Virtual Server and Desktop:
Key technologies for today and tomorrow

Virtualization is making inroads in the data center and on the desktop.

Server virtualization is on the verge of becoming the de facto technology in the data center. Research firm Gartner predicts that 50 percent of all enterprise data center workloads will be virtualized by 2013. There are a number of factors driving this trend, including the abundance of inexpensive processing power, dropping costs for memory and storage, and the development of off-the-shelf server virtualization software from VMware, Citrix and Microsoft. Virtualization is also making inroads on the desktop. While adoptions rates are much lower than for servers, that is expected to change: According to Gartner, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) is among the top 2011 IT priorities for many organizations.

While some organizations have embraced server and desktop virtualization wholeheartedly, others are hanging back and waiting. As the cloud moves more and more into the mainstream of IT operations, virtualization—the key enabling technology for the cloud—only increases in strategic importance.

Despite their differences, desktop and server virtualization share a common characteristic: Realizing the full potential of these technologies requires specialized skills—skills that many IT groups lack. That’s where TorreyPoint can add significant value to any virtualization project.

The TorreyPoint Virtual Server and Desktop Solution delivers the full range of benefits of server and desktop virtualization to enterprises, government organizations, and educational institutions, and empowers IT professionals to take over their virtualization environment with complete confidence in both their own ability and the technical support provided by TorreyPoint.

Organizations must overcome challenges to realize the benefits of virtualization.

As enterprises, government organizations, and educational institutions move to virtualization, they encounter a range of unforeseen challenges such as:

• Network congestion. Virtualization can dramatically increase the traffic between servers and storage, creating bottlenecks and slowing down the internal network. A thorough network assessment and evaluation is a vital step before finalizing the design of a virtualized data center.
• Virtualizing critical applications. CPU-heavy applications such as transactional databases and financial programs may not perform well in a virtualized environment. Only a detailed expert analysis of the CPU and I/O characteristics of these applications can determine which ones are suitable for virtualization.
• Disaster recovery and high availability. The mechanisms for server failover are quite different in a virtual environment. Designing virtual systems for high reliability and availability requires an in-depth understanding of how virtualization software interacts with the underlying operating systems.
• Server sizing and software license costs. Calculating the appropriate ratio of physical to virtual machines servers and determining the right physical servers can have a significant impact on performance and ROI. Also, application software vendors differ in how they assess hardware platforms—some charge by number of processors, others by number of computing cores—so the choice of hardware platform can have a significant impact on software licensing costs.
• Security. While targeted attacks on virtualized systems have been relatively rare, security experts see this area as ripe for exploitation. Attacks on virtual systems can be extensions of older forms of attack—for example, Denial of Service (DoS), buffer overflows, spyware–which can lurk on the underlying operating systems. In addition, security monitoring groups are detecting new attacks targeted specifically at virtual environments, for example, Blue Pill and other hypervisor rootkits.
• Realigning IT roles and responsibilities. A virtual infrastructure often spans traditional boundaries between groups responsible for server, networks, storage, and security. IT managers must rethink the organizational structure in light of the realities of virtualization.

TorreyPoint has the experience and expertise to navigate these and other issues involved in setting virtual environments for desktops and servers. The TorreyPoint Virtual Server and Desktop solution includes:

• System architecture design and specification
• Network readiness evaluation
  
• Server and virtualization software evaluation and procurement
• Security evaluation and design
• Installation and testing
• Knowledge transfer and training
• Ongoing maintenance

These services are available as a turnkey package for new installations or individually for existing installations—for example, it can be worthwhile to schedule regular security checkups of the virtualization software deployment.

TorreyPoint works to deliver the full benefits of virtualization.

The TorreyPoint Virtual Server and Desktop Solution helps organizations of all sizes and industries realize the benefits of server virtualization including:

• Reduced expenses for facilities and utilities. Consolidating a large number of virtual servers onto a single physical host reduces the physical footprint as well as the power and cooling required.
• Reduced capital investment. Most organizations realize a net reduction in capital investment even when the licensing costs for the virtualization software are taken into account. These savings can potentially grow in the future with continued development of open source alternatives based on Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM).
• Faster server deployment. Deploying a physical server can take days or weeks, while deploying a new virtual server often can be accomplished within an hour.

TorreyPoint is equally qualified to deliver the benefits of VDI:

• Lower desktop maintenance costs. Making sure that users’ desktops secure, reliable, up to date and always ready for work is an enormous and expensive task today. VDI centralizes the process of software installation and maintenance, avoiding the need to visit individual work locations and ensuring consistent patching and versioning.
• Lower capital investment. Thin clients are less expensive than fully featured personal computers. Security. Since VDI desktops run as virtual machines, no actual data leaves the data center. A lost or stolen laptop doesn't automatically mean loss of data.
  
• Access to mobile devices. Users are adopting a number of devices from iPads and smart phones to netbooks and conventional laptops. Keeping these devices secure and providing unfettered access anywhere is a challenge, one that desktop virtualization technology can help to solve.

When it comes to designing and deploying virtual server and virtual desktop solutions, many enterprises, government organizations, and educational institutions turn to TorreyPoint. We bring a unique combination of in-depth expertise and cutting-edge solutions that allow businesses of all sizes to realize the full range of benefits from virtualization technology.

TorreyPoint’s technical staff includes experts in virtualization as well as networking—a vital technology for successful deployment of virtualization in the data center and the workplace. TorreyPoint can optimize an existing virtual environment as well as design and build a completely new environment for both server and desktop applications.

Virtualization is an important technology today, and even more so tomorrow, as the cloud becomes a strategic imperative for enterprises and organizations. Let TorreyPoint provide the technical and business expertise and experience to drive the benefits of server and desktop virtualization in your business.