IT pros call the condition “server sprawl,” and Land O’Lakes had a bad case of it. “We faced a combination of underutilized and aging hardware, applications running on outdated operating systems, and rising datacenter power and cooling costs,” said Jason Nord, the company’s server administrator.

To counter the problem, Land O’Lakes did what an increasing number of similarly challenged companies are doing: It turned to a virtualization solution. Specifically, it became an early adopter of Microsoft virtualization technologies, including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

The company’s IT team initially rolled out a Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 in its test and development environment, in which four physical servers each hosted 10 to 13 virtual machines, with each virtual machine running one application. During 2008, the team plans to migrate this environment to Hyper-V and to move an additional 10 to 15 new applications directly into virtual machines in the production environment, thus saving the cost of hardware servers.

“Our Microsoft virtualization solution is a key part of a business strategy we have at Land O’Lakes called Best Cost Initiative,” said Tony Taylor, the company’s director of IT services. “It’s not just about cutting costs, but about looking where our money is being spent and finding ways to leverage our investments across the company. Virtualization holds a lot of promise in helping us maximize the value of our IT investments.”

The Integrated Approach
To accompany Microsoft virtualization technologies such as Hyper-V, the System Center family of solutions delivers management tools to configure, operate, deploy and backup physical and virtual servers from the datacenter to the desktop — all from a single pane of glass. With proper management tools and processes, customers can control the power of virtualization and become agile, while still maintaining control. This can help prevent such issues as “virtual server sprawl” — one of the challenges that can be introduced by the increased use of server virtualization.

Ironically, this virtual equivalent of physical server sprawl stems from the ease with which virtual machines can be created. Some IT teams have allowed multiple groups within the organization to create their own virtual machines, only to lose track of them later. This kind of uncontrolled usage can lead to legal and security concerns.

“To truly see the full benefits of virtualization, it is critical to have the right processes and tools in place,” Hilf said. “That’s why management tools are so important — they are the glue that holds it all together and helps deliver the real benefits of virtualization.”