Server Virtualization

Enterprise computing demands continue to increase, but after decades of IT buildout, server sprawl is escalating system management costs and outstripping available data center space, power and cooling capabilities. In a recent survey, 42 percent of data center owners said they would exceed power capacity within the next 12−24 months, and 39 percent said they would exceed cooling capacity in the same timeframe. IDC estimates that for every dollar IT spends today on hardware to support new users and applications, they spend another 50 cents on power and cooling for existing hardware.

Virtualization is a critical IT tool for responding to these challenges: it enables consolidation for more computing in a smaller space and with a smaller power footprint; it facilitates load balancing to increase business agility and utilization of server resources; and it enables workload migration from one virtual machine to another to help ensure business continuity. To achieve the highest payoff from these virtualization initiatives, IT needs virtualization platforms that provide optimal performance and headroom, energy efficiency, flexible virtualization and manageability to support a wide variety of virtualization models.

Windows Server^® 2008 Hyper-V™ and the Intel^® Xeon^® processor 5500 series with Intel^® Intelligent Power Technology deliver exceptional virtualization efficiency and flexibility, enabling IT organizations to achieve maximum benefits from virtualization, such as:

• Greater consolidation potential and lower data center costs with up to 1.9x3 the virtualization performance, leading energy efficiency and an integrated, robust set of tools for managing virtual and physical servers
• Unprecedented flexibility and control through multi-platform support and live virtual machine migration
• Rock-solid business continuity through complementary software and hardware capabilities that support high availability, disaster recovery and online maintenance

here.