Virtualisation

Virtualisation is the “next big thing” in data centre and server management. Node4 offer a range of virtualisation options to allow you to get the most from your hardware resources.

Virtualisation allows you to run multiple operating systems on a single piece of hardware. Instead of a separate server for your Linux website, your SQL database and your Exchange server, you can run them all from one server and keep capital costs down. Depending on the type of application and the usage profile, consolidation ratios of 10:1 or more can be achieved.

However, virtualisation can give you much more than that. You can spread the virtual machines over multiple servers to make the most of available resources like CPU and RAM, whilst giving high levels of availability. If one physical server fails or needs to be shut down for maintenance, you can move the virtual machine to the other hardware, without the end users noticing anything has changed.

Our virtualisation offerings range from simple, single physical server setups to multiple servers with shared SAN storage using VMware Infrastructure 3 to manage the virtual environment. A second SAN can be hosted at one of our other data centres to mirror all your business data and virtual machines and provide a robust disaster recovery solution.

Combined with our N+1 resilient data centre infrastructure (power and air con) and a redundant network infrastructure (firewalls, switches etc) you can safeguard against hardware failure causing downtime to your business. See our High Availability Bundle, for more information on network resilience.

Node4 use EqualLogic PS Series SANs, to give the best balance of performance, scalability and resilience. Offering up to 16Tb per SAN with a range of RAID options, additional SANs can be added to the configuration to provide more storage as required with no downtime.

No more tape backups, no more downtime because of server maintenance, no more worrying about running out of disk space or other resources.

A typical high end scenario is outlined in the diagram below

High Availability Networking Bundle

Node4 offer a number of Cisco-based high availability solutions for the network infrastructure around your VMware or physical server environment. For example our Dedicated High Availability Enterprise Bundle provides high throughput load balancing for websites, a clustered database platform and redundant firewall security.

Dedicated High Availability Enterprise Bundle:

Firewalls	2x Cisco ASA5510
Switches	2x CSS11501 Content switches for load balancing
Web servers	2x DL360 (behind content switches)
SQL Servers	2x DL380 (clustered)
or:
DL360 quad core VMWare servers (as many as required)VMWare Infrastructure 3 2x EqualLogic SANs for data storage (one hosted offsite) HSRP redundant network connections into the rack Dual (A+B) power feeds (separate PDUs).