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Microsoft Virtualization: Data Center to Desktop
Customer Solution Case Study
Hosting Company Implements Virtualization to
Expand Services and Cut Operations Costs
Overview ―The sooner we can put servers in customers’ hands,
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Professional services
the better. Instead of a one-day turnaround, we can
deliver a server in minutes. This helps our customers
Customer Profile
MaximumASP provides Windows®-based
meet their business objectives faster.‖
Web hosting and managed IT services. Chris Morrow, Chief Information Officer, MaximumASP
Based in Louisville, Kentucky,
MaximumASP has 35 employees and hosts Based in Louisville, Kentucky, MaximumASP is a Web-hosting
48,000 domains in more than 60
countries. company that prides itself on its innovative offerings and
outstanding customer service. The company’s growth, however, led
Business Situation
MaximumASP wanted to expand its to a proliferation of servers that took increasing amounts of time to
services without sending data center costs provision and manage, pulling staff away from researching new
soaring. Also, constant server provisioning
and management were hurting business services and hurting business agility. MaximumASP is now using
flexibility, innovation, and customer the Windows Server® 2008 operating system with Hyper-V™
service.
technology to consolidate servers and offer more flexible and
Solution competitive products, such as high-availability clusters and self-
MaximumASP is using Hyper-V™
virtualization technology in the Windows service server provisioning. The company anticipates saving
Server® 2008 operating system to U.S.$350,000 in hardware costs by virtualizing 200 servers, in
consolidate servers, and Terminal Services
to give customers easy access to their addition to saving on power and IT management costs.
hosted servers. MaximumASP is also using Microsoft® System Center Virtual
Benefits Machine Manager 2008 to streamline server deployment and
Improved customer service management.
Low-cost high availability
Lower data center costs
Improved server utilization
Enhanced security
―Our biggest competitive Situation needs or competitor moves, because it took
Founded in 2000, MaximumASP provides so long to scale our infrastructure,‖ Foster
differentiator is our Windows®-based Web hosting and managed says. ―Also, the time spent provisioning
customer service and IT services. The Louisville, Kentucky–based servers and managing hardware hindered our
company has grown rapidly by strategically staff from researching new services and
support. We didn’t want seeking customer feedback and continuously working with customers to better meet their
to be diverted from our introducing new offerings. Today, needs.‖
MaximumASP has 35 employees and hosts
singular focus on more than 48,000 domains for customers in MaximumASP also wanted to reduce the
customers by a rising more than 60 countries. The company rising cost of physical servers and the related
provides comprehensive network protection, real estate and power costs. The company
tide of hardware automated server patching, and advanced was spending thousands of dollars every year
issues.‖ server monitoring on more than 2,400 on new hardware, software licenses, and
servers. electrical power, and wanted to avoid
Chris Morrow, Chief Information Officer, outgrowing its Louisville data center and
MaximumASP Web hosting has become extremely having to build another. Funding dozens of
competitive and even commoditized in many new servers each year was especially hard to
parts of the world. ―There’s tremendous swallow when most of the company’s 2,400
market pressure to come up with new servers operated at low capacity. ―Customers
products, yet pricing tends to be usually order more server horsepower than
commoditized in the hosting space, which they need, to meet peak performance
makes it difficult to be competitive,‖ says requirements, but average server utilization
Chris Morrow, Chief Information Officer for was about 5 percent,‖ Foster says. ―We
MaximumASP. ―To offer new services, we wanted to be able to set up a server and
have to add hardware, which raises costs.‖ dynamically add processing power as it is
needed.‖ That kind of dynamic scaling was
As MaximumASP became more successful, hard to do in a physical server environment
its server holdings skyrocketed. ―We started because of the time needed to deploy and
out with one tiny rack of six Dell servers, and reboot servers.
today we have rows and rows of servers,‖
says Dominic Foster, Chief Technology Officer MaximumASP had used Microsoft® Virtual
for MaximumASP. As the number of servers Server 2005 and the Parallels Virtuozzo
increased, they created a drag on the bottom server virtualization product to consolidate
line and an impediment to innovation. ―Our some servers. However, there was a limit to
staff spent increasing amounts of time the types of servers MaximumASP could
provisioning new servers, decommissioning virtualize with these technologies because of
unneeded servers, and managing servers,‖ their lack of support for multiple processors,
Foster says. ―Before we expanded the clustering, 64-bit applications, and hypervisor
business further, we needed to get server technology.
