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CNS News
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As servers multiply, so do the costs associated with them; the cost of the computers themselves, the racks to mount them, the power and cooling infrastructure to operate them, and the space to locate and secure them.
Budgets are shrinking, space is becoming crowded, but demand for services is increasing -- clearly, "More Of The Same" is NOT the answer. A new approach is needed.
UF Computing and Networking Services is now offering virtual machine hosting services utilizing proven virtualization technology by VMware. This service is designed to help UF units conserve scarce resources by consolidating computing infrastructure into CNS's enterprise data center. This will allow UF colleges and departments to avoid the burden of purchasing and maintaining computer hardware.
Our virtualization environment is designed with high-availability in mind, utilizing SAN-backed storage and failover between physical servers. A clustered design allows us to hot-migrate your virtual server between multiple physical hardware devices. This prevents downtime due to hardware failure or maintenance.
Our standard virtual machine includes:
1/2 CPU, bursting to any available CPUs
2 Gigabytes of RAM
80 Gigabytes of SAN-attached storage
... priced at $60 per month (no initial set-up charge). Additional resources are available to meet your servers' needs, and can be incrementally added to the base price for a nominal fee.
If you have questions, or specialized requests please contact us
at <open-systems-l@lists.ufl.edu>.
In addition to saving money and space, and gaining a high-availability infrastructure for your servers, you will realize gains in two other important areas:
Improved physical security
With your virtual machines deployed on CNS's infrastructure, your servers will be in a highly-secure physical environment, monitored by CNS Operations staff 24 x 365.
Energy savings
Servers rarely operate at full -- or even optimum -- efficiency, resulting in substantial energy-waste by the servers themselves, and of the power needed to cool them. While you may not directly pay an energy bill for powering and cooling your servers, the University does pay that bill. And money that the University saves in energy-costs can go to other needs. Virtualizing servers can save up to 80% in energy costs vs. physical-hardware servers (http://www.vmware.com/solutions/consolidation/green/).
In addition, computing-servers distributed widely throughout campus buildings significantly restrict the ability of Physical Plant Division to implement energy-conservation measures for building environmental systems (http://ufsustainability.blogspot.com/2008/12/beneficial-setbacks.html).
Effective immediately, in order to make the best of use of the available data center capacity, CNS will no longer be accepting new co-located (physical hardware) servers.
Existing CNS co-location customers will continue to be supported only for the hardware already located in CNS facilities. We will work with those customers over time to migrate their existing servers to virtual machines. All new servers will be virtualized.
Exceptions will be considered on an individual-server basis, when issues (such as special connectivity requirements) make it impossible for the server to be virtualized.
For additional information on any of the issues addressed in this
announcement, please see http://docs.osg.ufl.edu/hosting; or for a consultation on your specific needs, please contact <open-systems-l@lists.ufl.edu>.
We welcome your comments and suggestions on this and all CNS documentation. Please send your comments to: