The Need For (Hyper-V) Speed!
Heart & Soul
Information System Department or ISD is the heart for Maxis Communications, Malaysia’s premier ISP and Telco.
This organization serves roughly 3,500 internal (not including 600 contract staff) users 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
Add those numbers up, and you have a savvy and demanding user based, who ideationally supports Maxis’s customers, as whole.
Timing and Speed is everything says the Lau Sheng Lin, Assistant Principle Engineer (WinTel). In the business that moves in the ‘speed of light’, every nano-second can mean either Maxis customers stays loyal, or chooses the next available Telco/ISP.
Proud Caretakers
At the moment, Maxis ISD team is the proud caretakers of Windows Servers, Linux Server and HP SuperDome. Under their care, there’s 3,500 client workstation and 600 servers.
These server range houses Maxis Communications critical apps for it to serve internal and external customers.
Under Lau’s personal care are 17 VM Ware ESX Servers and over 100 plus VM clients. However, only un-critical apps go into the VM clients.
The VM range are also part of Maxis Communications entire Business Continuity Process (BCP)/Disaster Recovery Process (DRP).
The Itch to Switch
Lau of all people is familiar with the ol’ saying ‘If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it’. He has been with Maxis Communications ISD since 2001 and this is his 9th year ensuring all servers are up and running.
The VM ESX is working just fine, but he says they could do better. Managing VM clients more efficiently, faster and cost of virtualization infrastructure are on his betterment with Virtualization Wish-List.
Lau got his first glimpse at what Microsoft Hyper-V could offer while he was attending Dennis's session at TechEd 08’ here in Malaysia.
He then got enrolled into the ‘IT Pro Momentum Program’ and tested Windows Server 2008 Hyper V. Lau was attracted to the robustness and seamless integration of Hyper-V as compared to what he was already running.
Tasting the Difference
Speed is the key factor for Lau’s likeness towards Hyper-V since ISD’s operations runs on how fast it could support its internal and external customers.
Fetching the virtual clients takes less time. All of the clients can be managed, regardless of the OS (ISD also tested RedHat Server in Hyper-V) with SCVMM, its snappy.
As price wise, of all the features and benefits, MS Hyper-V wins all hands-down. The pricing is straight forward compared to VM Ware ESX. VM Ware monitors only client’s health, whereas MOM can be used to monitor both Hyper-V and its clients. Integration and speed at its best!
The last factor is hardware support. With Intel latest V-chip server, Hyper-V seems to integrate seamless with the hardware. Less configuration and hick-ups and because of that, top grade performance. Hyper-V is able to max out the true performance of the hardware.
Final Words
Lau would highly recommend IT Pro’s to join IT Pro Momentum and test out Hyper-V. These are his reasons:
1) Latest technology. Fully utilize the V power of CPU. AMD and Intel have it on the hardware. Hardware and software integration. Hardware-ready environment.
2) More integration with current monitoring MOM/SCVMM without . No need to pay more to 3rd party cost.
3) Abundance resources and support.
