Bryn Celynnog Comprehensive school is taking the first steps of virtualisation. Over the Easter School holidays, ExtraScope will be installing a consolidated centralised storage device and implementing Citrix XenServer on the physical servers that the school is running.

Citrix XenServer™ is the only enterprise-class, cloud-proven virtualization platform that delivers the critical features of live migration and centralized multi-server management at no cost. XenServer is an open and powerful server virtualization solution that radically reduces datacenter costs by transforming static and complex datacenter environments into more dynamic, easy to manage IT service delivery centers.

What does this mean for the school?

1. Better resource utilization. Now you don't have to buy a separate piece of capital every time you have a request for a new server. You simply create a new VM for them and as far as the user sees it looks and feels just like a physical asset to them. In most cases they don't even notice it is a VM they are actually working on.
   
2. Speed of deployment for new servers. To deploy a VM from an existing template take about 3 minutes (that includes configuring name, IP, and other specifics for the server). Compare this with having to issue a PO, rack the server, make sure there is enough power/cooling, attach a console and the other steps required for building a physical box. It can take anywhere from 1week to 4weeks (depending on how quick you can get the server shipped to you.
   
3. Save on power and cooling costs. Don't need to run as many physical assets anymore.
   
4. Load balancing. If a VM is using too many of the physical resources it can be migrated (in real-time with VMotion) to another physical asset.
   
5. Upgrading hardware without scheduling downtime. If you have enough hosts within your cluster you can migrate all the VMs off one host and spread them to other available hosts. Once all VMs are off the host you can take it offline, upgrade, bring it up, migrate back the VMs, and repeat. This way none of your VMs experience any downtime!
   
6. Setting and tearing down test environments quickly. Especially handy when you want to test a new app or script. You can deploy a VM in 3 minutes, test what you have to test and blow it away again.
   
7. Ability to take snap shots of existing states. Since a VM is really just a set of files you can take snap shots and revert the VM to previous states within seconds.
   
8. Ability to set disks to non-persistent states. This is useful for things like training environment. After training is done you don't want to keep the changes made to VMs for the next class. If that is the case set disk to non-persistent and reboot the system. Any changes made to a non-persistent disk will be gone.