed servers. This would allow C Infinity to host more machines using less power, physical hardware and rack space without compromising security or performance. C Infinity evaluated the contenders in the market and decided to adopt Microsoft’s Hyper-V.
“Hyper-V is a logical extension to our existing infrastructure”, said Aidan Finn, Systems and Infrastructure Manager at C Infinity. “We’ve developed an infrastructure based on Microsoft’s Optimised Infrastructure and Dynamic Systems Initiative concepts. This allows us to build product expertise and automation into the network”. By doing this, C Infinity’s infrastructure is much more responsive to change, faults and performance. It allows them to instantly respond to issues, often before the client can notice them.
“Using Hyper-V, we can greatly increase the numbers of machines that we can host in a managed manner” says Caitriona Lynch of C Infinity. “We can reduce our operating costs and implement greener computing. We pass on these savings to our customers. Often they are smaller businesses that are already facing significant investment challenges in developing an online presence. We can make this easier for them by providing them with a virtualisation option”, continued Lynch.
C Infinity’s Hyper-V implementation will sit side-by-side with dedicated hosting. All of this is managed using Microsoft’s System Centre, Windows Software Update Services and Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.
“Some of the key advantages of virtualisation are speed of deployment, fault tolerance and flexibility”, says Aidan Finn. “Using Hyper-V we are abstracting the physical hardware. This means that a machine is no longer physically tied to the underlying hardware. We are clustering our hosts using Windows 2008 clustering. Now our clients can avail of hardware clustering even if they only lease a single virtual server from us”. C Infinity and their clients also can take advantage of quicker deployments by using template virtual machines.
“We decided to use Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 Core Installation. This brings some challenges for most Windows administrators by being a command prompt only operating system. However, those are quickly resolved and easily offset by the reduced operating system footprint. We have a smaller attack surface and a much better performing host”, says Aidan Finn.
C Infinity sees each host server as a building block. Hyper-V hosts are added as required to always allow for additional growth capacity and fault tolerance. “There’s a need to be able to manage the hosts and virtual machines. One of our deciding factors on a solution was management; we need to minimise operating costs and continue to rely on expert automation”. C Infinity was already familiar with these concepts thanks to Microsoft’s System Center Operations Manager 2007. Aidan Finn is also a Microsoft “Most Valuable Professional” (MVP) for Microsoft’s System Centre Configuration Manager 2007. “A big plus for Hyper-V was System Centre Virtual Machine Manager 2008 and how it tightly integrates with Operations Manager using Physical Resource Optimization or PRO. We can manage all of the virtual machines using a single pane and get integrated cradle to grave management through one management infrastructure. Everything we do to increase manageability and reduce costs improves our service for our clients”, commented Caitriona Lynch.
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