"There is the ability to deploy things fast," Roden says. "We're in the process of putting in some additional applications. You don't have to spend days putting together a server. You can do it rapidly by cloning a server or even do it from scratch."
This added flexibility has allowed GDLD to create an offsite disaster recovery solution by taking advantage of the virtualization management capabilities of Virtual Iron's VI-Center. "It changes our perspective on backups and disaster recovery and business continuity," Roden says. "In the past, you'd end up with a whole variety of servers and equipment. Even if you back them up, the chances that you will be able to restore them becomes a problem." While he could hire a third-party disaster recovery vendor to handle the problem, "it becomes enormously expensive."
"With virtualization, the hardware isn't an issue as long as Virtual Iron supports it," Roden says. "We brought up Virtual Iron at the co-lo [collocation site]. We could bring up VMs [virtual machines] at the co-lo and re-establish applications."
Roden says the firm has seen a return on its investment in 12 months, based on maintenance savings and new virtual servers that didn't require new hardware. He spent around $30,000 on the Virtual Iron implementation, which he says was about $15,000 less than a comparable VMware installation would have cost at the time. He also says the ability to replicate an entire server as a virtual hard disk has reduced backup costs and eliminated the need for a separate replication or CDP system for its Tier 2 servers.
The move to virtualization has been a real plus for the firm from both a cost perspective and because of the flexibility it brings, he says, and it has reduced hardware costs and simplified server management. "We've accomplished what weve set out to accomplish," he says.
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