With OIT’s new Virtual Server Hosting service, units which need a server for a departmental web site or application hosting can provide those services to their faculty, staff, and students with all the advantages of a professionally managed Data Center but at a much lower cost.
A virtual server or virtual machine (VM) is the software emulation of a physical server’s hardware and services, and can be configured to meet the needs of a particular group of users. A single high-end physical server or cluster can simulate a large number of servers, and make more efficient use of physical resources such as disk, memory, and network bandwidth than stand-alone servers can.
With OIT’s VM service, customers may install, configure, and manage the operating system and applications of their choosing, to meet local needs. Administrators can quickly configure and deploy VMs without concern for the purchase, maintenance or replacement of the underlying hardware. As the service is hosted on OIT’s enterprise infrastructure in the Academic Data Center, customers enjoy the benefits of redundant, highly available systems which are often beyond the means of smaller departments.
This service helps increase server reliability, as well as achieve campus goals of efficiency in power and cooling. Old, unreliable equipment can be retired, while the server’s software and function is retained.
The VM service is hosted on an HP blade server chassis. Each blade has four gigabit Ethernet network controllers, and the maximum possible memory. Storage is provided by OIT’s enterprise disk storage from NetApp. In addition to the high-availability features in the hardware components, the VMWare virtual environment allows for dynamic movement of servers across physical hosts, as well as automatic restarts for the VMs.
OIT’s VM service uses the same infrastructure as OIT’s other enterprise services: earthquake protection tables, redundant power sources, large-scale UPS, data center chilled-water cooling, on-site emergency cooling, and generator-backup power.
More information on configuration options and pricing can be found on the Virtual Server Hosting web site.