Virtualization: user group and good stories

Details of the next Microsoft Virtualisation* User Group meeting now up on www.mvug.co.uk!

Where:    Microsoft London (Cardinal Place)
When: Date & Time 29th January 2009 18:00 – 21:30
Who & What: Simon Cleland (Unisys) & Colin Power (Slough Borough Council) Hyper-V RDP deployment at Slough Borough Council Aaron Parker (TFL) Application virtualisation – what is App-V? Benefits of App-V & a look inside an enterprise implementation. Justin Zarb (Microsoft) Application virtualisation – in-depth look at App-V architecture

I presented at an event for Public Sector customers recently and the folks from Slough Borough Council were there. I thought they were a great example because so many of the things we talk about when we’re presenting about Hyper-V actually cropped up with their deployment.

We’ve got another great story from the Public sector at the other end of the British Isles – Perth and Kinross council reckon Hyper-V will save £100,000 in its first year.  

However the best virtualization Story was one which told by one of our partners on the recent unplugged tour. Virtualization reduces server count, and that’s great for Electricity (cost and CO2), maintenance, capital expenditure and so on. But they had a customer who didn’t care about that. They found the the walls were cracking in their office and the reason was the weight of Servers in the room above. According to the structural engineer, they had overloaded the floor of server room by a factor of 4 and there was a risk that it would collapse onto the office staff below. That’s the first story I’ve heard of virtualization being used to reduce Weight. 

 

* Being British the MVUG  like using the Victorian affectation of spelling it with an S