VMware, Inc, the global leader in virtualization solutions
from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced that its
industry-leading virtualization and management suite, VMware
Infrastructure 3, continues to enhance its status as one of the premier
platforms for running Microsoft Exchange, with the Interfaith Medical
Center of New York City, medical device manufacturer NuVasive, Ohio
Mutual Insurance Group, the University of Plymouth in the U.K., Marvell
Technology Group Ltd., and the Rochester General Hospital system joining
an ever-growing list of organizations that have turned to VMware to
optimize their Exchange environments.
Exchange customers are migrating to the VMware platform as
virtualization becomes a core component of mainstream IT environments,
and IT organizations seek to deliver their applications as dynamic
services, while cutting costs. Microsoft Exchange is a commonly
virtualized application and is supported by Microsoft as part of the
Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). VMware ESX
was the first hypervisor to be certified under the program, providing
VMware customers with access to support services directly from Microsoft.
“We are going to be implementing Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and
Office Communications Server 2007,” said Joseph Sorrenti, assistant vice
president for infrastructure at Interfaith Medical Center. “VMware did
an excellent job in getting its platform certified with Microsoft.
Interfaith has implemented a virtualization-first policy, and we’re
confident that VMware is the best infrastructure on which to run our
most crucial applications.”
50,000 Mailboxes at U.K. University
One example of a large Microsoft Exchange deployment on VMware is at the
University of Plymouth in the U.K. The university has virtualized 50,000
Exchange 2007 mailboxes on VMware Infrastructure, giving the university
a more manageable and flexible Exchange environment, while taking
advantage of VMware’s unique high-availability tools, such as VMware HA
and VMotion technologies.
“We couldn’t be happier with the uptime and performance of our Exchange
implementation on the VMware platform,” said Adrian Jane, infrastructure
and operations manager at the University of Plymouth. “The VMware
platform is ideal for mission-critical applications like Exchange Server
2007. VMware Infrastructure is a proven and highly stable product. And
when your mission-critical applications are running on VMware solutions,
they may help fully protect them. You may also have rapid recovery if
any issues arise. So for us, it was the only choice for our virtualized
environment.”
Based on their overall IT infrastructure, the university estimates it is
saving roughly $90,000 annually on utility costs and reducing CO2
emissions by 170 tons per year by using the VMware platform. The number
of server racks needed has also been reduced from 32 to two.
VMware Choice Backed by Successful Exchange Deployment on VMware
After considering other competitor products, Marvell Technology Group
Ltd. selected the VMware platform as the foundation for its virtual
infrastructure, based on 1) VMware’s proven track record of success in
production datacenters, and 2) its ability to meet all existing
virtualization requirements. As an example of their trust of VMware
solutions, Marvell deployed a brand new Exchange 2007 infrastructure on
the VMware infrastructure, equipped with VMware tools like VMware HA and
VMware DRS. Marvell is currently in the process of migrating all 6,000
mailboxes to this new infrastructure.
“Microsoft Exchange is a critical application for us,” said Rick Chang,
associate vice president of IT Infrastructure at Marvell Semiconductor.
“Service availability is essential to our business operation. VMware
provides robust feature sets with built-in automation, high-availability
and manageability. The decision is easy for us, we picked a solution
that can give us high-availability of the virtualized environment and
the ability to recover quickly should something happen.”
Exchange Virtualization for Healthcare
Another large Exchange deployment on the VMware platform is at Rochester
General Hospital, which has a distributed environment in upstate New
York. Rochester’s IT organization recently virtualized its 5,000-mailbox
Exchange environment to improve control, manageability and uptime.
“We virtualized all our Exchange servers in our VMware environment and
had no issues whatsoever,” said Tom Gibaud, manager of information
technology at Rochester General Hospital. “Simply put, VMware
Infrastructure 3 helps us better manage our computing environment. For
example, if we notice that there is a memory error on a server, it is
very easy for us to utilize the VMotion functionality to move that box
somewhere else, replace the memory chip, and then VMotion it back. Try
doing that with a datacenter full of physical servers!”
Saving Money, Speeding Deployment, Ensuring Availability
NuVasive recently upgraded from Exchange 2003 running on a conventional
physical infrastructure to Exchange 2007 running on the VMware platform.
The upgrade involved about 500 mailboxes on four Intel-based blade
servers. The entire upgrade to Exchange 2007 and the migration to a
virtualized environment were completed in a month.
Exchange is one of several critical applications that NuVasive has
virtualized on the VMware platform, which has already saved the company
about $1.1 million dollars in capital and operational costs including
hardware, cabling, rack space, power and administration. In NuVasive’s
case, provisioning time has been cut from days and sometimes weeks for
physical boxes to 20 minutes for a virtual machine. Application uptime
is 99.99 percent.
Archiving Email in a Virtualized Environment
The Ohio Mutual Insurance Group (OMIG) is another VMware customer that
is running its entire Exchange environment on the VMware platform, which
includes approximately 200 mailboxes. OMIG uses Exchange in conjunction
with a third party application, Symantec Enterprise Vault, which
provides email archiving.
“We were pleasantly surprised how the VMware platform handled
distributed resources and provides high availability,” said Mark Coe,
manager of IT infrastructure and Operations at OMIG. “Those are very
important capabilities for the virtualization of email systems and all
enterprise applications. We now rely on VMware virtualization for the
vast majority of our day-to-day operations.”