proliferation under control.‖
―Our biggest competitive differentiator is our
Deploying each new server took roughly four customer service and support,‖ Morrow says.
hours, and MaximumASP deployed hundreds ―We didn’t want to be diverted from our
more servers each year. Lengthy server singular focus on customers by a rising tide of
deployment times sapped staff productivity hardware issues.‖
and hurt business agility. ―We couldn’t
respond as quickly as we wanted to customer
―We liked the cost- Solution Server 2008 installation option that enables
When Microsoft announced the Windows customers to install a pared-down operating
effectiveness of Hyper-V, Server® 2008 operating system with Hyper- system to reduce performance overhead and
its support for V™ technology, MaximumASP was one of the the attack surface.
first in line to try it. Hyper-V is a server
multiprocessor servers virtualization technology built into Windows MaximumASP is currently running 5 to 10
and clustering, and its Server 2008 that eliminates the need for virtual machines on each physical server. The
third-party virtualization software. ―We liked virtual machines run a combination of the
familiarity.‖ the cost-effectiveness of Hyper-V, its support Windows Server 2003 Standard and
Dominic Foster, Chief Technology Officer, for multiprocessor servers and clustering, Enterprise operating systems and a variety of
MaximumASP and its familiarity,‖ Foster says. ―Plus, we workloads, including Microsoft SQL Server®
already had a heavy investment in Microsoft 2008 data management software, Internet
System Center management solutions and Information Services 6, Microsoft Exchange
could use those programs to back up, Server 2007 messaging, and multiple
monitor, and manage Hyper-V–based virtual application servers. In one area of its
servers.‖ business alone, MaximumASP was able to
consolidate 40 physical servers down to 5.
Another factor supporting the MaximumASP
move to Hyper-V was the strong support from The company has identified another 200
Microsoft and the greater Microsoft servers that are easy physical-to-virtual (P2V)
community. ―There’s a large network of migration candidates and anticipates
people that you can turn to for ideas and achieving an 8:1 consolidation ratio (eight
help,‖ Foster says. virtual machines running on each physical
server). Long term, MaximumASP will
In April 2008, Microsoft invited MaximumASP continue to make upgrades to its virtual
to join the Microsoft Go-Live program, which server model.
helps Microsoft partners gain access to early-
release software. As program participants, MaximumASP exclusively uses Dell hardware
MaximumASP received help in setting up in its data center because of Dell’s reliability,
Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and innovation, and support. The Hyper-V–based
training its staff. ―The Microsoft Go-Live servers are Dell PowerEdge 1950 computers,
program gave us an easy way to be in touch each with two Quad-Core Intel Xeon
with Microsoft while we were evaluating processors and 16 gigabytes of RAM. ―The
Hyper-V and to provide input to product reliability of Dell hardware has contributed to
teams that were fine-tuning the product,‖ our rapid growth,‖ Foster says. ―Instead of
Morrow says. ―We delivered a lot of feedback worrying about servers going down, our
and felt that our input was valued. The Go- engineers can spend time innovating new
Live program has been important in building and better products for our customers.‖
relationships with Microsoft and giving us
access to Microsoft virtualization experts.‖ Tools for Virtualization Management
MaximumASP uses Microsoft System Center
Early Consolidation Results Virtual Machine Manager 2008 to manage its
In early 2008, MaximumASP deployed virtual landscape. With System Center Virtual
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Machine Manager 2008, IT staff can centrally
Windows Server 2008 Datacenter with Hyper- provision and maintain virtual machines
V on 20 physical servers in a Server Core using the familiar Windows interface. ―P2V
configuration. Server Core is a Windows migration is very easy with the new software,
―Using Hyper-V, and Intelligent Placement is a nicely evolved MaximumASP continues to use Terminal
feature,‖ Foster says. Intelligent Placement Services to give customers easy remote
customers could deploy analyzes performance data and resource access to their applications. MaximumASP
and decommission their requirements for a new virtual machine and presents the server management console
makes deployment recommendations. across a network using the Remote Desktop
own virtual machines Connection. Running on a client computer,
online, as needed, on MaximumASP has plans to use System this software communicates with Terminal
Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 in Services using the Remote Desktop Protocol
the fly.‖ conjunction with other System Center (RDP), sending only key presses, mouse
Chris Morrow, Chief Information Officer, programs to achieve server management movements, and screen data. RDP also
MaximumASP efficiencies. For example, it will use System encrypts traffic, allowing more secure access
Center Data Protection Manager 2007 to to applications.
back up virtual and physical servers, System
Center Operations Manager 2007 to monitor
virtual and physical servers, and System Benefits
Center Configuration Manager 2007 to By taking advantage of Hyper-V and Terminal
configure and tune virtual machine Services in Windows Server 2008, and
performance. Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine
Manager 2008, MaximumASP is using
MaximumASP took advantage of the Server virtualization to expand services, increase
Management Suite Enterprise licensing business agility, improve customer service,
arrangement to obtain all these Microsoft lower costs, and enhance security.
