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More virtual infrastructure in the Cheops datacenter.
Edegem, 25 February 2008
Cheops has opted for centralisation, consolidation, High Availability and Disaster Recovery with the installation of an HP C7000 BladeSystem and an HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array-SAN in combination with a VMware-ESX server.
Virtualisation is the preferred solution of the future because it leads to a very efficient utilisation of the IT infrastructure and maximum availability and scalability of systems.
Conventional servers utilise on average barely 25% of their capacity.
Virtualisation software offers the possibility to run applications on several virtual machines but on one single physical server consisting of one or more blades in the rack. This leads to significant savings and a drastically reduced Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
This technology also offers very interesting advantages from an ecological point of view: improved utilisation of the hardware, reduced power consumption and hence reduced CO2 emissions.
As a VMware VIP Enterprise Partner, Cheops itself naturally makes use of the following features :
- VMware HA (High Availability)
Ensures the automatic restart of the virtual servers in the event of a breakdown of a server. - VMware DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduling)
Ensures the automatic and dynamic balance of the load across the various servers. - VMware Consolidated Backup (for SAN environments only)
Ensures the centralisation of the back-ups and allows file level back-ups without having to install an agent. - VMware VMFS (Virtual Machine File System)
Virtualisation storage optimised for virtual machines that serve as high performance clusters. - Expanded virtual machine capacity
For improved multi-tasking in the area of CPU and network utilisation. - Virtual SMP
This enables the virtualisation of up to 4 CPUs and 16 GB of memory. - Drag-and-drop management
Visualisation of the environment by way of a topological map and a centralised configuration.
VMware observes a steady growth in virtualisation solutions in companies of all sizes, particularly in the SME sector.
Cheops has not reached its paradigm yet in this implementation, but has already delivered some significant projects.
