Strategic Capstone Project:Controlling Software Costs

in a Virtual Server Environment

Kenneth D. GauvreauMG6970: Summer Term 1

New England CollegeJune 23, 2008

Advisor: Christina Coidakis-Barss

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Agenda

General Knowledge of Virtual machines

Costs of licenses

Managing VMs and Licenses

Conclusion

Recommendation

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General Knowledge of Virtual machines

Servers

• high powered computer that is optimized for a specific task

Virtual Servers

• software representation of a physical server

• a file that contains all the information stored in a physical

server

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General Knowledge of Virtual machines

Physical Hardware System(“Server”)

Operating System (“OS”)

Virtual Machine (“VM”) Technology

OS OS

Application Application

PhysicalOS

Environment

VirtualOS

Environments

Virtual HW System

Virtual HW System

Allocatesvirtual

resources

Virtual· processors· RAM· network card· etc.

Physical· processors· RAM· network card· etc.

Physical and virtual hardware systems and resources (Microsoft, 2006)

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General Knowledge of Virtual machines

Multi-processor and multi-core Servers

• Greatly increases processing power and speed

Benefits of Virtualization

• Better utilization of resources

• High Availability

• Reduced downtime

• Reduced hardware Costs

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Costs of licenses

Named-user basis

Concurrent user

CPU based pricing

Multi-core pricing

Linux – per physical server

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Managing VMs and Licenses

• Replicating virtual machines

• Accurate tracking systems

• Open Source Software

• Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition

• Power off unneeded servers

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Conclusion

Virtualizing servers will not result in large software cost savings

Software costs can be controlled

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Recommendations

• Move towards Open Source Software

• Utilize Windows Enterprise Edition

• Run multiple applications on a single server

• Power off unneeded servers