System Center programs in one package. ―All
the components purchased individually were Improved Customer Service and
cost-prohibitive for us,‖ Foster says. ―With Business Opportunity
this new bundle, we can completely manage Evaluating Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-
our environment with a single family of tools.‖ V as part of the Microsoft Go-Live program
made it possible for MaximumASP to get an
Easy Remote Access through early competitive lead on new services and
Presentation Virtualization hosting capabilities. ―We were proactive with
Always looking for new ways to give virtualization because our data centers were
customers more control over their hosted filling up, but we also polled customers and
servers, the company uses Terminal Services heard that they were eager to explore it,‖
in Windows Server 2008 to virtually present Foster says. ―Now that we’ve proven the
specific applications running on its servers. production-readiness of Hyper-V, we are busy
For example, in November 2007, scoping out new virtualization services that
MaximumASP released the beta version of will make us and our customers more
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 in a hosted competitive.‖
environment to give first movers in the SQL
Server developer community an opportunity One idea is to offer a low-cost starter-server
to try the new database for free. By using offering that runs on virtual machines rather
Terminal Services, MaximumASP could than on physical servers. MaximumASP could
provide its customers with access to their host multiple customers on one physical
MaximumASP-hosted database servers and server, increasing revenues and lowering
let them manage the servers remotely. infrastructure costs.
―High-availability Another idea is to give customers the ability instead of building dedicated clusters for
to configure hosting services online, on- each customer,‖ Morrow says. ―Virtual
services are another demand. ―Using Hyper-V, customers could machines can fail back and forth across
revenue opportunity for deploy and decommission their own virtual those machines to achieve high availability.‖
machines online, as needed, on the fly,‖
us and provide a huge Morrow says. ―For example, if a customer MaximumASP wants to set up a 16-node
benefit to our needs 100 servers for a project, they, or we, cluster to provide node fault tolerance. It
could roll the servers out in minutes. We would use Windows Server 2008 Network
customers. Instead of wouldn’t have to order and provision 100 Load Balancing to distribute the processing
customers having to physical servers, which could take weeks. The loads across the nodes. ―We already use
sooner we can put servers in customers’ clusters for larger customers, primarily to
purchase two servers hands, the better. Instead of a two or three- provide more application performance;
and license two day turnaround, we can deliver a server in however, Hyper-V will enable us to use
minutes. This helps our customers meet their clusters to improve uptime for all customers,‖
operating systems, we business objectives faster.‖ Foster says. ―If a hardware node in a cluster
can include high fails, the virtual machine running that
By implementing new hosting offerings on customer’s application will automatically
availability in the price virtual machines, MaximumASP can quickly, come up on another node. High-availability
of our standard easily, and cost-effectively scale its offerings services are another revenue opportunity for
depending on customer demand. ―If a new us and provide a huge benefit to our
offering.‖ service turns out to be more popular than customers. Instead of customers having to
Dominic Foster, Chief Technology Officer, we’d anticipated, we can scale up servers in purchase two servers and license two
MaximumASP minutes,‖ Foster says. ―Conversely, if a operating systems, we can include high
service is less popular than anticipated, we availability in the price of our standard
can quickly scale back or decommission offering. This will help us grow our business
servers. We won’t have invested in a whole and encourage existing customers to add
rack of physical servers.‖ new services.‖
The use of Windows Server 2008 Terminal Lower Data Center Costs
Services to enable customers to remotely log By consolidating 40 servers to 5,
on to their MaximumASP-hosted servers gives MaximumASP reduced a 46U-sized rack to a
customers finer control over their hosted 5U rack, reduced electrical power by 50
solutions and better secures their remote amps, and reduced operating system
access. MaximumASP is also able to provide licensing costs by U.S.$7,000 annually. The
customers with the latest version of more money that MaximumASP saves in its
applications without customers having to data centers, the more it has to invest in new
uninstall or reinstall software. services and customer support.
