The joys of Virtualisation

For those of you coming along tomorrow to the Vista Install Fest, you will be pleased to know that Virtualisation has saved the day. Yesterday I was happily verifying the servers were all up and running when the unthinkable happened - I had a hardware failure. How many of you have been in the situation of device failure just when you didn't need it?

Well, I have to now thank Virtual Server and Virtual Machines for saving the day. This is perhaps a good example for the use of the technology. The demo network I use all the time consists of Domain Controllers, Exchange 2003 Front and and Back End, LCS and LCS Proxy, Sharepoint, Web Server, SQL2005 Workstations and of course MOM to manage it all. I run all of these in Virtual Machines. Now, I know you are going to say, "If I ran these on multiple machines, a piece of harware failure affects only one box right?", well if it takes down a critical service, the knock on effect can be huge. You may be right, but in this case, I decided to make use of the spare horsepower this server has to run everything on one box, especially as my load tends to be low.

The amazing thing is that we are back up and running in short order after simply moving the virtual machines across to another box. If that is not a testament to the use of Virtualization technology, especially in low load, test and consolidation scenarios, then I am afraid I don't know what is.

See you at the Install Fest!