ESX Hosting

Overview

Qualifying the business value of outsourcing IT infrastructure and deciding to utilize ESX Hosting is predicated on a careful evaluation of three basic considerations:

  • Risk Assessment
  • Return on Investment (ROI)
  • Social Impact

Risk includes discussions of equipment uptime as it affects company productivity and the negative marketing impact if public Internet services fail. It also includes the implied risk of loosing in-house expertise necessary to sustain equipment proficiency.  The ROI discussion includes initial hardware and maintenance costs as well as direct labor costs to install and maintain server equipment. Finally, the social impact of ESX hosting has a positive impact on energy consumption and equipment end-of-life disposal.

ESX Hosting & Risk Assessment
In order to give each of these subjects proper attention, we must first segment servers by application services so that appropriate risk can be applied to each.  In a typical IT environment, there are two different protocols and three different application services that drive risk.

host_risk-bLocal area networks (LANs) are characterized as private networks that have proprietary communication protocols between client PC and server.  With the exception of VPN (Virtual Private Network) communications, these services are not accessible by computer other than those within the LAN.  These servers are not vulnerable to outside (internet) attach.  However, they are susceptible to virus infection from internal computers connected to them. 

In order for Extranet services to be available to clients outside the LAN, HTTP protocol is used.  Even though access is restricted to an assigned password, dictionary attacks by hackers that can overcome password protection are becoming more common and more powerful.  Additional layers of security protection are necessary to mitigate hacker penetration.  Although 100% security is impossible, a server using advanced securities measures can reduce the risk to manageable levels.

Web services open to the public are the most vulnerable.  Even though some of these services require a password, user 96 any user, including hackers, can define the password.  Interruption to these services can be the most damaging, as they are also the most public.  These interruptions can be as benign as prolonged service outage or as critical as propagating malicious email or malware.  In severe cases, phishing hacks prompt calls from the FBI and demand immediate attention.  Without the appropriate level of expertise such conditions can evolve into significant branding injury, and prolonged outages.

Finally, applications using HTTP protocol are subject to Internet services availability.  Most companies with on-site hosting of Extranet and Internet application services have a single point of failure.  For example, if for some reason, their ISP (Internet Services Provider) fails, their Extranet and Internet application services also fail.  The same conditions would apply to a power outage or other natural disasters.

ESX hosting services by Vmracks eliminate the single point of failure by employing redundant hardware with ESX Vmware (link to Vmware Market Leader page) automatic fail-over High Availability (link to High Availability page) (HA), multiple up-stream providers and power backup.

Return On Investment

ESX hosting lowers the cost of managing and maintaining SMB server infrastructure.  The actual savings depends upon:
  • The current skill of your IT team and their ability to85
  • Secure servers from outside vulnerabilities.
  • Manage the repair servers when attacked.
Implement Vmware ESX infrastructure and consideration of the training cost and learning curve required.
  • Ongoing training requirements
  • The cost of new server equipment

Although the cost savings is different for each business, Vmracks92 ESX hosting services are designed to provide tangable cost savings.  Examples of different ROI models are here.

Social Impact

ESX hosting through VMracks is inherently a more environmental friendly solution. 

It is well known that traditional IT infrastructures require a multitude of physical servers to maintain application isolation so that software/OS conflicts are minimized.  This traditional infrastructure means each server must be sized for high load conditions that may occur less than 20% of the time.  Therefore, the power requirements to maintain all these servers are very high.

VMracks employees Vmware ESX Hosting, which allow us to provision many virtual servers, each isolated from the other, on far fewer physical servers.  The energy savings and carbon footprint of Vmware ESX Hosting is many times less than traditional IT infrastructures.

Because VMracks can use fewer physical servers while providing better uptime, the impact of ESX Hosting on end-of-life land fill requirements is many times less than traditional IT infrastructures.