Low-Cost High Availability In its next phase of server consolidation with
MaximumASP plans to take advantage of the Hyper-V, MaximumASP plans to consolidate
clustering capabilities of Hyper-V in the 200 servers. ―With a consolidation ratio
Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and ranging from 4:1 to 8:1, this could potentially
Datacenter editions to provide customers lead to hardware savings of up to $350,000,‖
with low-cost, high-availability services. ―We Morrow says. ―We also get a much more
can use Hyper-V to create low-cost highly efficient use of data center floor space.‖
available services, because we can now put
multiple customers on a single cluster
―We have seen server Fewer physical servers yields a reduction in Hyper-V, MaximumASP can set up a private
server management time. ―We have seen network on a physical server in which the
provisioning times drop server provisioning times drop from four Web server is able to communicate with a
from four hours to less hours to one less than one hour,‖ Foster database server. This allows the company to
says. ―Virtualization also reduces the amount isolate the database server from contact with
than one hour. of support that a new server requires. Using the public Internet.
Virtualization also System Center Virtual Machine Manager
2008 features such as the P2V migration More Virtualization Possibilities
reduces the amount of tools and Intelligent Placement really MaximumASP has clearly demonstrated the
support that a new simplifies virtual machine management.‖ benefits of virtualization to reduce data
center costs, give the business more flexibility
server requires.‖ MaximumASP estimates that a combination and agility, and dynamically meet customer
Dominic Foster, Chief Technology Officer, of hardware and management savings has needs. The company is eager to explore other
MaximumASP yielded a three-month return on its Windows Microsoft virtualization technologies to
Server 2008 investment. optimize its infrastructure and provide even
greater customer convenience. Currently, it is
Improved Server Utilization exploring application virtualization as a way
Average server utilization has increased from to give customers early online access to new
5 percent for physical servers to 65 percent MaximumASP features and services.
for Hyper-V-based virtual machines. If one
virtual machine’s processing load becomes ―We’re focusing on Hyper-V and Terminal
too heavy, MaximumASP can easily move the Services right now, but we like what Microsoft
workload to another virtual machine. ―With is doing with application virtualization,‖
Hyper-V, we are better able to optimize server Morrow says. ―The Microsoft virtualization
resources,‖ Foster says. story is looking better and better every day.
We’re all about putting more control in
Overall application performance has also customers’ hands, and virtualization is
improved because of the Hyper-V support for helping us do that.‖
multiple and multicore processors. ―I’ve
moved applications from Virtual Server 2005
to Hyper-V–based servers containing more
processing power and memory and seen
great improvements in application
performance,‖ Foster says. ―You can throw
more resources at Hyper-V.‖
Enhanced Security
MaximumASP has found that Hyper-V
enhances server security through a
combination of features. First, Hyper-V can
take advantage of newer hardware-level
security features such as Execute Disable Bit,
which prevents execution of the most
prevalent viruses and worms. Also, because
Hyper-V is a streamlined, lightweight software
layer, it presents a smaller attack surface
than other virtualization solutions. Also, with
For More Information Microsoft Virtualization
For more information about Microsoft Microsoft virtualization is an end-to-end
products and services, call the Microsoft strategy that can profoundly affect nearly
Sales Information Center at (800) 426- every aspect of the IT infrastructure
9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft management lifecycle. It can drive greater
Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- efficiencies, flexibility, and cost effectiveness
2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of- throughout your organization. From
hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone accelerating application deployments; to
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in ensuring systems, applications, and data are
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in always available; to taking the hassle out of
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and rebuilding and shutting down servers and
Canada, please contact your local desktops for testing and development; to
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information reducing risk, slashing costs, and improving
using the World Wide Web, go to: the agility of your entire environment—
www.microsoft.com virtualization has the power to transform your
infrastructure, from the data center to the
For more information about MaximumASP desktop.
products and services, call (866) 925-
4678 or visit the Web site at: For more information about Microsoft
www.maximumasp.com virtualization solutions, go to:
www.microsoft.com/virtualization
Software and Services − Microsoft System Center Virtual
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio Machine Manager 2008
− Windows Server 2008 Datacenter Technologies
− Windows Server 2008 Enterprise − Hyper-V
− Windows Server 2003 Standard − Terminal Services
− Microsoft System Center Configuration
Manager 2007 Hardware
− Microsoft System Center Data Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers with two
Protection Manager 2007 Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors and 16
− Microsoft System Center Operations gigabytes of RAM
Manager 2007
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT
MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published August 2008
