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The Move From Physical To Virtual: Page 2 of 3

Virtualization also let us configure the disaster recovery box so that while we run test and development environments, we can also run smaller Oracle partitions. If we want to conduct load testing, we just reconfigure the development partitions for true load testing. If we have to run a disaster recovery process, we can use the whole box to run production.

For storage, we use virtualized Network Appliance devices, which we have configured in a classic enterprise shared storage setup. We use the devices to create extra copies of our database for test and development. Previously, when we wanted to refresh the test and development database, we had to make a full copy of the production database, which took 12 to 24 hours and required a lot of storage. Now, we just create a copy of the disaster recovery database, which is an up-to-date production copy. It takes very little space, and the process occurs within minutes.

At the application layer, most of our code is custom written in Java running on a BEA WebLogic app server. For hardware, we use Dell 2950 servers with two quad processors and 32 GB of RAM. We also added extra network interface cards to the servers for the subnets that connect the servers to our storage.

ADD WHEN NEEDED

A key virtualization feature at the application layer is VMware's VMotion capability. This lets us create a cluster of three or four severs to which we can add 20 to 40 virtual servers. VMotion manages the servers by monitoring how busy each server is and automatically moves a virtual server from one physical server to another if the original physical server is too busy. This occurs in real time without any interruption to the application.

When assessing the cost of converting to a virtual environment, it's important to realize that virtualization requires additional network storage since it takes 20 GB to load the OS of a virtual machine. You also will need additional network interface cards for the separate network subnets between the virtual machines and the storage devices. When you add the cost of the virtual operating system software and the extra memory you will require, your cost per server goes up. Alternately, when you consider that you can consolidate up to 10 virtual servers into one physical server, the overall savings becomes considerable--not just in up-front hardware costs, but also in terms of power and cooling costs, as well as data center space.