ICT innovation and The Credit Crunch

Now The Credit Crunch is making new victims on a daily basis it's very likely that ICT budget will be reduced. So what do you do? Off course you want to introduce these new Microsoft services that make your life and those of your colleagues better. But when your budget is cut how do your spend it correctly on servers, consultancy and licenses.

My answer? Virtualize where possible. Nowadays Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware are a good to reduce physical servers and spend more on software or consultancy.
Especially with Hyper-V in combination with Windows 2008 Enterprise licensing will give you a good value. Because one Windows 2008 Enterprise license gives you the right to install up to 4 virtual guests based on the same licenses. Very nice.

Just released is the Hyper-V 2008 server. Free to use. Except for the guest licenses of course. Another cheap way to get started with Virtualization

Things you can virtualize based on this license type are:

• Exchange mail
• Active Directory
• Sharepoint
• Webservers
• Development

These services can be virtualized on Windows 2008 guests OS. in my own experiences with Hyper-V the only hard part is getting the right hardware.

Hyper-V has a certified server list. My experiences are with Dell Poweredge 2950 series. In combination with a lot of memory (8 GB +) and discs you can easily host up to 8 active Guests. While you busy configuring don't forget some extra NIC's (from 2 to 4). You'll thank me later.

A Dell Poweredge server with 8 GB mem and plenty of HD's is available for 3000 to 4000 euro. A Windows 2008 enterprise license for circa 2500 euro.

And with 2 dell servers and load balancing features in Hyper-V and Windows 2008 you have an excellent fast and reliable solution. At least that's how it worked out for me...

Thanks for reading. Let me know if this works for you or if I can help.